We folks on the right love to point up the plentiful hypocrisies on the left, especially when it comes to “tolerance.” We’re made out to be out-of-touch intolerant knuckle draggers if we don’t agree with someone’s illegal, immoral or demonstrably dopey conduct. They remain blissfully oblivious to their intolerance of our beliefs.
But this example of ignorance and intolerance out of the latest edition of Willamette Week beckoned me forth to give offense. And so I shall:
This is the story of the owner of The Viewpoint Inn’s battle with the thugs at the “Friends of the Gorge.” Read the story here. The “radical environmentalists,” as the owner accurately calls them, basically bled dry the finances of cash strapped entrepreneur Geoff Thompson.
Geoff Thompson, whom I’ve had on the program several times about his property rights battles, is gay and apparently has a penchant for posing for calendars.
Here’s where the left’s intolerance and the Willamette Week’s inbred idiocy comes into play.
In the discussion of people who had come to the aid of Thompson and his partner the WW observes:
With help from an unlikely collection of allies, including conservative property rights advocates and state Treasurer Ted Wheeler, Thompson reopened the inn on Memorial Day 2007, after a three-year land-use battle that left him deeply in debt.
You seldom if ever see those kinds of words applied to, let’s say, the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is held out a neutral “civil rights” organization in journalism. But the ACLU is a leftist organization which doesn’t help conservative causes as a general rule. This is because the ACLU is a political organization–not a civil rights organization. Let that one sink in for a moment. (You might want to ask former ACLU attorney and Victoria Taft blog force writer Rees Lloyd about that if you have any quaint questions about that. )
But not so Oregonians in Action or The Victoria Taft Show. To the left (including journalists) it’s inconceivable that their caricature of conservatism could include tolerance of a gay man–even one with a private property rights issue. We’re so wedded to intolerance their thinking goes that we won’t help this gay guy.
Who’s prejudiced here?
Equally sad is that Willamette Week perceives private property rights issues to be a conservative issue. That’s probably because their “neutral” ACLU rarely helps anyone with a private property issue. Wonder why? It’s a “civil right” is it not?
WW’s can’t–or chooses not to–disconnect their prejudiced and intolerant view of conservatives from the issue of a gay guy who has a property rights issue.
We don’t see his gayness, WW, we see the issue.
Your ignorance is showing.
And, in case you missed it, private property rights are a civil right, dilweeds.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.[1]
