I’d like to start off with the important stuff. Someone clever started a “buy-cott” movement to counteract the boycott being organized against Goya Foods. Participation is easy, just buy $10 worth of Goya products and donate it to your local food bank. In one move you get to show your support for free speech and do something good for your community. Win-win. I made my purchase yesterday.
And now for something totally different.
Robert Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, recently said “We all truly blessed, at the same time, to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder.” The result was an immediate call by the Left for a boycott against Goya Foods. I posted about this on Facebook and one of my “friends” commented as follows:
“This is called ad homenim, but only when the person is attacked INSTEAD of the ideas. However, when a person repeatedly and stubbornly embraces devotion to demonstrably erroneous ideas, this is a demonstration of Bad Faith because they fail to reconsider their position in the light of new data. And at that point, the person is fair game for personal attack.”
This is really scary thinking for a couple of reasons. What are “demonstrably erroneous ideas”? In this case, the demonstrably erroneous idea must be simply supporting the President of the United States. Who made that call?
Now let’s move on to the “repeatedly and stubbornly” part. By all reasonable standards, Mr. Unanue is a good guy. With him at the helm, Goya Foods has donated millions of dollars to literally hundreds of charities (the entire list in on their Web site). And, Goya Foods employs more than 4,000 people in 26 facilities. For those of you who are confused, most people would consider these to be good things. I’m not seeing a pattern of bad behavior there.
Expressing gratitude for the President a single time is not an indication of being repeatedly stubborn and clearly doesn’t warrant attacking someone personally. There must be a something else going on here. What’s happening is that Mr. Unanue is being blamed for anytime ANYONE has expressed support for the President. There are many people who have supported, and still support, the President. Since those people continue to support “erroneous ideas”, the next time ANY individual supports the President, that person is fair game for an immediate personal attack. That’s ridiculous.
Unfortunately, you can see this flawed logic being applied elsewhere today. This is the same sort of thinking that brands all police officers as racist simply because a very small number of them happen to be racist. Grouping all similar people into a single group is stereotyping and profiling and we’ve been told that both are bad things to do.
The fact of the matter is Mr. Unanue did nothing wrong. He simply counted his blessings and was immediately attacked for it. Even worse, he was attacked not only for what he believes in, but because other people also believe it.
If you’re living in America, where Mr. Unanue’s right to count his blessings is protected by the same Constitution that protects the mob’s right to protest his doing so, you should count your own blessings…while you’re still allowed to do so.
