Indeed Robertson and the family have repeatedly written spoken and preached against racism and Phils adopted grandson Will is biracial. While in the air force I was stationed in northern Louisiana and took courses at Tech at the same time Robertson was there. Although a damn Yankee" I not only immersed myself in southern living including good manners faith-based communities food hunting and fishing family and friends but ended up marrying as my first wife a young woman from Shreveport. I learned firsthand to understand and appreciate many core values that northern bigotry had blinded me to. As Magerys GQ article notes The ecology here has been so perfectly manipulated that it feels as if two giant hands reached down from the sky and molded the land itself an effect that Im sure would please Phil. . . . Its hard not to gaze upon his cultivations and wonder if youve gotten life all wrong. This is life as summer camp. Its gorgeous in a way that alters you on an elemental level. I feel it when I breathe the air. I feel it when I survey the enormity of the space around me." It is this authenticity in upholding enduring core values that has deeply resonated with Americans and that A&E and progressive" elites cannot simply put on hiatus." Probably to A&Es surprise the massive public outrage over Robertsons suspension was immediate and widespread and has ranged from conservative to liberal: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin:My message is to get human beings to love God love their neighbor and for the life of me I just dont see the downside of human beings not being so mean to one another and actually care for one another and not steal from one another and not murder each other for their tennis shoes. Thats the message I have. . . . America and the world we have a love problem. Im trying to get people aware of that. A loving person is not going to pick up a spear or a knife because when the Ten Commandments were written it was before guns and God was saying Look quit murdering each other." Now Im just trying to say Folks lets try to love one another no matter what the color of their skin."
Free speech is an endangered species. Those intolerants hatin and taking on theDuck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us."Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal:
The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints except those they disagree with. . . . It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh and Phil Robertson gets suspended."Liberal gay journalist Andrew Sullivan:
Robertson is a character in a reality show. Hes not a spokesman for A&E any more than some soul-sucking social x-ray from the Real Housewives series is a spokeswoman for Bravo. Is he being fired for being out of character? Nah. Hes being fired for staying in character a character A&E has nurtured and promoted and benefited from. Turning around and demanding a Duck Dynasty star suddenly become the equivalent of a Rachel Maddow guest is preposterous and unfair. What Phil Robertson has given A&E is a dose of redneck reality. Why on earth would they fire him for giving some more?"Lesbian feminist author Camille Paglia:
In a democratic country people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality as I one hundred percent do. If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible again they have a right of religious freedom there. . . . To express yourself in a magazine in an interview this is the level of punitive PC utterly fascist utterly Stalinist okay that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity juvenility. . . . There is a dialogue going on human civilization for heaven sakes. Its not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement. And that is what happened to feminism and that is what happened to gay activism a fanaticism."KISS front man Paul Stanley:
Yank people off TV if we dont agree with their views in a mag. interview? You want your views heard allow others same right. . . . Dont want to be penalized for your views you cant penalize someone for theirs. Thats more offensive than their words. . . . Being allowed to speak isnt supposed to be followed by punishment for speaking."Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist Clarence Page:
I like Duck Dynasty. I have been a fan for a number of months. I was hooked by the humor and the personality of the folks in the family. . . . What does A&E do? They suspended him. I think that was an over-reaction. . . . I think instead of trying to punish people like Phil Robertson we should talk about the issues he raised. Have a dialogue. This is the way you encourage more tolerance."Singer and hunter Ted Nugent:
Though they claim to be the party of tolerance what the left wants is to intimidate and silence and even hurt those with whom they disagree. The lefts tolerance only extends to those who espouse their agenda and nostrums. Phil Robertson didnt say anything hurtful or shameful. He didnt say that homosexuals should be beaten maligned persecuted denied human dignity or rights or have their birthdays taken away. . . . My suspicion is that as this plays out it will be more beneficial to the Duck Dynasty guys than the disconnected suits at A&E who made a business decision to bow at the altar of political correctness. This isnt about Phil Robertsons First Amendment rights. He can say whatever he wants. This is about left-wing hit squads pouncing upon anyone with whom they disagree to shut them up and intimidate others into being quiet."Gay CNN anchorman Don Lemon:
He has a right to say exactly what he wants. This is America. . . . I always err on the side of free speech. The marketplace should decide. If people do not like Duck Dynasty they should not watch Duck Dynasty. . . . I dont think he should be fired. I think people should be allowed to say what they want and if they hang themselves they hang themselves."Columnist and author Patrick Buchanan:
What GLAAD wants to do is to blacklist Robertson to punish him by taking away his podium Duck Dynasty. . . . He is being censored by elites who wish to deny him access to the medium they largely control television. . . . To our modern moral and cultural elites it is those who condemn the values of GLAAD who are the enemies of decency and progress who ought to be fired and blacklisted to prevent their poisonous views from being disseminated. In the Hollywood of the late 1940s Communism was persona non grata. In the 21st century biblical Christianity is persona non grata."The backlash has been so enormous that Facebook pages were created within twenty-four hours to boycott A&Es action with the number of fans accessing these pagestotaling 1.8 million 1.5 million and 1.4 million. Elite social media firms responded by trying to muzzle the reaction with Facebook initially slapping the administrator of theBoycott A&E Until Phil Robertson Is Put Back on Duck Dynasty page with a twelve-hour ban because it received nearly 4500 likes in just one hour" but after protests the ban was removed. Twitter similarly blocked tweets that included links to the pro-Robertson site IStandWithPhil.com but then reversed the ban and apologized after being deluged with protests. And according to Nielsen when the boycotts began A&Es ratings immediately dropped by 13 percent with the percentage of adults ages twenty-five to fifty-four who watched the network dropping 22 percent and that of adults from eighteen to forty-nine falling 18 percent. So if A&E were indeed pursuing a publicity campaign that strategy has seriously backfired. When major Duck Dynasty sponsor Cracker Barrel also tried to follow A&Es lead and announced that its stores would no longer carry Duck Dynasty merchandise they alsoreversed their ban within forty-eight hours and issued an apology: Dear Cracker Barrel Customer: When we made the decision to remove and evaluate certain Duck Dynasty items we offended many of our loyal customers. Our intent was to avoid offending but thats just what weve done. You wrote you called and you took to social media to express your thoughts and feelings. You flat out told us we were wrong. We listened. Today we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores." Meanwhile days before Christmas Walmart the major retailer for Duck Dynasty hadcompletely sold out of show merchandise; five (and counting) Duck Dynasty books had become 2013 bestsellers (with at least three more scheduled for 2014 already heading up the sales charts in pre-release); the Duck Dynasty Christmas album Duck the Hallsdebuted at number one on the Billboard Chart; 250000 fans had signed a petition to reinstate Robertson; and GLAAD began reeling from the biggest backlash in years." According to a Radar Online source with inside knowledge of the networks machinations" the New York Daily News has reported that Its an absolute disaster for A&E. . . . Now its a standoff between the family and the network who is going to blink first? There is no way Phil is going to apologize for his comments because he doesnt think what he said is hateful or prejudice its his religious beliefs. . . . A&E isnt going to walk away from Duck Dynasty they cant afford to do it. Its just a matter of getting both sides to agree on how to move forward." And indeed this is exactly what has happened even though GLAAD is not glad about A&Es reversal stating that Phil Robertson should look African American and gay people in the eyes and hear about the hurtful impact of praising Jim Crow laws and comparing gay people to terrorists." In response Brietbarts Warner Todd Huston has noted: It is interesting that GLAAD put Robertsons comments about African Americans first in its own statement about his comments on homosexuals. One might think that GLAAD feels it lost the battle on that issue and needed the cover of racism to add heft to its complaints. Still the statement takes Robertsons comments out of context and mischaracterizes them. Robertson made no such claim that Jim Crow laws did not harm African Americans nor did he compare homosexuals to terrorists." Cultural leftists" have been pursuing a campaign against Judeo-Christianity traditional morality gender identities the nuclear family limited constitutional government free enterprise the family civility individual liberty personal responsibility the rule of law and much more. In the name of tolerance" and diversity" this campaign has sought to impose a secular theocracy" to smother bourgeois values and coercively impose progressive" culture on an unwilling public and gender issues have become a key rallying point (see for example articles in theWall Street Journal National Catholic Register Hartford Courant Reuters andWashington Times). And what about Robertsons views of a clear and innate differentiation between men and women? In a recent Wall Street Journal interview of Camille Paglia A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues" she similarly decries opinion makers who deny the biological differences between men and women" and considers the idea that all gay people are born gay" to be the biggest canard." Also and as reported in The Guardianin recent studies of the human brain
scientists have drawn on nearly 1000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains. Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average womens brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres in contrast to mens brains where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions. Ragini Verma a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes with mens brains apparently wired more for perception and coordinated actions and womens for social skills and memory making them better equipped for multitasking.So and contrary to postmodern wishes is gender no more a choice than is the law of gravity or ones birthday DNA or species? Vive la diffrence! In his essay Americas Ruling Classand the Perils of Revolution" author and scholar Angelo Codevilla superbly examines the culture war here as a conflict between two political classes in contemporary America. As Independent Institute Senior FellowRobert Higgs points out regarding this article:
Codevilla cuts immediately to the core: the United States today is divided into (a) a ruling class which dominates the government at every level the schools and universities the mainstream media Hollywood and a great deal else and (b) all of the rest of us a heterogeneous agglomeration that Codevilla dubs the country class. The ruling class holds the lions share of the institutional power but the country class encompasses perhaps two-thirds of the people. Members of the two classes do not like one another. In particular the ruling class views the rest of the population as composed of ignoramuses who are vicious violent racist fanatically religious intolerant irrational unscientific backward generally ill behaved and incapable of living well without constant detailed direction by their betters; and it views itself as perfectly qualified and entitled to pound the rest into better shape by the generous application of laws taxes subsidies regulations speech controls and unceasing declarations of its dedication to bringing the country and indeed the entire world out of its present darkness and into the light of the Brave New World it is busily engineering. This class divide has little to do with rich versus poor or Democrat versus Republican. At its core it has to do with the division between on the one hand those whose attitudes are attuned to the views endorsed by the ruling class (especially political correctness") and whose fortunes are linked directly or indirectly with government programs and on the other hand those whose outlooks and interests derive from and focus on private affairs especially the traditional family religion and genuine private enterprise. Above all as Codevilla makes plain for our ruling class identity always trumps." As true believers these people know" they are superior in every way and they are not shy about letting everyone else know that they are. Arrogance" might as well be their middle name.As I have also discussed elsewhere this progressive" (i.e. authoritarian) campaign first began in earnest during the Renaissance" of the sixteenth century and by the Enlightenment" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this view took on a ferocity in leading the modern" Zeitgeist dominated by a secular civic religion of utilitarianism moral relativism narcissism collectivism and the worship of government power. In short postmodern cultural elites disdain almost everything upon which civilization has rested and work toward silencing all contrary views. Litmus tests that trigger such campaigns have included (but are not limited to) global warming Obamacare gender and race identity Judeo-Christian beliefs and birth- and gun- control. In response Duck Dynasty has remarkably broken through this Nanny-State malaise connecting with many millions of people fed up with the absurdities and bullying of liberal" elites. And whether viewers consider homosexuality a sin or not the show has further raised a crucial tenet of the natural law the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." C. S. Lewis showed in his brilliant book The Abolition of Man and other writings that the natural law is central to individual liberty personal responsibility civic virtue and the rule of law and has been universal to all civilizations and essential for their very existence even as rulers have repeatedly and hypocritically exempted themselves from it. The Golden Rule is the basis for tolerance in the freedoms of speech and religion including whether individuals are allowed to freely express their views when asked without being smeared bullied and silenced. One may in fact love the sinner but hate the sin. Jesus said it best:
You have heard that it was said You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. (Matthew 5:4344 NIV) Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brothers eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother Let me take the speck out of your eye" when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite first take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye. (Matthew 7:35 NIV) So in everything do to others what you would have them do to you for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12 NIV) Then Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered I tell you not seven times but seventy-seven times." (Matthew 18:2122 NIV)So the lesson here is that treating all people white or black gay or straight male or female young or old drunk or sober rich or poor etc. with love and respect is paramount. In a new thirty-minute film about the Robertsons I Am Second" Phil and his family discuss their own dark and ugly journey through drunkenness violence drug abuse sexual promiscuity and far more and how accepting Jesus taught them to love God and all people turned their lives around saved their family and formed the basis for what has become the immense success of Duck Dynasty. Click here to read Part I Originating from Patheos