Banning The N-Word

While we’re talking about race and liberals, I wanted to talk about something that recently happened vis-à-vis the NFL and how it really exposes the problem with liberal thinking. The issue involves the NFL’s proposal to ban the “N-word.”

What brought this issue to a head was the supposed bullying of Jonathan Martin. When the NFL investigated that incident, the outside investigator turned up a massive number of uses of the N-word by and between players and even involving some coaches and trainers. The NFL immediately recognized that this created a hostile work environment and a bevy of liberal journalists proposed banning the N-word by making it a personal foul (15 yard penalty for its use on the field).

Thus, begins our tale.

Right out of the gates, every single liberal sportswriter jumped on the bandwagon of this proposal and agreed that it was time to ban the dreaded N-word. This was the perfect solution to a problem that had lingered too long: closet racists using the N-word during games. Yep, despite 0 reported instances of that, these journalists just knew this was a problem. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the right thing to do to ban this word. Indeed, only a racist could oppose this idea!

Naturally, the NFL’s designated race hustler, the Fritz Pollard Alliance, jumped on board too. The Fritz Pollard Alliance is an organization dedicated to complaining that “minorities” (read: blacks) aren’t getting a fair shake in any aspect of football.

Soon, articles were being written asking why those rich, white, conservative, racist men who own the teams (like Obama supporter Dan Rooney) wouldn’t order this ban immediately. What could they possibly be waiting for, those dirty racists?

Then things went wrong.

A few days after this golden alliance of liberals declared the perfect solution of banning this outrageous word, a black football player named Richard Sherman threw a hissy fit. He called the idea racist that a bunch of old white men would tell him and his fellow black teammates what words they could or could not say on the field.

Uh oh. That does sound racist.

Now we had a dilemma. It was racist to allow the word to be used, but it was racist to try to stop players from using it. Curses!

By this point, most liberal sportswriters were running away from this story because there was no solution they could push. Of course, that didn’t stop them from demanding that “The NFL must do something!” even though their own logic made it impossible to fix this problem.

Then, the Fritz Pollard Alliance cranks got all pissed off at the young thugs (oops, that’s now a “racist” term according to Sherman) would use a word that the old pros “had fought their whole lives to stop.” You might not remember that, but run with it. The youths responded by claiming that “nigga” is a term of endearment and, thus, the NFL had no right to trample on their First Amendment rights.

This brought a round of articles from the liberals who started this craziness about how the players' First Amendment rights are sacrosanct and the dirty, racist white-conservative-owned NFL better not trample those. Oh, and the NFL still needed to fix this N-word problem.

In the end, the issue fell apart because it was unworkable from the get go.

What this was, was an attempt by liberal journalists to try to insert themselves into history by manufacturing a new civil rights issue. Basically, they hoped to bandwagon an easy victory and then declare themselves the equal of people like Martin Luther King for their bravery in stopping the outrageous use of this word. But it didn’t work. It didn’t work because the black players they claimed to be speaking for crapped all over their idea. Liberals always seem to think of the people they help as children who need their guidance, but in this case, those children easily exposed the liberals as confused fools who never bothered to understand the issue or think through their solution. These are hard times to be paternalistic.

In fact, let’s examine some of the failings of our liberal friends on this issue:

● Notice first, that liberals love speech codes. They believe that society should ban words they don’t like and that you should be punished for using those.

● Notice next that the liberals didn’t care about First Amendment rights when they liked the end result. This is typical of liberals to assume that all good people will agree with them, to assume that no rational or decent person could be on the other side, and thus to not care about the rights being trampled because those rights belong to bad people. Liberals only want to protect things they agree with. For the record, those aren’t rights, those are indulgences.

● Notice also, that they don’t understand what the First Amendment is. The First Amendment protects your right to speak from the Government, not from the NFL.

● Notice further how this issue fell apart once it became racist to be on either side. It’s funny how often and how easily liberal ideas end up in this kind of Mexican standoff. This really highlights that the complaints aren't legitimate in the first place if the same argument can make you racist for either supporting or opposing the same thing. This really points at the rotten logic of the victim movement.

● Finally, note that we again see the same pattern you always see with liberals. First, they see a problem and they immediately demand the most obvious and overbearing solution: somebody powerful ban the word! They never stop to ask if this would work before patting themselves on the back for their great solution either.

Secondly, once the original plan proves unworkable, they fall apart because they have no actual solution other than the big, obnoxious one they originally offered. Thus, their answer becomes “somebody do something!”

Third, like everything else liberals do, their solutions quickly devolve into competing interest groups, with each side trying to claim victim status. The result is a bitter debate that gets settled on the basis of who you like rather than principle.

What’s interesting to me is how consistently the things above play out when it comes to liberals. They always propose the most overbearing solution possible; they love trampling on people’s rights and doing so hypocritically. It never works and they never care if they are causing more problems than they are solving. In trying to fix something racist/sexist/etc., they always discover the children they want to help quickly see their solutions as equally racist/sexist/etc. Everything always falls apart. And yet, they smugly claim moral superiority every single time. That’s the story of liberalism time and again. This is why they judge their own actions on intentions rather than results, because their results suck.