{"id":1944,"date":"2008-10-30T16:45:46","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T16:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-10-30T16:47:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T16:47:03","slug":"your_politics_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1944","title":{"rendered":"Your Politics Or Your Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

So here’s something that caught my eye.<\/p>\n

Dan Cooper makes beautiful hunting rifles<\/a> in Montana. Like most gun people, he’s been a Republican most of his life, but in 2004 he became enamored with Barack Obama, after his Democratic Convention speech, and donated to his Senatorial campaign. He maxed out donating to Obama’s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

When a story about this appeared in USA Today<\/a>, the gun folks were – unhappy.<\/p>\n

In response, he appears to have been fired from his own company<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I heard about it, I shared this thought with some shooting friends:<\/p>\n

I’m gonna stick my unarmored rear out on this a bit and say that the reaction I’m seeing here kinda creeps me out. Agree or disagree with the man’s politics, choose to buy his goods or not – but there’s something about the idea of someone being fired for taking a political stand that doesn’t involve liquidating kulaks or Jews which doesn’t fit with my notion of American freedom.<\/p>\n

\nMaybe I’m sensitive to it, given the fact that as liberal as I am, I’m massively conservative by the standards of many of the people I do business with. I’ve actually lost business because of my blog and politics – which is “good riddance” to me. But the idea that my boss or my Board might get to vet my political views isn’t something that I’ll cheer, and I hope that on a moment’s more thoughtful reflection many of you will reconsider. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their reaction has been pretty stiff – they (not unreasonably) think that Obama will be horrible on gun policy. from my point of view, it will be an interesting – and probably first – test of how Obama will govern domestically. Will he push for aggressive gun restriction, or accept that the recent court decisions and the run of American politics are such that the issue isn’t a winning one?<\/p>\n

From my point of view, I’ll be becoming a Life Member (or EPL Life Member – $25 at a time) of the NRA<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n

But it still creeps me out that – no matter how strong the reaction – someone would lose their job for their political beliefs. It’s the kind of think I bust Hollywood and the media for, and it seems like a basic American value that we all ought to be able to agree on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A gun maker loses his job for supporting Obama. Armed Liberal is unhappy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}