The big brew-haha* this morning revolves around the decision of Starbucks' CEO to politely ask gunowners not to wear their six-shooters in his coffee shops. Wrote Howard Schultz:
I am writing today with a respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas. ...
For these reasons, today we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas—even in states where "open carry" is permitted—unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.
I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on. Second, we know we cannot satisfy everyone.
Schultz cites pressure from outside activist groups as one of the reasons for making this extremely polite, extremely non-binding request of potential customers. What's interesting to me is that it's obvious Schultz has no fear of guns (nor should he; when's the last time there was a mass-shooting at a Starbucks perpetrated by someone with an open-carry permit?). No. He fears the left. And he doesn't fear the right.
These are all sensible positions for him to take.
Look, here are the facts of life, my conservative friends: We don't do the politicized life particularly well. We don't make our decisions about where to buy our coffee based on who Howard Schultz donates to in election campaigns or what sort of policy they have toward guns or how they accumulate their fair trade coffee beans. We care about taste, expense, and convenience.
The left, however, does the politicized life exceptionally well. They mount campaigns to pressure corporations to get what they want. They organize boycotts. They direct their complaints to gatekeepers who share their views and can influence policy. They blacklist artists with whom they disagree and pressure corporations to do the same. They control the levers of the media to add additional pressure from newspapers and television networks.
So there will be a lot of fulmination on social media from those on the right about rights and guns and the Constitution, and then a little less the next day, and a little less the day after that, until finally you forgot why you were mad at Starbucks and you stop tweeting and facebooking and kvetching and start buying pumpkin spice lattes by the bucketful and, in a moment of clarity, you'll think about how silly it was for you to give up Starbucks in the name of something that literally never impacted you in the first place because you don't have an open-carry permit.
The right is wired different than the left. It's a healthier wiring, one that leads to far more enjoyment in life and far less heartache.
But it's a wiring that leaves you particularly poorly equipped to wage these kinds of fights. It's why you lose. It's why you're losing the culture. It's why Howard Schultz doesn't fear you.
It's why Howard Schultz will never fear you.
*GET IT?
Updated: I accidentally called Howard Schultz "George Schultz." That egregious error has been fixed.