David McElroy

I didn’t eat at Chick-fil-A Wednesday, but only because I new the lines would be around the block on a day that was being billed as “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” which was a response to the groups that have been trying to get everyone to boycott my favorite chicken restaurant.

For as long as I can remember, Chick-fil-A has been an enjoyable part of my life. Back when they just had the sandwich, I used to throw away the bread and pickle, because the chicken was all I wanted. I switched to the nuggets and then to the strips when they were introduced. I have other favorites at other places. The Big Mac and the Whopper were pretty good if I wanted unhealthy burgers — as most of us do sometimes. And the old, discontinued Big Twin (which was an even better knockoff of the Big Mac) at Hardee’s was another favorite. (And speaking of Hardee’s, it’s hard to beat their sausage biscuits.)

There’s lot of food from a lot of places that I’ve loved over the years. But I have to confess that with every favorite I’d add to my list (or choice I’d remember to never buy again), the only thing that mattered to me was whether I liked the food. I never once considered the politics of the people who sold me the sandwich.

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For a long time, I’ve found myself wishing I could live on an island somewhere — or maybe even in a cave — to escape the stupid people who seem to be all around.

But when I think about it more seriously, I realize it’s not just stupid people who I want to escape. I want to escape from very bright people who insist that it’s their moral right to force me to obey their will.

There are some quite brilliant people — at least as measured by IQ — who have fallen for the civic religion that tells them it’s their moral right to make my decisions and take my money to use as they please. Most galling, perhaps, is their sanctimonious belief that I’m being “greedy” if I don’t want to obey them.

I watched an online discussion play out of Facebook Monday between siblings over the issue. One woman posted this graphic from the Bastiat Institute, which I had also posted Monday. It points out something that I’ve talked about before. If someone else claims a right to what you produce, you are a slave to that person or group to that extent.

After the woman posted the graphic, her two sisters disagreed with her, each for a different reason. It ended up mostly as a dialogue between the original poster and one of her sisters, who is a progressive left Democrat. They’re all three exceptionally intelligent women. But the leftist misses the moral point about the theft of property entirely. I think this part of the exchange was when I most wanted to bang my head against a wall:

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When a couple in Mississippi recently set their wedding date, they thought they were looking at dates in July of 2012. But some members of their church looked at the calendar and thought it said 1965.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson had been attending the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs together and had planned to join the congregation after they were married. They reserved the church for their wedding weeks in advance and invitations were sent. Then the couple got news that no one in 2012 would have expected.

The Rev. Stan Weatherford told them that some people in the congregation objected to a black couple being married there. They were told that no black couple had ever been married by the church since its founding in 1883. The pastor said certain powerful people in the church had let him know he would be fired if he went ahead with the wedding.

The couple were married on the day they had chosen and Weatherford still married them, but the ceremony was moved down the street to another church — one with a black congregation.

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