Activist writer pushes bigotry in disturbing editorial

The Left, at one point, pretended to be aghast by the rhetoric of then-candidate Donald Trump. Their rallying cry? “When they go low, we go high.” Now, it’s become: let’s bully people we disagree with and repeal any anti-discrimination law that lets Conservatives exist in Seattle.

Oh how far we’ve fallen.

Writing in Crosscut, Kirkland-born Nate Christiansen argues Seattle should dismiss political ideology as a protected class, subjecting people to removal from public accommodations, employment, and housing if they hold beliefs he disagrees with. His argument is pedestrian, though makes great attempts to sound academic, and his reasoning is both dangerous and nonsensical.

Seattle is one of the only cities that protects people from discrimination on the basis of their ideological beliefs. Meaning, if Sarah Huckabee Sanders was booted from the Red Hen in Seattle, the restaurant would be in violation of our anti-discrimination laws the same way they’d be if they booted her for being a woman. Most people seem to agree that you should not be denied service because you hold political beliefs different from your own. Christiansen, however, thinks we should get rid of this law.

“Traditionally, civil rights laws are designed to protect people from being discriminated against for something that they cannot change,” Christiansen writes in part. “The color of a person’s skin or sex at birth, for instance, is merely a matter of chance, and do not define their worth. It is right and just that people should not be disadvantaged by them in society. […] A person’s political beliefs simply do not exist on the same level as intrinsic characteristics like race, and should not be protected the same.”

There’s a lot wrong with his position.

Discrimination begets discrimination

It is true that one chooses their ideological beliefs. But so, too, does one choose their marital status, parental status, religion, use of Section 8 certificates, use of a service animal and military status. And it’s weird Christiansen uses “sex at birth” as an example, given that gender identity can be chosen later on in life. All of these chosen characteristics are protected under current Seattle anti-discrimination laws. By his logic, he’d be fine that a business kicks out a breastfeeding mother (also protected) or a woman wearing a hijab.

Oh, how progressive of him.

Perhaps, he’s only setting his sights on political ideology because, like too many in Seattle, he’s looking to create an even bigger echo chamber to tell him his positions are just and right. After all, who would want to suffer the indignities of being told they may not have all the answers?

“…Seattle’s law privileges tranquility above justice by artificially sheltering behavior from social consequences,” he ironically notes, not realizing that the law he’d like to abolish is the law that protects him from being discriminated against for his ridiculous article. “This should not be. Though the negative peace marked by an absence of tension may be comfortable to power, it rarely serves the dispossessed, whose poverty should not be mistaken for meekness.”

His last sentence doesn’t really mean anything, certainly not in the context he’s using it. Those dispossessed of power, in Seattle, are actual conservatives. But that, of course, doesn’t matter to the author. His goal is to shun political speech he disagrees with, which is, perhaps, one of the most egotistical positions one could take: he knows more than the tens of millions of people who elected Trump, thus they should be silenced and his speech should reign.

“…while the broad swath of American society remains committed to its incremental improvement, recent years have seen a resurgence of malcontents who stand entirely opposed to its realization,” he claims.

Let me translate that for you: “I’ve lived in a blue-state bubble and I was shocked to discover people disagree with my deeply held beliefs. They must be stopped.”

Law aside, is that the world you want to live in? Christiansen cakes some of his ideological bigotry by bemoaning the injustice that a Fremont gym owner couldn’t kick out a white supremacist and includes a couple throwaway lines about the power of government intervention, but it’s not really what he’s talking about. He seems to just dislike conservative politics and positions. Dizzyingly, in a previous column for Crosscut, he supported government intervention to protect speech he agrees with.

The Left proudly proclaims the importance of diversity, while too many of them embrace the notion that we should surround conservatives with mobs, harassing them into submission? Yes, Maxine Waters would be proud, but is that what you want to happen? Is ideological diversity not something we should encourage?

Off with his hand!

The consequences of this kind of worldview – that we should feel free to refuse service to those with whom we disagree politically – would have a chilling effect on speech, free thought, religion, women’s and LGBTQ rights.

Surely, Christiansen must know these laws would be subject to conservative abuse as much as the liberal abuse he embraces. Indeed: imagine the power to discriminate, in the hands of your worst enemy.

Christiansen is promoting a set of values no less dangerous than those of the white supremacists he uses as props to give his horrific viewpoint some moral coverage. They want a “pure” society of white people in power; they’re disgusted by those who do not look like them; they aim to bully, harass and assault people who aren’t like them. Likewise, Christiansen is promoting a toxic environment where you’re bullied into silence, subject to harassment because you might want to vote Republican? He wants a pure society that only thinks like he does.

For all the Left’s silly use of The Handmaid’s Tale imagery, they sure do sound more and more like the Commander. What would happen if I read a Thomas Sowell book at a restaurant in Christiansen’s Seattle? Would they cut off my hand?

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