Actually I don’t. So far as I’m aware, the U.S. Communist party is merely supportive of murderous regimes, not an actual participant in murder. I pointed out their continued existence to justify my view that * The Communist Manifesto * is not a book of merely historical importance, even in the United States. It is the official doctrine of an organization now actively seeking to bring about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the United States. Their chances of success, of course, are as absurdly small as NAMBLA’s.
I boycott Neil Gaiman.
I’m not completely sure why; the original reason - hearing him say something incredibly arrogant from a secondhand source - seems kind of petty these days. Still, every time I reconsider buying a Sandman comic or something - I have never read a single page of anything of his yet, despite countless pushes from friends to do so - there’s a mysterious force that prevents me. I call it being stubborn.
K-Mart apparently not anti-choice:
http://www.choice.org/accessmonth/kmart.html
Wal-Mart apparently is. I try to boycott China: the US tries to increase trade with them. Most of the Martha Stewart/K-Mart stuff is made in China. WalMart sucks far worse than KMart imho. There is a K-Mart within walking distance of my house. I can’t always justify driving to pick up that certain something I need. The daily compromise… Mrs. M is vegetarian. She loves taking pictures. There is no suitable substitute for geletin-based film (hooves/bones/fat). She also drives. Animal-based lubricants and adhesives allow her to drive safely. Some computer printers have noise baffles glued on with fish-based adhesive. “Natural flavorings” may very well mean beef or chicken, so carefully reading ingredients won’t always let you know. “Dolphin safe/organic/cruelty free” are unregulated marketing buzzwords. The viciousness of being at the top of the food chain, bottom of the ladder. We compromise, do what we can to ease suffering, but at the end of the day…
I didn’t think I really boycotted anyone but after giving it some thought, I guess I do (albeit, they are few).
Abercrombie & Fitch: Expensive clothes that look like someone ran over them with a bulldozer, thereby ensuring their “clique” factor. Hate anything that encourages teenagers to exclude their fellow students even more.
Okay, this is the only one I can think of right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with some more.
And the Federalist Papers, Constitution of the United States of America, and other “classics” of American republicanism are not “merely supportive of {a} murderous regime,” too? All nations commit murder, without exception. Okay, maybe the Vatican is clean and pure, but still, they’ve got a bit of a nasty history under their belt, in any case.
If you think I’m nuts, feel free to ask the residents of the various death rows in this country, or various residents of Vietnam, Sudan, and Central America.
Naïvité, thy name is Danimal.
(The rest of your red-baiting blathering post has been ignored.)
You have missed my point. I, too, believe in their right to put down in writing any and all of their beliefs, as offensive as I might find them. I’m not a big fan of censorship. However, I also strongly believe in refusing to give my money to a business that profits by the sales of such material.
I also, as I said earlier, make a distinction between important written works that help us to understand history and the current writings of a current organization. If my local skinhead/nazi chapter publishes a newsletter I won’t shop in the store that sells it.
Also posted by Danimal
Ma’am, I think I may have offended you, and I apologize for that, and if this response causes you any further offense.
Look, I love a good, serious debate. But I don’t love smartass responses designed to “test my principles.” You’ll do better with me (and probably many others here) if you simply state your opinion clearly.
I will check it out. It’s been many years, perhaps Nestle sold Swiss Miss. Perhaps I boycotted the little blond nazi in error all these years. Oh well.
By the way, ConAgra sucks, but a guy has to eat something.
Tris
Montfort, I am doing my very best to keep this debate on a civil plane. Your last sentence is likelier to get this moved to the BBQ Pit than to GD.
That said, although I don’t consider America’s death rows to be a particularly good example, I will freely concede that the U.S. government, right back to the time of the Federalist papers, has been implicated in murder. Certainly in condoning slavery, or with the Trail of Tears, it has been involved in atrocities, and there are other instances from more recent times that could be cited. It is true, as you say, that all other governments have bloody hands also.
Will you not agree that, all governments being bloody-handed, there are still substantial differences in the *degree * to which they are murderous? That if one calls Nazi Germany “murderous,” one is not suggesting that Britain or the U.S. or the Soviet Union (!) who fought Hitler were lily-white innocents, but that they were less murderous.
I don’t consider the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence to be on a level with Mein Kampf, * because I consider the dishonorable and murderous actions of the United States government to be a betrayal of the principles these documents espoused, while the Holocaust was fully in line with Hitler’s ideas in Mein Kampf. But that’s not the most important thing. Even if it were proven to me by some passage in the “classics of American republicanism” that the Founding Fathers would have fully approved of Sand Creek, My Lai, or some similar atrocity, I still don’t want those documents suppressed. Neither do I want NAMBLA’s journal, or the Communist Manifesto, or Justine, or The Turner Diaries, or Mein Kampf suppressed. I firmly believe that censorship is not the answer to evil ideas. They should be examined and dismissed, not hidden from view.
*George Washington’s campaigns against the Indian allies of the British suggest that he had little compunction about murdering non-combatants. Neither did the Iroquois, of course . . .
Ummmm, okay. . .
I boycott Star Trek because I simply don’t like it.
I boycott Old Navy and the Gap for ruining my mindless t.v. watching with their insipid commercials.
I boycott Taco Bell for generally tasting like crap. (“Our brand new Chalupa. We sh** in it for you!”)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by robinh *
** You have missed my point. I, too, believe in their right to put down in writing any and all of their beliefs, as offensive as I might find them. I’m not a big fan of censorship. However, I also strongly believe in refusing to give my money to a business that profits by the sales of such material. **
[quote]
Understood.
I feel differently for a number of reasons, but it might be better not to go into them right here. Nobody asked me to justify my boycott, and I’m sorry I asked you to justify yours.
Unless you * want * to go into our reasons more, but we should probably start a different thread for that.
I’ve debated with a lot of people who use this kind of Socratic style where the questioner pretends to know nothing. This can sound “smartass” as you say. I’ll do my best to avoid it here in the future.
[QUOTERe NAMBLA: I see that Amazon also sells Hitler’s * Mein Kampf, * Marx and Engels’ * The Communist Manifesto, * and de Sade’s * Justine. * Further reasons for boycott? **[/QUOTE]
Your saying that Amazon carrying these three books is reason to boycott them? Any half-assed bookstore would carry these… Or were you implying that boycotting a retailer for selling controversial publications was lame?
Umm, okay, this I agree with. Why the hell, then, do you boycott Amazon for selling (some of) these works?
I don’t use this smiley very often, but I think it’s now appropriate.
:wally
When I said I agreed with Danimal’s statement, I meant to do so by omitting “and dismissed” from it.
I understand about the B+J/BB/RATM, but why Snapple? I didn’t think they contributed to any cause. I could be wrong, though.
Montfort, there is a very basic misunderstanding going on here.
- I * don’t boycott Amazon! At all! And I never said I did! Heck, I write reviews for Amazon! The person who is boycotting Amazon is Robin H, who does so because Amazon sells the NAMBLA Journal.
Did you miss my response to Guinastasia, “Well, let’s just say * I * wouldn’t boycott Amazon for that reason?”
My original question, “Further reasons for boycott?” was meant ironically. Robin H picked up on that immediately; in fact, it annoyed Robin H, which was not my intention. I am surprised to see that the irony still eludes you.
It seems to me that boycotting corporations that do bad, self-serving, environment-harming, duplicitous things would require you to live on a self-sufficient farm in the wilderness, subsisting on goat cheese and organically grown vegetables. Wait, the goat waste will probably contaminate the groundwater - I’d better boycott YOU.
Personally, I don’t boycott corporations. I don’t think it does much good, and as I said, you can’t live in the modern world without giving cash to a company that has done some kind of loathesome thing. I don’t patronize organizations that have poor quality, unreasonable prices, or bad customer service, but that’s not what I consider a boycott.
That said, I’m interested in the whole Nestle thing. I never understood it, and the posts here are not enlightening me much. Anyone have some fairly unbiased sources for the facts involved? I’d be interested to see what the brouhaha is about.
Whoops, sorry. I confused you with at least one other poster, and I apologize.
I think.
I’m a little confused, so I better should just re-read the thread.
No to the first question. Yes to the second, except I wasn’t trying to be rude (though I managed to offend Robin anyway); if I’d been explicit instead of being an ironical smartass I would have said “not well reasoned” rather than “lame.”
I boycott wild mushrooms.
When people try to force them on me, I decline. Once I had to leave the table, my host was so insistent. Her uncle picked them, and he knows what’s safe.
Every person ever poisoned by wild mushrooms in California in the last 10 years also knew they were safe, had done this before, had never been wrong before. Sure, only a couple died, but the rest all had permanent liver damage.
How do you boycott the Red Cross? Do they sell any products or services that you do not purchase? Or do you refuse their assistance after a disaster? I’m not questioning your reason, just how you go about boycotting them.