The Strange New Doctrine of the Republican Party -- By David Frum

[DonViejo]

The GOP’s version of freedom puts greater priority on right-wing cultural folkways than on rights of property and ownership.

7:00 AM ET

David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic

In 2002, the Weyerhaeuser paper mill in Valliant, Oklahoma, faced a drug problem. Managers at the mill in the small town, just north of the Texas line, brought contraband-sniffing dogs into the parking lot to identify suspect cars. The dogs pointed out a number of vehicles. When the cars were opened, the contraband inside was not drugs. It was guns. A dozen employees lost their job.

The firing triggered an uproar in Oklahoma. Weyerhaeuser had banned guns from its facilities; everybody understood that. The employees had obeyed that rule when they left their guns in their cars. If Weyerhaeuser now insisted that the ban applied to the parking lot, too, what were the employees supposed to do? Leave their guns at home and travel defenseless?

The Oklahoma legislature intervened. By unanimous vote in the state assembly—and a vote of 92–4 in the state senate—Oklahoma revised its firearms law to forbid businesses from policing their parking lots as Weyerhaeuser had done. The next year, the state amended the law again, this time to pound home the point even more emphatically:

No person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity shall maintain, establish, or enforce any policy or rule that has the effect of prohibiting any person, except a convicted felon, from transporting and storing firearms in a locked motor vehicle, or from transporting and storing firearms locked in or locked to a motor vehicle on any property set aside for any motor vehicle.

more
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/sudden-conservative-outrage-over-vaccine-passports/618476/

[hunter]

1. Because you never know when you might have some problem at work...

... that could be solved with a gun.

[Delmette2.0]

2. So happy I got my sons out of that state.

So fucking happy I got my sons out of Oklahoma before they were infected by R's.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Good Lord ! People would have to travel ALL THE WAY TO WORK without a gun ?!?

What sort of dictatorship IS this ?!?

[IronLionZion]

4. Vaccine passports can be an issue for tourism in Florida

for theme parks as well as cruise ships and international visitors flying in. The whole concept of "corporate communism" sounds like a contradiction. It would be interesting to see the GOP fight with the travel industry on this issue.

A sizable minority of Americans want to use airplanes belonging to others, theme parks belonging to others, sports stadiums belonging to others—without concession to the health of others or the property rights of owners.

[Mr.Bill]

5. So if you don't have proof of vaccination

I think it would be reasonable for the cruise line to require you be tested or show proof of a recent negative test before boarding.

Of course, I'm sure Florida will pass a law against that, too.

Hey, cruise lines, we have some very nice ports here on the west coast and we would love to have you do business safely here.

[Crunchy Frog]

6. I believe that Florida doesn't have jurisdiction over cruise lines,

as they are chartered in other countries.

[Hortensis]

7. Cons used to be really big on personal property rights, a very basic principle

that overrode many other legitimate concerns. Now RW culture warring is overriding property rights and being codified into law.

[JHB]

8. Consistency is inconvenient. If it bites /them/, it has to go. n/t

[Hortensis]

9. Yup. Anything that gets in the way of their power and wealth grabs.

That's why they had to purge traditional political conservatism from the Republican Party. There was some functional societal value in a party that resisted change that didn't work for wannabe billionaire plutocrats.