So I'm sure they'll be heartened to know that Target is among those stores leading the way to ditch this laughable notion of families and get together celebrating God's blessings on refugees seeking religious freedom in the New World. And the really great part is that these stores are doing it for the all important bottom line.
One of the great tensions of our age is that conservatives, including religious conservatives, are among the last true defenders of Capitalism and the Free Market (not necessarily the same thing). And yet there are few areas more dedicated to promoting godless hedonism, debauchery and the right to slaughter endless hordes of hapless unborn in the name of sexual debauchery than modern corporate America.
Of course not all business owners or corporations worship money, promote animal debauchery and could care less about God. But a sizeable portion of corporate moguls today are quite proud of their godless support of leftist hedonism and narcissism. After all, that's where brainless consumers come from.
So Target is simply one of many joining the wave. I said some time ago that Thanksgiving would go the way of everything else linked to the dying Christian West. And it won't be replaced with anything good. It will be the lowest animal cultural denominator. But at least it will be an animal culture with the latest smartphone. And for that, American religious conservatives who so zealously support the Market can be proud.
But as should be pointed out, the free market only gives people what they want. Consider for instance, this graph:
ReplyDeletehttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl8/N6z1g6k5XS0/s1600/number-pages-regulations-added-to-federal-register-each-year-1936-2012-projected.png
And note that every time the line climbs, the market gets less free. Yet were things really more debase and hedonistic in the 30s or earlier?
No, the problem is us. Target would only open on Thanksgiving "for the bottom line" if in fact there were people wanting to go shopping that time. In other words, if nobody went to the store at 8pm to buy things, then the stores wouldn't bother opening.
Hmmm... sometimes I notice that a lot of these points (maybe a little yours here, but more other bloggers I've seen) take on a bit of parentalism.
Take this instance. Ok, Target's opening earlier. What else should they do? Stay closed "for people's own good"? Keep people that want to from visiting their stores that want to because... why? Because people shouldn't? Isn't that the same thought pointed out by Goldberg here about a lot of government regulations? The idea that “Vast swathes of policy are based on the correct presumption that people don’t know what’s best for them.”
Well the "downside" of freedom is that people must be allowed to be "bad". Or to be more accurate, to have different priorities from us. Otherwise, what's to keep say... atheist randians from taking over and just removing all holidays from the schedule because they find us religious folk to be lazy?
Am I thrilled with it all? No, but then I'm not surprised after years of shattering the cultural narrative and trading assimilation for multiculturalism.
At this point the problem isn't capitalism, that just delivers to people what they want. The problem, is what the people are wanting.