Shoppers can always choose to stay home Re: “Stop the commercial assault on Thanksgiving,” Nov. 17
Meghan Cox Gurdon attacks Walmart and other retailers for operating on Thanksgiving Day, calling it a “breach of civic decency,” and a “horrible stain over the Thanksgiving table.”
But retailers aren’t dumping ads on the turkey, nor are customers shopping at gunpoint. Knowledge that some stores are open on Thanksgiving won’t ruin my mashed potatoes.
“If getting big bargains means rushing through dinner, you know it’ll happen,” Gurdon claims. Actually, retailers don’t know that. Stores have traditionally remained closed on Thanksgiving because so few people shop. Many, if not most families will stay home Thursday as they always have. Retailers are takingthe riskthey won’t.
Articles like this aren’t just rhetorical excesses. They underpin arguments against free enterprise, supporting myths that companies control consumers. If consumers stay home this Thanksgiving, expect retailers to open later next year. Let the people decide.
David Bier
Arlington
Occupiers have First Amendment rights to stay
Re: “Time to give the heave ho to occupy DC,” Nov. 16
As a First Amendment attorney and legal adviser to the Occupy DC movement, I am writing in response to this editorial, which states that the Occupy movement’s grasp of the First Amendment is “divorced from reality.”
If there is anyone in D.C. whose view of the First Amendment is “divorced from reality,” it is surely the federal judge who earlier this month held that Food and Drug Administration regulations requiring cigarette packages to bear graphics depicting the effects of smoking violate the First Amendment rights of Big Tobacco.
Occupy DC is a peaceful movement that seeks to highlight problems such as wealth inequality through symbolic speech, such as the erection of tents and tarps in McPherson Square. The Occupiers cannot afford to take their message to the masses the same way large corporations do — through expensive advertisements in the mass media.
Your editorial quotes from the majority opinion in Clark v. CCNV, but the insightful dissent by Justice Marshall stays truer to the intent of the Founders: “A disquieting feature about the disposition of this case is that it lends credence to the charge that judicial administration of the First Amendment, in conjunction with a social order marked by large disparities in wealth and other sources of power, tends systematically to discriminate against efforts by the relatively disadvantaged to convey their political ideas.”
Jeffrey Light
Washington
U.S. won’t have any friends if Obama is re-elected
Re: “Obama has a knack for ticking off America’s friends,” Nov. 16
The real question is whether the U. S. still has many good friends left. After nearly three years, President Obama has succeeded in alienating our long-time allies while encouraging friendly but fruitlessdiscussions with our worst enemies.
The brouhaha with Australia is only the latest in a series of international blunders that has cost the U. S. many long-term friendships.
While our economic woes are evident to the majority of the voters, our failed foreign policy should also be of concern.Since President Obama cannot recognize friend from foe, another term in the White House would be a national disaster.
Nelson Marans
Silver Spring
