Over the weekend, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders went to dinner at a restaurant in Virginia called the Red Hen. After appetizers, the co-owner of the restaurant asked Sanders and her party to leave, which they did. Sanders tweeted about the event, which has since been confirmed by news outlets and the co-owner herself. The progressive Left had a field day with the incident, as members of the media, politics, and celebrities applauded the restaurant’s decision. Some went so far as to advocate business owners nationwide employ this course of action against those with whom they disagree politically.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., called for attacks on members of Trump administration: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Maxine Waters calls for attacks on Trump administration: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” pic.twitter.com/jMV7wk48wM
— Ryan Saavedra ?? (@RealSaavedra) June 24, 2018
To be clear, private companies absolutely reserve the right to refuse someone service. Sanders was well aware of this fact, which is why she left. Sure, Sanders tweeted about it, but that’s not because the restaurant wasn’t wrong, it was likely because it demonstrated a strange hypocrisy growing on the Left.
For the last two years, the Left has been outraged over the case of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who refused to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding ceremony. Though Phillips had previously baked cakes for gay people, he believed a same-sex wedding ceremony violated his religious beliefs, so he refused and was sued. While the Supreme Court didn’t exactly address the free speech and religious expression aspect of this case head-on, they did rule that the government cannot be overtly hostile and force a person to violate his religious conscience in such an aggressive manner.
Liberals believed from the beginning this was a classic case of refusing to do business with someone, of discrimination based on sexual orientation, often comparing the case to race-based discrimination. Even though the heart of this issue had nothing to do with refusing to do business with someone of a certain race, sex, or class, it tugged on all the right heart strings and that’s why they hated the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Even though the stories of Sanders and Masterpiece Cakeshop are hardly analogous at all, the Left’s hypocrisy is even more clear and egregious when one realizes they hated Phillips for “refusing service” to gay people, but applauded the owners of Red Hen for refusing to serve a Republican. The two situations are entirely different, but to the Left they are not — that’s what makes this so hypocritical and frightening.
It’s one thing to disagree with what Phillips did. But to make it analogous to what the owner of the Red Hen did, when it’s not, and then applaud the latter, while despising the former, is doublethink at its finest. For the Left to go a step further and advocate all business owners who disagree with the Trump administration refuse them service is a right, sure. But it’s also advocating a kind of Lord of the Flies mayhem to no good end.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
