Whole Foods and liberal intolerance

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal last week proposing several methods of healthcare reform that did not entail a public option. His commentary added constructive and rational discourse to an otherwise ideologically and emotionally charged debate on healthcare. Whole Foods is a supermarket chain that emphasizes healthy organic and fresh foods. Needless to say, many of Whole Foods’s customers are liberal Democrats. In response to Mackey’s op-ed piece, a number of liberal bloggers began calling for a boycott of Whole Foods because the CEO did not share the same left-wing ideology of its liberal customers.

Liberalism has a long and admirable history of being open-minded and tolerant. Organizations like the ACLU pride themselves on defending free speech from all sides of the political spectrum. Academics in America’s universities defend the tenure system because it enables professors to express unpopular views. The liberal media jealously defends its special role in the Fourth Estate to expose and criticize government policy because it is essential to freedom in a democracy.

Therefore, it is disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected, that some close-mined liberal customers are threatening to boycott Whole Foods because the CEO proposed constructive discourse that was not part of the liberal Democratic Party line. This is part of the disturbing liberal trend toward punishing individuals who do not engage in “politically correct” speech.

Larry Summers, director of Obama’s National Economic Council, lost his job as president at Harvard several years ago because he had the temerity to make a “provocative” statement that there may be fewer female than male professors in math and science because men and women may think differently. During the Clinton administration, then-Secretary of the Treasury Summers was one of the proponents and architects of the administration’s balanced budget. Given the dressing-down received by Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf at the White House for exposing the unfunded costs of Obama’s healthcare proposal, it is unlikely that Summers will make a provocative statement about the unfunded costs of Obama’s healthcare proposals.

The liberal establishment has made it clear. If you do not follow the party line in a liberal institution or one serving liberals, you will be penalized for free speech that contradicts liberal orthodoxy. The case of Mackey is the most recent evidence American liberalism has morphed into intolerance toward competing ideas. America loses great ideas in the long run when the presenter of unorthodox ideas is penalized.

Williams can be heard nightly on Sirius/XM Power 169 from 8 to 10 p.m. EST.

Visit www.armstrongwilliams.com .