Classes that are protected now, were not protected at some point.
I think the discussion revolves not around whether political affiliation is a protected class, but whether it should be, in a sense- whether what is going on is good or bad for society, not whether or not it is illegal.
You are entitled to believe that it is good, of course.
The fact that the criminal is the President of the United States and his enablers is incidental to the principle.
No one wants to ban any reasonable political views. But when a political party organises public mass violence, subversion, insurrection, murder, intimidation of public officers, the attempted overthrow of a legitimate election, among other crimes, that party - and especially its leaders - loses all claims on the patience of the public and on the tolerance of private sector service providers.
Attempts to turn this into a debate about political censorship are not being made in good faith. The reality is that criminal acts took place on a scale that was truly shocking.
Anyone who provides goods and services of any kind to the individuals and organisations responsible has a moral and legal duty to stop doing so - immediately.
But it is political. This summer saw widespread political violence, including attacks on government institutions, not to mention billions in property damage, but the mainstream reaction to that was "Show me where it says protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful"[1] with massive support for the riots from Silicon Valley companies. Kaepernick praised the violence and Dorsey gave him $3m.[2] The double standard is just sickening.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-zb58uiFjU [2] https://i.imgur.com/uM1iQ5R.jpg
Lets go through some quick fire bullet points, 93% of the summer protests where peaceful, most of the damage was on insured property with no loss of life, the cause of the riots was the unashamed and unlawful treatment of minorities in America. It was a grassroots movement.
Now lets compare that to, a mob that straight away turned to violence, caused loss of life (and bashed the head of a police man with a fire extinguisher), mob had gallows and chanted to kill the vice president, pipe bombs, molotov cocktails and hostage situation zip ties where found on the scene, and it all started from a conspiracy theory that 51 different judges have considered meritless, our congress has considered meritless and the vice president of his own administration considered debunked.
I wonder who is the one with a double standard here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...
>most of the damage was on insured property
Government property is insured by taxpayers
>93% of the summer protests where peaceful
I'm not sure how to confirm/disprove that statement. I'd posit that most protestors at the capitol were peaceful, but I'm not sure how to confirm/deny that either.
>mob had gallows and chanted to kill the vice president
Where I live "ACAB" is a trendy chant used to devil-ify police
EDIT: Also, is this not the same thing? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3217754/Black-Lives... - not sure how trustworthy this is
> molotov cocktails and hostage situation zip ties where found on the scene,
I have seen molotovs used at BLM protest
All this to say - it's not black and white; I also feel there clearly is some double standard going on here. I disagree with (what i think is) the premise of the capitol protests, but it does not strike me as that much worse than what people were supporting a few months ago.
No one (including the US Supreme Court) has a definition for "reasonable."
That's what has some of us alarmed.
For Trump and his cronies? Sure, there are more than enough actual laws they've broken. But let's justify action against them on actual laws, as opposed to because-SV-doesn't-like-them and has public support at the moment. Or even use the moment to pass new laws, covering the type of behavior we want to make illegal.
Instead, this feels a lot like 9/12, in that people are post-hoc justifying popular actions on a moral basis, to the detriment of legal foundations.
And as we found then, as soon as you decide "terrorists can't be reasoned with and don't deserve rights," then being able to label someone a terrorist becomes a powerful tool...
Creating protected classes significantly curtails neighbouring freedoms while increasing the government’s role in day to day interactions.
One hallmark of existing protected classes is they are somewhat objective (counterfactual: race). Political affiliation is totally subjective. If someone believes in violent death for Blacks, Jews and gays, should a Holocaust memorial group be forced to accept them? If no, then you need someone deciding which groups do and don’t merit protection. And who is and isn’t actually a member of that group.
It’s not impossible. But it has unintended consequences. More than re-delineating the private company / utility boundary. More than expanding antitrust enforcement.
Another hallmark is they tend to be mostly immutable, or unchangeable voluntarily. Society generally doesn’t accept that it’s reasonable for a person to change their gender, sexual orientation, race, age etc in order to participate in all facets of society.
I don’t think political affiliation meets that standard. Although I imagine that some might consider their political affiliation to be as core their identity as religion.