To boycott or not to boycott

I have a tough one for all of you with reasonable minds and conservative bents. The issue at hand is how to react to the seemingly unlimited iterations of protests and boycotts unleashed by the Left since life as they knew it changed during the early evening hours of Nov. 8.

First, a point of historical context. Boycotts are not new to politics; they are a primary tool for those seeking social change. History records that both sides utilized such weapons to great effect in the decades-running fight for civil rights. Segregationists wielded it as a punishment against those who advocated for integration. But it was Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP that turned these tactics into a truly effective strategy in the battle against those who refused to recognize basic civil rights for black Americans. In the process, a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, became "boycott central" for the civil rights movement.

Now fast forward to the Obama era. The election of Barack Obama gave rise to a multitude of boycott-involved campaigns — all of them checking one or more boxes on the progressive playlist. These included organized protests and/or boycotts of talk radio advertisers, the Koch brothers, Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby — even a boycott of an entire state (North Carolina) for its adoption of a transgender bathroom bill.

Today, no venue is too small for the supposedly tolerant but now always aggrieved left. A case in point is Goldberg's New York Bagels, a small kosher eatery located in deep blue Pikesville, Maryland. Goldberg's owner, Stanley Drebin, saw a 15 percent loss in business once he expressed support for Donald Trump in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. In a familiar refrain, lefties used Facebook to call for a boycott.

More often than not, boycotts work (Chick-fil-A being an exception) as well-organized groups with serious economic firepower tend to carry the day. No surprise here: The party of community organizers really knows how to organize against free speech.