Premium

I Still Care About the NFL and So Should You

(15)

Like many Americans, I’m a big fan of the NFL, and like many Americans, its drift toward the divisive social justice messaging broke my heart. Its embrace of Black Lives Matter caused me and many other Americans to tune out and give up the NFL for lost.

For a time, I was one of them, but then I had a change of heart.

The change of heart didn’t come because of an embrace of the message, but I wanted to embrace the sport in spite of it. It was clear to me that the approach of turning it all off wasn’t going to stop the social justice messaging. In fact, it was pretty clear that abandoning the sport was the greatest gift I could have ever given the hard-left.

I was effectively taking my voice out of the conversation. So were millions of others who think a lot as I do. With only the echo chamber of bigots, race-baiters, and radicalized ideologues sounding their opinions in the sport, the NFL would tilt their way with nothing to oppose them.

We as conservatives seem to think that withdrawing our presence and reducing the income a business or organization receives will force it to behave. This is true, but only to a point. Completely abandoning a business will often make it find ways to win someone back, but if the customer isn’t there to guide what that comeback looks like, then the business or organization will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Besides, it needs to be understood that the business is currently dealing with a huge problem in the form of politically radicalized pressure from the left. It doesn’t care about the money or the viewership. It doesn’t care about quality. All it cares about is having their thinking and beliefs enforced, even if their ideas rot everything it touches. This kind of belief and subsequent tactics makes them push hard, and keep pushing until their way becomes the norm in any given situation.

They infiltrate and take over their targets.

This is why abandoning the NFL is a bad tactic, and the same can go for anything we’re talking about be it Hollywood or a corporation. Simply walking away won’t cause the business to change up its tactics, at least drastically. Subtracting your voice gives them the impression that there isn’t enough support out there for a rejection of hard-left values. They hire hard-left radicals to advise or even work within the company to help guide it to what they think the people want.

Self-censorship only empowers those who want you to be silenced in the first place.

The abandonment of the NFL by conservatives is a horrid idea that will only empower America’s enemies. The NFL needs us to speak up and fight for it in the same way Hollywood needs it. The left may have taken ground in these territories but it’s important to remember that it doesn’t belong to them. These are American institutions that need us to speak up for it, find work in it, and influence it until it’s restored to its former glory.

That won’t happen if we walk away from it completely.

In this day and age, conservatives must abandon the idea that we can simply vote with our wallet. Yes, it does have a bit of an effect, but we need to remember that this isn’t just a bunch of businessmen we’re dealing with now. We’ve now entered a time when we’re fighting zealous ideologues with a nearly religious commitment to their radicalism. This won’t simply go away because we did, it only thrives.

In the same way we hate the sin but not the sinner, we should give the NFL our support but not the messaging. It’s too valuable an institution to America to abandon, both on a business level and an influential level. We have to begin fighting back, not walking away.

Recommended

Trending on RedState Videos