If THIS ain’t the hill we’ve all been waiting for the Vichy GOPers to show themselves willing to die on, I don’t know what else might be.

Simply put, corporations that do what Disney did, publicly lobbying against the rights of parents to have a say in whether their young children are exposed to sexually explicit subject matter, have marked themselves out as enemies of a free people and should be treated as such. If Disney wants to make war on families in Florida, then the proper role of a democratically elected government is to go after Disney with every power at its disposal.

This isn’t about the economic arguments, not anymore. Whatever merit there was to the notion that Disney “serves the public interest” before the fight over parental rights has completely vanished. Now that Disney has taken a stand against families and parents, there can be no doubt: Disney does not serve the public interest in Florida, and Floridians owe it nothing.

Conservatives should understand this, but not all of them do. Over at National Review, Charles Cooke has decided to stand athwart history, as it were, and yell: “Independent special district status is complicated!” His complaint with DeSantis is that there was no need to punish Disney over its opposition to the parental rights bill because the bill passed. Disney lost, DeSantis and Republicans won. Moreover, he adds, until a month ago, “Walt Disney World’s legal status was not even a blip on the GOP’s radar. No Republicans were calling for it to be revisited, nor did they have any reason to.”

Did they not? What changed in the last month that might have prompted them to revisit the issue? Could it be that Disney came out publicly as a very real threat to Florida parents who don’t want their second-graders instructed about sexual orientation and gender identity? Could it be that the fight over the parental rights bill revealed Disney as something other than an entertainment brand and Walt Disney World as something other than a beloved family theme park? Could it be, in fact, that this entire affair has exposed Disney as a malign force in Florida’s civic life?

That Cooke can’t grasp this, and instead attacks DeSantis by tediously explicating the particulars of Florida’s independent special districts, shows the naiveté of conservatives in general and Republican politicians in particular on woke corporations pushing extremist agendas. Cooke argues there are lots of independent special districts in Florida, and that Walt Disney World “is unique not in its type but only in its particulars.” Orlando International Airport and the Daytona International Speedway, he notes, have a similar independent status. Why single out Disney?

To ask is to answer. Did the Orlando International Airport or the Daytona International Speedway wage a public campaign against the parental rights bill, and while doing so commit to pushing a “queer” agenda on children? No, they didn’t. Disney did. That makes all the difference.

Cooke further laments that singling out Disney is a mistake because, “Walt Disney World is deeply rooted in Florida’s soil, as a result of agreements the Florida legislature made with it in good faith. To poison that soil over a temporary spat would be absurd.”

But here again Cooke — and really, it’s not about Cooke, it’s about the accommodationist strain on the right that he and NR represent — misunderstands the nature of the fight. This is not a “temporary spat,” as Disney itself has made clear. It’s an ideological and cultural war that corporations like Disney will never stop waging.

For many years now, only one side in this war has been crying “no quarter” before every battle. The other side has pretended not to believe it and surrendered time and again, with predictable results. Finally, DeSantis and Florida Republicans have taken the enemy at their word, and responded in kind. Republicans everywhere should go and do likewise.

And there you have it. Davidson is dead right with this essay, although it’s not even remotely likely that the Vichy GOPers will do any such thing, alas, and none of us should be waiting on tenterhooks in breathless expectation that it might finally happen. With such a “long train of abuses” behind them—betrayal after double-cross after duplicity after perfidy—the Repugnican Party has paraded its core faithlessness for all to see. Anybody taken in by the treacherous mountebanks after all that we’ve seen isn’t just naive or gullible, he’s a masochist and a schmuck of the first water. Were it not for the nearly Biblical destruction their willful blindness has brought crashing down on Real American heads by folks like Cooke and all other the smug, perennially hapless NeverTrumpTards at NRO and elsewhere, one could almost feel sorry for them.

Almost.

Update! Nobody ever won a war by refusing to fight back, nor by denying that he’s in one.

Via Glenn.

Relentless update! Man, this guy just doesn’t let up, does he? Kinda like the old joke about the Energizer buinny with his batteries in backwards: he just keeps coming, and coming, and coming…

The backlash towards Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been swift, heavy, and harsh after he signed a bill that makes Disney operate on the same rules as every other corporation in the state. For some reason, this has many on the left and even a handful on the right really mad. To address it, he went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News Friday night.

“This company had a deal unlike any company or any individual in all of the state of Florida… probably anywhere in the United States.” he said. “They were self-governing. They had extraordinary powers. They could build nuclear power plants. They didn’t have to go through permitting processes, obviously a lot of tax benefits. And so that’s just inappropriate.”

He explained why the left is so adamant about trying to push their agenda through corporations rather through direct political action.

“They used to be hostile to big corporations because they perceived those corporations as being apolitical and they wouldn’t support their agenda,” he said. “Now, they figured out that they could try to subcontract out their leftism to some of these big corporations and some of the executives will cave to the woke mob, and then they’ll basically do the left’s dirty work.”

Ron DeSantis is doing what every Republican governor in the nation should be doing. He’s taking the fight directly at the left instead of placating and evading battles. Imagine if more did the same.

I’ve been screaming myself purple-faced for way too many years about this same exact thing, which should at least partially explain my joyous enthusiasm for DeSantis the Barbarian: it’s all about offense, not defense, dammit. OFFENSE is how wars get won, and as we all know politics is war by other means.

It’s a shame that we can only imagine more of them doing the same…for now. Happily, that will be changing before too much longer; there’s a clock ticking on GOPe lassitude and complaisance, whether they realize it or not, and the current arrangement is by no means permanent. Before we know it, the American political house of cards will be swept away on the wings of a Force 12 cyclone fueled by discontent, disillusionment, and sheer rage.

Weep not for the Woke update! Brother Smith saws away on the world’s smallest violin.

A state governor is “bullying” a massive international conglomerate with its tentacles wrapped around numerous facets of our society including considerable control over the mainstream media? Yeah, I don’t think so. If anything, Disney is the bully on the block that has finally for the first time been punched in the face by a kid he thought he could shake down for lunch money. And now Disney, in typical gaslighting fashion, is pretending to be the victim and the leftists are eating it up.

Disney is not the “hand that feeds Florida,” Florida is the hand that feeds Disney. Many people don’t understand that Disney is reliant on park revenues to keep the company afloat, their movies are peripheral to the parks. And, with California going down the tubes as a vacation spot, Florida is where the money is at. Disney’s only option is to stay in Orlando, pay their taxes and remain under the watchful eye of the state government or they will die as a company. It’s that simple.

At bottom it’s amazing that leftists have chosen this hill to die on. Standing against a bill that prevents indoctrination and sexualization of young children automatically makes them suspect. They claim it’s not happening, which is a provable lie. They claim it’s authoritarian, but can’t produce a logical argument as to how preventing such lessons in public schools violates anyone’s rights. They say that conservatives are bullies for going after Disney, but ignore the fact that Disney started the whole thing by attacking Floridians that support a legal and constitutional bill.

Frankly, these people deserve what they get. There is no reasoning with them and their insanity should be held up as an example of what not to do as a society for generations to come. They should be kept as far away from power as possible because they are dangerous zealots who do not care about facts, science or core principles. They only want to destroy their enemies, and they see us as the enemy. If they can get to us through our kids, then they are fine with that. I feel no empathy for them when they get hit back.

Empathy? FUCK THAT NOISE, pal. Empathy, charity, and forebearance are NOT on the menu for these nefarious curs—not now, not ever again, not on your life. None of that ought to occupy any space whatsoever in our hearts and minds. Far better to kick them while they’re down: bludgeon them into the pit of despair so deeply they can have no hope of climbing out again; shatter their pride, their sense of self-worth, and whatever sanity they may have; essentially, just rip their fucking guts out both literally and figuratively, sayeth I. Keep Trevor and Taylor Progtard abashed, afraid, and wracked with dread until their fragile psyches shatter into fragments so minuscule an electron microscope would be necessary to make ’em out. Leave every man Jack of them in a gooey puddle on the ground, weeping inconsolably and barely capable of coherent speech—a spent round, nothing but a wretched, miserable mess. Make it damned near impossible to remember why it was that Real Americans had ever considered them such an ominous threat to everything they hold dear in the first place.

Hold that line? Oh HELL no. Push ’em back, push ’em back, WAAAAAY back! must be our mantra from this day forward. Force them to stop thinking about what they’re going to do to us, and start worrying about what WE’RE going to do to THEM for a change. No, they’re not licked yet, of course they aren’t. BUT if we can make the aforementioned attitudinal about-face happen and hold fast to it, crushing them will no longer be a matter of if, but when. And after that? THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN, BABY!

That sound pretty good to anybody out there? I sure think it does, but as always YMMV.

Make no mistake: Ron DeSantis has notched a “W” here not just for himself, his political party, and his State, but for basic decency, rationality, and good old common sense too, among other fine and worthwhile things. Every Heritage American concerned with preserving those cardinal virtues should be celebrating this resounding triumph, even as they make plans to get straight back to work on the next one.