Left “blacklists” Sarah Sanders

The left wants to prevent Sarah Sanders from gaining employment, now that she has moved on from the Trump White House. An outfit called American Bridge is seeking signatures in support of the blacklisting of Sanders. Its email reads:

Hello: We signed an open letter to America’s CEOs demanding they won’t hire anyone from the Trump administration who was complicit in Trump’s family separation policy.

Trump just announced that Sarah Sanders, his long-time press secretary and avid liar from the White House podium, will be leaving his administration at the end of the month.

Sanders will no doubt be looking for her next big gig––but CEOs must reject her resume.

Sanders spread misinformation, deflected blame, and did her best to cover for Trump at the expense of the truth about the family separation policy.

There’s nothing new about the left’s efforts to blacklist those who serve in Republican administrations. Some members of the George W. Bush administration received the same treatment — e.g. when they tried to return to teaching law. And the left vehemently objected when the University of Virginia hired Marc Short (one of the more innocuous, to put it kindly, members of Trump’s White House team) for a top position at the school.

I don’t know whether the left has ever successfully ruined the post-administration career of a Republican. However, I’m pretty sure it has managed to cause some to land in less prestigious jobs than they would have occupied had they been returning to private life from some other form of service, especially service in a Democratic administration.

In Sanders’ case, the left is targeting “America’s CEO’s.” I suspect that this is an even more spineless cohort than college and university administrators. We’ll see.

The left’s effort to wreck Sanders’ livelihood adds to my appreciation of Angelo Codevilla’s case for “a conservative resistance.” Codevilla writes:

The state and corporate officials who have pressured conservative America to bend to their ways by withdrawing their business from recalcitrant localities threaten those whom they target with isolation. They discount the fact that isolation is a double-edged sword, which their targets can wield to greater effect than they.

Some 180 corporate CEOs declared they will reduce business in states that restrict abortions. But the moment that conservatives come to view companies and institutions like, say, Procter & Gamble, or Disney, or corporate Hollywood, as an enemy of their way of life, said institution is cut in half, at best. Twitter says conservative speech is hate speech. Why should conservatives use Twitter?

Conservative boycotts would intend not to change corporate policies, but to channel conservative patronage away from their enemies—to amputate diseased parts of the body politic so that healthy ones might grow.

Similarly, conservatives should call out and boycott schools and any other institutions that show themselves to be promoting a way of life alien to them. Why should we associate with those who hate us?

I’ve asked myself that question many times.

Isolation is indeed a double-edged sword. So are boycotts and blacklists.

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