What’s the point of tearing down statues just to put up new ones? Senator Ben Cardin held a town meeting recently (https://www.c-span.org/video/?433356-1/senator-ben-cardin-town-hall-meeting-health-care&start=5709#).
The stated topic of the meeting was health care, but Cardin was asked at several points about his sponsorship of a bill which would punish, even criminalize, anyone who takes part in the BDS (Boycott Divest Sanction) movement.
The BDS movement is aimed at putting pressure on illegal settlements in Israel/Palestine. One speaker put it to Cardin this way:”We need you to stop giving comfort to an apartheid state. You are standing in the same position that Ronald Reagan stood and when he was trying to face (sic) South Africa.” (see the video at the 1.34.06 mark).
Each time Cardin was asked about BDS he seemed to freeze. His chumminess, on display for the questioners about health care, disappeared. Instead there was a stiff pose and a canned response, something about “foreign entities”, an argument every bit as phony as the one made a generation ago invoking “states rights.”
Fifty or one hundred years from now, people will wonder why the government promoted apartheid while others who were supposedly completely dedicated to wiping out racism contented themselves with tearing down civil war statues.
I can’t imagine such a law passing constitutional muster. It would seem that individuals and institutions have an inherent right to spend or not spend/invest their money as they see fit.
It’s flagrantly unconstitutional, I disagree with the BDS campaign but absolutely affirm their constitutional rights under the 1st amendment that this proposed bill would violate.