From the Washington Post:
Mia Lazarus put her chips and juice down on the counter and prepared to pay. But in the midst of the lunchtime rush, the cashier's eyes wandered to Lazarus's T-shirt, which expressed a political message that proved to be overwhelming for the clerk.
One glance at the words "Baltimore Zionist District" on Lazarus's "I Stand for Israel" T-shirt, and the cashier at the Maryland Food Collective, a crunchy grocery and sandwich shop in the student union on the University of Maryland's College Park campus, blurted: "Your shirt offends me. I won't ring you up." The cashier told Lazarus she could go to the back of the store to find another clerk....
Lazarus wasn't much inconvenienced:
Lazarus got her food; another cashier at the independent, worker-owned co-op was willing to take the student's money. But the incident led to the creation of a Facebook site on which some students called for a boycott of the food co-op; an hours-long, teary meeting at which Lazarus and her friends hashed things out with the collective; and then an agreement.
The collective, which rents space from the university, announced last week that it would serve any customer who was not physically or verbally abusive, but that any worker who was offended by a customer's politics could discreetly slip away and find another clerk to serve the patron.
That seems right to me: If the collective can accommodate its employees' personal preferences without inconveniencing the patron (assuming there's no material delay), and if it wishes to accommodate such preferences, that's fine.
Still, it's unfortunate that some patrons would be so intolerant of support for Zionism that they would refuse to do business with those who wear such T-shirts. One aspect of everyday tolerance is that you don't let most political disagreements get in the way of doing business together. There are exceptions (I wouldn't want to do business with someone wearing a KKK T-shirt, and I'd take the same view about Che Guevara T-shirts if I thought most of their wearers really supported what Che stood for, rather than just engaging in political posturing). But people who believe that support for Israel and Zionism should fall within that narrow zone are, in my view, morally mistaken.
I would also not endorse laws that ban such discrimination; nor would I argue for First Amendment protection here, since the co-op is a private entity, and its renting government property shouldn't affect that analysis (cf. Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, but see Wilmington Parking Auth. v. Burton).
At the same time, the University of Maryland is entitled to make sure that space that it rents out on its campus is available to people without regard to "race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, personal appearance, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, or on the basis of the exercise of rights secured by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution" -- even when the difference in treatment involves a few seconds of delay, which the patrons will likely understand stems from a server's refusal to serve them. (I quote this list from the Human Relations Code; I'm not sure it's literally applicable here, but there may be similar terms in the co-op's lease, and in any event the University may set up such rules for its lessees.) And I particularly liked the reaction of Gretchen Metzelaars, director of Maryland's student union, met with the collective "trying to help them come to the conclusion that they must abide by the university's human rights code":
Despite hours of conversation, "it became apparent that they were not coming to the right conclusion," Metzelaars said. "So we delivered it to them." This week, she told the collective that if it discriminates again, it will have 60 days to vacate the premises.
"They can't see that this is discrimination .... They're more committed to their righteousness than they are to the rights of other people. The fact is, you have to serve everyone."
The collective finally seemed to get that idea, Metzelaars said. But then, "we finished our discussion, and they said, okay, but if someone came in wearing a swastika, we wouldn't serve them. And I said, 'Whoa! That's the problem right there: Everyone gets to say what they believe, and you have to serve them.'"
Not the only approach that would be proper, I think, but a sensible approach, especially in a university.
Finally, let me close with this: "The students don't want to come off as haters. When Lazarus and others active in Maryland's Jewish student groups met with the collective, the visitors baked a vegan chocolate cake and brought it as a peace offering." Something about that "vegan" is just so apt.
Ms. Metzelaars, director of the student union, had it right - forget the vegan chocolate cakes, if you discriminate in this manner again, you will have 60 days to vacate the premises.
Scary or appropriate?
Now vegans (or more generally vegetarians especially caucasian ones) scare me.
It appears to me there is a strong correlation between vegetarianism and animal rights activism and a strong correlation between animal rights activism and animal murder.
But, as I said, a university may well properly take a different view as to businesses to which it rents space.
Personally, I do not believe in anti-discrimination laws of any sort as I think property rights entail the right of a business owner to choose whom to serve even on an invidious basis. But that's not the law, and I thought the UMD rep handled the situation well.
As to the Co-op's remedy, I have to disagree with Prof. Volokh. I think overall, we'd be a freer country without anti-discrimination laws. But given those laws exist, I think letting a co-op say the equivalent of "You dirty _____ [insert disfavored group], I won't serve you but we keep someone in the back to handle your dirty ______ money" is both logically and legally questionable.
Because . . . vegans tend to make peace offerings? Vegans tend to join collectives? Vegans tend to be named Lazarus?
Allow me to test this if I may -- what if we were talking about the only 24 hour pharmacy in town, and the pharmacist refused to dispense a 'morning-after' contraceptive to a customer? The pharmacy is a private enterprise, and the pharmacist is declining to serve the customer for 'whatever reason', after all. How prompt must another employee (i.e., another pharamcist) be to step into the breach? Fifteen seconds? A minute? An hour? A day?
We might all condemn the pharamcist, and the customer almost certainly would be offended, but is that adequate reason for us to ban the pharamcist from having this discretion in doing his/her job? And if so, how is it different for the clerk at the co-op?
EV, that may be the way you think things should be, but is that the law in this country, locally or nationally?
If all of Lester Maddox's waiters/waitresses refused to serve African-Americans except for one among them, perhaps for additional pay, who was willing to do so, then provided African-American customers were not made to wait longer than others, the Georgia restauranteur might have been OK vis-a-vis the law? Denny's most serious offense was that African-Americans received slower service than other customers?
Do you think, as the students seem to, that it comes down to what is "separate but equal" and what isn't? ("Separate but equal wasn't equal," Lazarus said. "In this case, I'm getting the same service, but it's just from a different cashier.") If another staff member is present and willing to step in, then "separate" may be "equal," and hence no problem?
[BTW, ought pharmacists be allowed to fill prescriptions they object to on "moral" grounds, e.g., oral contraceptives for the unwed? Only if another pharmacist without such personal objections to the doctor's prescription is present and willing to step in for their colleague? Ought state licensing boards be able to compel physicians and dentists to treat AIDS patients, when there are others who could provide the care?]
I think it was Berkley Breathed who coined the phrase "offensensitivity." We worry way too much about "offending" people these days.
No First Amendment intrusion, OK. But what about the Commerce Clause. What with Mohammedans refusing to serve travellers carrying liquor with their taxis, and now this, whatever happened to Heart of Dixie Motel?
The Twin Cities cab drivers refusing service to travellers carrying liquor may be a different matter, since the cabbies must have hack licenses and the airport authority is intimately involved in the business. (Similarly, physicians/dentists/pharmacists may have their exercise of "free choice" restricted.)
The problem is with the notion of "no material delay." Unless there's always an idle reserve employee there will inevitably be material delays. So the cashier is going to have to serve people with t-shirts carrying messages she doesn't like at least some of the time. Then what? Or what if all the cashiers hate Zionists? In other words, I think the policy EV describes is unworkable, and will inevitably create problems for customers, as well as the collective.
The proper answer to a claim that someone will refuse to serve anyone displaying Nazi regalia is not "You have to serve them." The Nazis like the KKK or people in Hamas bandanas are representing an identified terrorist organization during a time of war. The proper response is, "You may want to serve them to keep them busy and you should call the police and FBI."
If there's substance to that, I'd think the remedy would be simple and direct: Announce loudly (before witnesses, or better yet, recording media) that "I am hereby offering this payment in exchange for these goods. Are you refusing my payment?" This puts it squarely on the cashier. You're either rung up, or you walk.
(On DVD, Andy Garcia's "The Lost City" (Garcia, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman) is a tremendous and a gutsy film - deservedly, many 5-star Amazon reviews - and one of the very few that places Che and Castro in a more honest historical and cultural light.)
I'm assuming it was the coop students, but I'm just not sure. It seems like Lazarus, and her group, was the "visitors." I guess I might have to actually click the link and read for myself....
I'm speechless. Well, almost.
Maybe all that means is that Carolina is young and never experienced life in the United States before antidiscrimination laws. In a way, that would be sort of positive.
It's pretty easy to rouse the rabble, but when left alone the big majority of Americans are pretty easy-going. Every place I've ever lived, some Christian bigots have tried to establish a 'Christian Yellow Pages' restricted trade association.
It is a credit to the mass of Christians that, so far as I know, none of these has ever survived more than a couple of months.
Eugene, your co-conspirator David Bernstein at first thought it was an urban legend when I told him about a case in which the owner of the German-themed Alpine Village restaurant was subjected to damages under California's Unruh Act for refusing to serve Nazis wearing swastikas. On finding it was true, Bernstein certainly thought the restaurateur was badly done by. (By the way, the ACLU represented the Nazis.)
My view is that if you run a business open to the general public you may be compelled to serve people of all political views and your own moral or political revulsion counts for nothing in that regard. That leaves open the question of what to do about people wearing symbols or messages. (In most cases, of course, business staff won't be aware of the customer's political views unless a symbol or message is worn.)
I can see the argument against forcing service of Nazis wearing swastikas in a restaurant because I think the presence of Nazi symbols would prevent many other customers from going into the restaurant and would certainly interfere with some people enjoying their meal; it would disrupt the functioning of the restaurant as a public business. Ignoring the swastikas would be akin to ignoring, as Tony Soprano put it on Sunday, the 500-pound elephant in the room.
In the case of a grocery store or a drug store, the wearing of symbols or political messages does not similarly interfere with the functioning of the business. The symbols or messages are not there inside the business for long. No one is there for enjoyment, for pleasure, for a peaceful break from the hustle and bustle of the day.
But if you allow a business, even a restaurant, to ban people wearing swastikas, then what do you do about people wearing other political symbols--Bush is Great, Israel Forever, Abortion is Murder--that many find offensive?
These problems arise because of the wholesale--and, I believe, unthinking--adoption of first amendment public forum law as part of public business anti-discrimination law. Privately owned businesses are simply not public fora. Yet so many people wear political symbols and messages on their clothing, it would be difficult for any business to adopt a flat ban on symbols and messages.
Really? I'd think the opposite.
It's been my observation that the "enlightened" campuses are far more likely to foster an "equal for me but not for thee" attitude. In fact, I'm surprised - but greatly heartened - by the Student Union Director's decision. She obviously understands freedom. (Unlike the administration on so many other campuses.)
In the event there were no anti-discrimination laws, we would definitely be a freer nation, because individual freedom--including the freedom to be a bigoted a$$--is the only sort of freedom which can exist.
I think you would not believe however, that if there were no law against it, there probably would be less discrimination now today than there is.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
GO TERPS!
Now I've read the linked article and I'm still confused as to who baked the vegan cake. Can anybody clear this up? It makes it seem the students from the Jewish Students Union were the visitors and baked the cake. If that's the case, the much-mocked vegan-ness of the cake makes a LOT of sense.
I don't just believe it, I know it. I grew up in Tennessee before there were antidiscrimination laws. There were pro-discrimination laws in those days.
There was a day when I found myself looking down the barrel of a 12-gauge because I was objecting to that.
Yet another reason I am not a libertarian.
Hattio, upon re-reading it, I think it may have been the Jewish student group that delivered the "vegan chocolate cake" (parve) to the "collective." (Did they eat the cake collectively, then altogether in one voice, that is collectively, express thanks for the butter-less, egg-less, vegetable oil concoction?) Not clear how the "much-mocked vegan-ness of the cake (would then make) a LOT of sense." (Some hidden meaning in "LOT"?) It seems to me even sorrier that the Jewish students felt the need to make a peace offering to the "collective," when apologies should have been forthcoming from the "collective" to the Jewish students, or better yet to the University of Maryland community at large.
If I spotted a manager I would notify him that the cashiers drawer was short.
Granted, your hypothesis is much more plausible than mine, but I still wonder whether the two variables (anti-discimination laws and discrimination) are merely correlated.
The workers who would talk to me -- most would not because "the collective speaks collectively," as one member put it -- said no one should have to have contact with people whose views they find hurtful.
Ah, gotta love modern 'liberal'ism. We've gone from all views being entitled to be heard to the idea that one shouldn't even have to have 'contact' with people they disagree with. What do our colleges teach nowadays?
That having been said, I think that the 1960s represent a special case. The laws may have been needed then because Jim Crow was so legally entrenched -- but should have been limited at the time, and should have been allowed to expire.
So, no, at this point, being Jewish does not get you squat on campus. Except being a punching bag for Islamists or lefties and laughed at by the administration if you complain.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/n/a/2007/02/16/state/n165120S95.DTL
The older I get the more I understand.
Interesting question. A few months ago, on these very boards, we debated an incident whereby a bus driver refused to drive her bus because there was an ad about some gay group, and it offended her religious beliefs.
Seems at that time, there were a lot of people saying that she had her rights, that the bus company can find another bus driver, this is a 1st Amendment right to religion and so on. Many people asserted that the employer should be sensitive to her concerns and merely reassign her to another route that didn't have that ad, and therefore no harm, no foul.
Many people defended her. I most certainly did not, on the grounds that she is hired to do a job, ie, drive a bus, and she either drives it or gets fired.
So where are all those defenders of her now? Isn't this the same situation? Well maybe not -- I guess it all depends on your views of gays and Israel.
At the same time, however, and without the prodding of prodiscrimination laws, deeds had antiJewish provisions written in, and universities had discriminatory quotas against Jews.
And I could go on and on.
"Eh, ye f***in Gunner. Get outta my store", he said with a west London accent.
Whether your freedom is impinged by the law or by ignorant racist lynch mobs, your freedom is still impinged. Flaws and all, more people have more freedom today than prior to the Civil Rights Act.
Ah yes, another "hate" crime. Yet such facile, tendentious arrogations are to be taken with the utmost seriousness, as if any and all discrimination is co-equivalent. I see your charge of hate and raise you with a blatant Christophobic contempt and hatred.
People continue to have basic rights and liberties, some of which pertain to the ability to discriminate on reasonable moral grounds. They are not so readily usurped and denied by the latest homosexual or other activist group's snarls, contempt, arrogations and presumption even if such blowfish tactics are now common and instill a submissive, cowed demeanor in some, at times with Pavlovian predictability.
For the time being at least, these Constitutional tenets still hold.
Hm, I'm surprised no one has taken issue with this. Is it such a stretch to construe the young lady's shirt as supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands (even if it is only an "occupation" in the subjective view of the cashier) and/or the history of Zionism which includes some very nasty episodes (Deir Yassin, eg)? Presumptuous perhaps, but I'd guess I'd be pretty sensitive to this if I were Palestinian.
For the record, I think both the cashier and the professor's standards are both too sensitive.
I remember the same thing and another, slightly older, story on this website concerning christian owners of a pool store (or something like that) refusing to serve a gay couple. The response of most the posters was pretty much "it's their right to refuse service to anyone".
I'm with the Professor on the legal issues.
you wrote:
"many people seriously find zionism as offensive as the KKK, which you say you could understand not serving."
Poop,
I'll serve the "KKK t-shirts", the Zionists, and even... YOU, Poopolopen.*
However, I'd have to think twice about EV:-)
*Did I forget the Nazi's?**
**Oh, don't mention the war....
One aspect, in fact the main aspect, frankly, of civilized life is that you don't let political disagreements get in the way of living. Show support for whatever cause you care to on your shirt; I'll serve you, take your money...and laugh at/about you.
Too many people make everything political these days. What can one do but hand them ExLax?
Bill, if I conflated zionism with those italicized things, I'd agree with you. Essentially however, zionism it is the belief that God (or the chief god) actually did give Israel to the Jews, when in fact that's just the excuse every primitive tribe that wasn't so primitive as to be animist as opposed to at least pantheistic used when they moved in on a weaker tribe's territory, and killed them for it.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
It gets murky with private clubs (i.e. intent).
I know of no rational way (rule based) to square that circle.
Evidently human nature requires a devil. Personally I blame evil in the world on cats. However, given the number of cat lovers that is not going to work out. Any one have any suggestions on an appropriate object of hatred that will not have us at each other's throats?
Evidently the Palestinians are a sensitive lot and easily offended.
Just look at the current dust up in Lebanon where NO JEWS ARE INVOLVED.
As long as Der Yasin is a factor how about Hebron 1929.
Or that Palestinian fellow (the Mufti of Jerusalem - Arafat's and Abbas' mentor) who raised a couple of divisions of SS for the express purpose of killing Jews. The Austrian Corporal thought he was a swell guy. So good that he had his most famous book translated into Arabic (with the inappropriate parts excized). Still a best seller today.
No doubt the Palestinians are occupied by their own evil intent. If they gave up that occupation Israel has offered to give up theirs. So far no takers on the Palestinian side.
This is worthy of Lewis Carroll. What absolute nonsense. The laws were passed because the vast majority of voting (i.e., white) citizens favored segregation. Period. You want evidence? Take a look at political campaigns in theregion. The candidates basically argued over who was the biggest racist. Does that sound like only a small group supported segregation?
Like Harry Eagar, I lived in the south during the days of Jim Crow. I can assure you that the libertarian ideas about how that society worked are pure fantasy.
Guns? LOL
1. The shirt had a political statement, not a religious one even tho many, but not ALL of those holding the political view are jewish. The case would have been much clearer if the statement were religious in nature
2. Someone said that it was wrong for a member of the coop not to want to speak for the coop. That is silly, without authorization you take your life (or job as the case may be) in hand when you speak for your department, company, organization.
3. It seems to me the issue here is what training did the coop give to its unpaid (I assume) member? To what extent was it required to give that training and have policies in place to deal with such situations. Same goes for everyone else.
4. A close analogy to me is the situation with day after pills. Comments?
Yes, as Michael B notes, it seems that people here are okay with a store clerk refusing service to gay person, but everyone is not okay with a store clerk refusing service to any other -- is that the standard?
without paying. A far better and just as disruptive
response would be to leave the tray in front of the
cashier, leave and eat elsewhere.
I take it the jewish students were the ones who brought the cake. If the coop members they met with are vegans, wouldn't it be pretty rude to bring a non-vegan cake? I don't think it's fair to suggest this is PC behavior; it's just ordinary politeness. If you were hosting a meeting with some orthodox Jews would you serve ham sandwiches?
(Of course I wouldn't have brought a cake at all)
Speaking for myself, I'd try to bring a variety, but make clear my kitchen is not kosher. If I had sufficient time, I'd hunt up a kosher deli and have such foodstuffs present.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
There's a lot of intolerance on our leftist campuses.
The Co-op, in general, ought to discriminate against anyone they feel like discriminating against. I'd really prefer it if they'd write up a big sign of who they'll refuse service to and put it on the outside of their door. But, since they don't own the property, they are subject to their landlord's own right of refusal of service -- and their landlord has made it clear that if the Co-op continues to exercise their right as a retail establishment to refuse service to anyone, the University will exercise their right as landlord to evict them. I hope, just as I did with the Co-op, that the University will make the terms of their stance really clear to all prospective tenants.
I think restrictions on the ability of a group to limit its membership, in a university setting in particular, are silly. I am provisionally less of the opinion that restricting the Co-op's right to refuse service is silly (both because I think voluntary associations are more worthy of protection than commercial ones [I don't quite know why I think that, probably because of that "peaceably assemble" bit I had to memorize in 8th grade], and because membership rules are a bigger deal than who you do or do not sell a $1 bag of butter-free cookies to.)
But the university can certainly use their own rights as a landlord to limit the activities of either the student group or the Co-op (upon threat of simple eviction,) can they not? Treating questions of Student Government funding, access to mailboxes, registration and promotion rights, etc., for a student group as separate issues, obviously.
At the same time, however, and without the prodding of prodiscrimination laws, deeds had antiJewish provisions written in, and universities had discriminatory quotas against Jews.
Harry Eager, I fully agree with your point about pernicious discrimination even in the absence of "pro-discrimination" laws. In 1963, though, while deeds may have had nakedly discriminatory convenants, and may still have them today, those sorts of covenants have been unenforceable since Shelley v. Kramer was decided in 1948. (BTW, Judge Bork takes strong exception to that decision. Does David Nieporent for libertarian or other reasons wish that the outcome had been different?)
No, no, no. It's not presenting vegans with a vegan cake that has been mocked as PC behavior, it is presenting the "collective" with any sort of peace offering, when it is the "collective" that wants to be allowed to discriminate against students whose political views they do not share, all while doing business in a state university building. Unfortunately, Ms. Lazarus, who took a principled but not universally popular political stance, is willing to accept "separate but equal" on her campus as a reasonable compromise.
That can only work on an individual level. If you want to question a certain poster or the original author about positions taken then versus now, that is fine.
They are worse than silly, since for no compelling reason they infringe the associational rights of those who have come together because of what they have in common and is important to them. A group of gay activists deeply opposed to the Church's stance on gay rights ought not be able to join a Newman sponsored group, take control of the organization, and then start issuing statements in the name of the Catholic group advocating SSM, denouncing the Pope, etc. And that is the sort of mischief that schools open the door to.
In those groups, I suppose, the only associational criterion was political, so it isn't exactly parallel with, say, a college Hillel club.
Why do you qualify it with "allegedly"? Do you have any doubt about it? If there wasn't a group to take over in that manner or otherwise co-opt, then they would form another under some misleading name, often one with "peace," "justice" or the like in it. But then all sorts, including right-wingers and corporate interests, have adopted the tactic of flying false or misleading flags these days.
Sarah is not "aware of any Mormons who'd want to be presidents of a Catholic group," nor am I. (I expect that Mitt Romney, that is the now "anti-abortion" Mitt, would be happy to have Catholics vote for him.) "Messianic Jews" (aka Christians), though, have tried to join Jewish groups, and I have no doubt many would be delighted to serve as presidents of those groups given the opportunity.
I am not saying that in the absence of those laws, that there would be no discrimination, any more than in the absence of hate speech laws there will be no hate speech. But racist speech has mostly disappeared, except on the fringes, without need for European-style censorship laws.
Again, that having been said, Jim Crow had been entrenched by law for so long that I could see a temporary need for antidiscrimination laws. But it should have been temporary.
Neurodoc: as a libertarian, yes, I think it was a wrong decision, even if I like some of the results of the decision.
No, I wouldn't be "okay" with that.
I did note a Constitutional issue, alluded to in general terms and more specifically as related to the subject of adoption and a privately owned B&B. I noted the facile and tendentious arrogation of the "hate crime" label. Likewise I noted the facile insinuation of contempt directed at a certain group as well.
David, if you'll allow me to be personal, in 1963 I lived about a block from the Standard Country Club in Atlanta (setting of Alfred Uhry's play 'Last Night of Ballyhoo' if you've seen that). Thanks to neurodoc, we know that for at least 15 years, Christians had been on notice that discrimination against Jews was illegal.
The news must have been a little slow getting to Atlanta, because the Standard was a Jewish club. As a kid, I once asked my father why the Jews needed their own club. His response has colored my thinking for close to 50 years -- 'Because they aren't allowed in the Piedmont Driving Club.'
Dad, a Catholic, probably wouldn't have been welcomed in either one, if he'd had the money, which he didn't.
And yet when blacks or gays or other minorities form groups that are obstensibly for blacks or gays or those other minorities, they are ridiculed for practicing the same sort of discrimination that they decry when white people do it.
So: It's okay for any group of people to form a group that promotes X interest, and then prohibits the addition of any non-X members to that group? But if they want tax exempt status, the IRS will not allow that. And any black group that says Black Only will certainly be ridiculed on Fox News and the O'Reilly Report.
So what should the standard be?
But it did last. To take one example, Jim Crow laws did not much deal with employment, yet there was enormous racial discrimination in employment. For another, private universities in the south were generally segregated, despite the lack of a legal requirement.
I never said that I would not serve the KKK. In any case, my point was not that I do not know that many people are offended by Zionism but that I find it most unfortunate that they take such a position. It may well be that they are as offended by Zionism as by the KKK, but the equation is obscene and ridiculous, and they shouldn't be.
Your characterization of Zionism is so grossly offbase that I would take your post to be a joke if I did not know better. Among the many things that show it to be false is the fact that a large percentage both of the founders of Zionism and of current zionists are agnostics or atheists, who certainly do not believe that Israel was given to the Jews by a non-existent divinity.
There is nothing about zionism per se which inherently requires or even necessarily encourages "advocacy of freedom, democracy, and the continued existence of the Jewish people".
In fact, as currently instituted in the State of Israel, it is unclear if zionism can survive freedom, democracy, and can ensure the continued existence of the Jewish people. After all, Zionism has gathered some 5.4 million of them into a "one bomb" location.
Yours very truly, Tom Perkins
ml, msl, &pfpp
Except, of course, TDPerkins, that these were the self-announced goals of the founders of the Zionist movement, all of whoim were atheist or agnostic Jews, and many of whom were socialists. Religious zionism formed as an attempt to synthesize the atheistic movement with principles of the Jewish religion. The latter group, characterized by e.g. Bnai Akiva, Young Israel, and the Mizarchi movement, are probably the ones you have in mind. And knowing many of them, I can assure you that the continued existence of the Jewish people is of great importance to them, as are the advocacy of freedom and democracy.
If you look into some of the secular labor Zionist groups, such as Habonim, Histradut, Hashomer, you will find that advocacy of freedom and democracy were of great importance to them as well. Read what they wrote and you will find some of your ignorant stereotyping to be eactly that.