Support Target: If We [Conservatives] Want To Save America We Must Stop Acting Like Liberals

As conservatives we genuinely bring out the anti-American side of the liberal, progressive and communist minorities in America. This is necessary to win the battles and must to be done to win the war of ideas. Liberals/progressives are destroying America, but in order to defeat the liberal agenda we can’t act like them. They are hypocritical and use double standards as part of their methodology. Sometimes conservatives, wrongly, adopt the same tactics.

Some recent instances are:

• A few months ago the CEO of Chic-Fil-A made comments condemning ‘gay marriages’. The conservatives applauded and the liberals whined.
• Recently Hobby Lobby won a major decision from the U.S. Supreme Court essentially agreeing with their premise that a corporation can run their business in accordance with their personal beliefs. The conservatives applauded and the liberals whined.
• Recently Target Corporation made an official announcement that they do not want customers to enter their stores with guns. Of course this meant criminals, and in addition lawful citizens who are allowed under federal and state law to carry a weapon. The liberals applauded and the conservatives whined.

When I retired from active duty (U.S. Air Force) in late 1999, I felt it was time do join the corporate world. Target Corporation has six national investigators who work corporate level security. I was hired by Target Corporation as an Executive and was based in Dallas, Texas. My primary duties were to manage the personal protective team for Target’s ‘Open Wheel’ CART Champion Juan Montoya. Montoya was from Columbia and had received several threats against his life. Whenever Montoya raced I would fly to his location and manage his protection team.

I stayed in five star hotels, ate at fine restaurants, and got to see some of the best high performance racing in the world. Montoya won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000. Target taught me valuable lessons about finances and, in general, how big corporations like Target operate and continue to operate today. I learned:

1. Regardless if a mom and pop business or a large corporation with stores across the world, there are ‘real’ people at the highest levels of the business. They make decisions based on personal beliefs and what they feel is in the best interest of the company.
2. Financial decisions are made to achieve long term goals and not for the short term.
3. Businesses early on decide the consumer market (people) they want as their customers.

Based on these guidelines it comes down to this for Target Corporate and their consumer goals. Target Corporate Executives taught me early on that they do want to attract the same customers as Walmart. Target goes after the middle class to upper class consumer. In their own words they do not want the “lower class people to shop at their stores with ‘food stamps’ in hand.”

Additionally, Target’s major marketing is focused on respectable, financially secure women to come to their stores and purchase their merchandise. This is why Target does not carry the same merchandise and variety as say Walmart. Target intentionally prices their products higher than Walmart. Again they do this to keep the ‘rift raft’ out and well off women in. One needs only go to any Walmart or Target to confirm what I have just said.

This does not mean middle class and upper level classes do not shop at Walmart, but seldom do societies ‘money and benefit suckers’ shop at Target. The prices at Target are higher and they do not offer low price tobacco, alcohol, or guns for sale. Matter of fact, they do not offer them at any price.

I am a big Second Amendment Rights advocate. I believe more guns should be in the hands of law-abiding American citizens, and fewer guns in the hands of our police and law enforcement. I also believe our country was formed as a free market – capitalist nation. It was our Founding Father’s primary desire to protect private property and businesses from undue government involvement. Undue pressures, rules and regulations from a few bureaucrats on how a business operates was against our founding principles.

In other words, conservatives should be supportive of any business legally operating in America. While I do not agree with Target’s policy of keeping lawful Americans from entering their stores with firearms, I am thrilled they have the freedom to make such a choices. We can choose where to shop. It is better the market determines corporate policy, not government.

If you do not like the way Target conducts business, then don’t shop there. I must emphasize Target wants middle and upper class WOMEN to shop at their stores. They want their female customers to feel secure and shop in a clean and safe environment.

Target executives know that millions of middle and upper class MALES will be offended at their firearms policy. Really they don’t care, because they also know that WOMAN rule the household and finances, and they will continue to shop at Target regardless of what their gun loving husbands feel. Target also knows most gun owning men will initially be upset, but in very short time stop whining. Why? Because most husbands, fathers, brothers want their female relatives to be safe and secure wherever they go. Deep down they know Target is the safest choice for a lady and her children to go to late in the evening than their competitors.

The Target Corporation spends millions upon millions of dollars on security measures to protect all their customers.

Do not behave like liberals. Support any legal business that employs one or a million employees. At least as of this writing we have the choice of where we shop and where we do not shop. Business owners for the most part can still make their own decisions about how they run their business.

Think about this if you disagree with the Target Corporate gun policy. Do you want a politician stepping in at any level and mandate the business decisions that a company may abide by? The federal government already has their hands deep into the operation of businesses (e.g. EPA, FDA, HHS, etc.), lets not give them the opportunity to dig deeper.

Conservatives must fight against further government involvement. What if President Obama stepped in and signed an Executive order requiring Target to allow guns in their stores? We would not have free enterprise and we would be closer to a socialist/communist society than we already are.

After only a few short months with Target, I left the soft beds of five Star Hotels, and rejoined the Department of Defense, went to Iraq to live in tents and be shot at. I wanted to fight for freedom again, so should you my fellow conservatives.