Whole Foods vs. its liberal customers

Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey is a libertarian who published an essay in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week advocating his own views about health care. And now some of his liberal customers are so OUTRAGED by Mackey's unshirted evil that they're vowing never, ever to shop at Whole Foods again. Excerpt:

"I will never shop there again," vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published.

Like many of his fellow health food fanatics, Joshua said he will no longer patronize the store after learning about Whole Foods Market Inc.'s CEO John Mackey's views on health care reform, which were made public this week in an op-ed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Lent, another Whole Foods enthusiast in Long Beach, Calif., told ABCNews.com that he, too, will turn to other organic groceries for his weekly shopping list.

"I'm boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care," said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods "several times a week."

Behold, this is how Mackey's unspeakably blackhearted op-ed began:

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction--toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

That's it. That's why some longtime Whole Foods customers are refusing to shop at the store anymore -- this, despite all the good things WF has done and does do in areas these people care about. Unbelievable. I can understand why somebody would disagree with Mackey, but to take such a maximalist point of view on this issue, and to turn your back on a store that presumably has been a good friend to you and to the agricultural and environmental causes you care about? Good grief. I'm not sure where I come down on the health care reform debate, but I welcome people like Mackey -- CEOs who run businesses that provide health care -- offering their creative thinking to the discussion. This is yet another depressing example of how difficult it is for people in this country to go off the reservation and think creatively about politics, economics and culture without having their tribe come down on them like a ton of bricks. Do you really think this is the way to spur creative thinking and innovation?

I don't spend a lot of money at Whole Foods, but I am definitely going to go by and purchase some groceries this weekend, and tell them I'm doing it to counter the boycott.
And the boycotters have stirred up my libertarian friend Trey Garrison, too. He writes on his blog:

Suck it, hippies and nationalized healthcare nerds. I'm about to make Whole Foods my exclusive grocery store even though I can't stand organic foods.