The idea that employers should be able to fire employees over mine political disagreements is morally abhorrent.
It is also strategically short-sighted to an almost comical degree: Whatever makes you think that most employers will be on the side of the right and the good?
It is also strategically short-sighted to an almost comical degree: Whatever makes you think that most employers will be on the side of the right and the good?
So many of these arguments come down to: We should be able to punish speech I consider bad but not speech I consider good.
This not only misses the point that we need procedural rules precisely because we don't agree on what's bad; it's also naive about people's actual views.
This not only misses the point that we need procedural rules precisely because we don't agree on what's bad; it's also naive about people's actual views.
People have accused the signatories of The Letter with being obsessed with what happens in media.
But the opposite is closer to being true: Only those whose horizons don't extend beyond progressive spaces can assume that giving employers so much power would be good for the left.
But the opposite is closer to being true: Only those whose horizons don't extend beyond progressive spaces can assume that giving employers so much power would be good for the left.
The reason to care about free speech, or to hold free and fair elections, is not that they are an end in themselves; it's that they are the best mechanisms we have developed over a long, painful history for how to stop diverse democracies from degenerating into war or tyranny.
