Thread by @Noobivore1

Honest question:
nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opi…

I've been seeing this sentiment a lot, today. If people are against the NFL owners limiting their players' Freedom of Speech (via protesting), are they also against a vegan McDonald's employee lecturing customers on slaughtering cattle?

How about a Pro-Life Planned Parenthood employee encouraging women to visit a priest/get therapy, rather than getting an abortion? (I know, a charged topic, but I think it gets my point across).

To be clear, in my opinion, the employer is 100% in the right to fire the employee in all of the above scenarios, both legally and morally. Their business, their rules. (Obviously, a gov't run org would be a totally different story.)

Now, if you think the backlash at these players' actions by a Conservative "mob" was out of proportion, I think there's a conversation to be had there. Even more so if this was in response to actions taken "off hours". But the owners are just acting in their company's interest.

I believe we've got a problem right now where, though we still maintain our legal right to free speech, it feels like our society itself has forgotten why it matters. Thankfully, our government was designed to be hard to change quickly (perhaps for this very reason).

I don't know what the solution is. While a part of me can see the temptation of something like #IBOR (Internet Bill of Rights), it smacks far too much of authoritarian, top-down control to me.

On the flipside, we've near-monopolies in the form of huge tech-giants, freely throwing their ideologically motivated weight around...private companies controlling Internet-based "public" squares (a claim I'm very skeptical of).

To go back to the original article, I'm conflicted. I think it's very disingenuous to put Damore's firing and the NFL's "hiding" players protesting on the same level, but I do agree there's a similarity there.

The thing that really strikes me as unfair about this article's characterization is the fact that players are NOT being stopped from protesting. Further, in cases like with Damore, there hadn't been signs of direct damage to their company.

Anyway, I want to close by addressing this point in the article, regarding Americans' ability to "shame who they want to shame":
"But what should they do? Should they use their liberty to punish dissent? Or should a free people protect a culture of freedom?"

I believe Mr. French is drawing a false dichotomy here, as he's glossing over THE most important part of why we have and value Freedom of Speech: to challenge bad ideas. The moment these players chose to use their platform for protest, they put their ideas in the public square.

To be brutally honest, I doubt much of anyone (including the players) actually has a clear idea of exactly what is being protested, and what potential solutions there might be for those problems. But to claim that "shaming" them (via boycott) is shutting down free speech?

I dunno...that sounds sort of anti-Free Speech to me...

@Debradelai @ThomasWictor @PaulSchmehl @_VachelLindsay_ This is my first long-form little rant. If y'all have any thoughts (or just a smack down) for me, I'm interested to hear it.