Brendan Eich resigned last week as CEO of Mozilla under pressure from gay rights activists upset because six years ago Eich had given a thousand bucks to California’s anti-gay marriage initiative, Prop 8.
On Fox News’s Special Report, George Will dubbed the story “redundant evidence that progressives are for diversity in everything but thought,” as well as an alarming illustration of the intolerance of “sore winners.”
Whatever one thinks of the campaign to drive out Eich (and a number of prominent gay leaders have spoken out against it), those demanding Eich’s ouster were within their legal rights. Still, such a political attack wouldn’t be possible without government assistance in denying donor anonymity. That’s the major lesson Mr. Will drew from the fracas: anonymous contributions are vital:
The people advocating full disclosure of campaign contributions say, “we just want voters to be able to make an informed choice.” That’s not what they’re doing at all. They really want to enable themselves to mount punitive campaigns, to deter people, and to chill political speech.
What’s wrong with today’s vendetta politics (what Pat Buchanan calls “The New Blacklist”) is not that boycotts are immoral, but that, when made personal and coupled with ideological conflict, they lead to never-ending feuds.
Anonymous speech and press and donations remain key to a peaceful society.
Advocates of mandatory campaign finance disclosure should be asked, “do you also, then, oppose the secret ballot?”
The privacy of the voting booth was also instituted to insulate people from the worst aspects of partisan discord … and commerce from the legacy of the Hatfields and McCoys.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Firefox Fired”
Now I will not use Fire Fox because they pushed him out.
For the progressives there is only one right answer, and it is to the left, and anyone who disagrees is to be ostracized and boycotted.
The ramifications of speech in the private sector were never meant to be protected, and cannot be. Prophets generally are not well liked, or treated, in their own time. It is only the Government which is prohibited from converting its disagreement with a position into discriminatory action. The market is not so constrained.
While I agree that the campaign and contribution disclosure rules have been bastardized to a creation of a target list in some incidents, I suspect one of the reasons why Mr. Eich “resigned” is that he is willing to stand up and be counted in the public square regarding his positions, and willing to accept the consequences of doing so. More power to him!
The reaction of the progressives, and their not being open to constructive policy debate,is the true tragedy. This is commonly fueled by the fact there is no discernable historical, logical, economic or traditional moral basis for their position, and therefore little opportunity for their prevailing in discourse. They are therefore relegated to emotional tirades and causing economic harm to those who disagree with them as their tools.
It has long been understood that conservatives do not work in Hollywood. Mr. Eich’s plight is simply a spreading of the disease.
I’m so sick of all this Gayety stuff — - — there is sorrow with the ” tyranny of the majority” but how much worse is the ” tyranny of the minority” ?
There can’t be a majority of homosexuals YET, can there?
A libertarian website I visit often had this take on Firefox and Mozilla. Contributors to his blogpost have been offering browsers other than Firefox and helping those that want to migrate to another browser. I personally migrated to Pale Moon.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/04/lions-den-ix-sarah-hoyt.html
The following was a recent post.
#uninstalled
Firefox on Vox Popoli: 20 percent, down from 34 percent.
Firefox on Alpha Game: 22 percent, down from 30 percent.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eich debacle turns out to be the biggest negative for Mozilla since Google introduced Chrome. Chrome is actually down one percentage point, from 27 to 26 percent, as Pale Moon now accounts for 7 percent of the traffic here and 3 percent at AG.
HKC
Bigots deserve criticism. What brought this particular bigot down was the number of technical people being unwilling to work with him.
It’s called freedom of association.
Given Obama and Clinton also supported proposition 8 when it was voted upon, when will all the liberals/progressives start calling for Obam to step down as well, and tell Hillary to not run?