In the Land of the Free, how free are we? Once again, the sorry story of Brendan Eich is a great object lesson. Over at Patheos, the Anchoress has a good piece on this growing intolerance of groupthink (emphasis mine, reformatted):
If the headline strikes some as offensive, it will nevertheless remain, because that’s the case I’m making, and I’m sticking with it: a gay CEO with a pair of brass ones needs to step up and speak truth to a growing, and most illiberal new power. He or she needs to hire Brendan Eich in some sort of corporate leadership capacity for the sake of the most fundamental of freedoms — the freedom to think what you want to think, even if your thinking is unpopular or deemed “mistaken” — and in so doing boldly declare that our society has no truck with inquisitions. If you’re going to get hung up on my vulgarisms, stop reading now, because there will be more and none of them will begin to approach the level of the patented-pure-d-bullsh*t that is the groveling of Mozilla before a victorious movement that, feeling its oats, needs to catch its breath and show some damned maturity and discernment.
…The very same people who have declared, “I yam what I yam”, and “we’re here, we’re queer; get used to it,” and who fought against discrimination on the basis of physical or emotional natures are proving themselves empty of magnanimity in victory. They are now saying “don’t be who you are,” and “you’re wrong, you’re gone; get used to it.” They’re applauding employment discrimination on the basis of an intellectual or spiritual philosophy.
What are they, anyway, philosophobes? Are they so terrified of any outlook which does not conform to theirs? I always thought a well-founded argument could withstand a little principled opposition. Apparently not.
Hmmmm – preaching tolerance until it was no longer needed? She continues and includes a snippet that WILL rub some folks the wrong way:
Clearly America’s successes since the 1690?s have been illusory; in reality, she has only moved her witch hunts and trials from Salem to Silicon Valley. Well, I have known gay people and loved gay people and buried gay people and fed gay people and edited gay people and argued on their behalf, even when it has at times meant facing opposition from my co-religionists. It seems to me some “official gay folk” need to step up, and speak up for the basic human right of free speech and free thought for all people — without fear of poverty and social stigma.
Let me be clear: I hold out absolutely no hope that this chill wind will be checked or reversed — too many people with money and influence and no individual courage at all find totalitarianism an alluring idea. Nevertheless, though everything is part illusion, I’ll still resist and say, as Tom McDonald so succinctly puts it, “this s**t has to stop.” Indeed; it is an execrable, detestable trend that, if unchecked, will affect every facet of our lives as “correct” thoughts and “correct” ways become ever-narrower and trap more and more people in its stinking and miserable gullies.
Do yourself a favor and watch The Lives of Others, and see how narrow it all becomes:
In a particularly creepy scene, a Stasi captain, observing that a neighbor has seen his crew bug the protagonist’s apartment, explains to her that a word of warning to the neighbor will end her daughter’s academic career at University. . .watching these lonely, desperate lives, observing the ease with which careers are destroyed on the merest whim of an ambitious party member, or the merest unguarded whimsy of a joke, is hair-raising.
I would ask my gay friends to openly reject this movement to oppress so-called “wrong” thinking — suffocate it right now, as it is being born — because eventually it will grow into a monster that will consume anyone, indiscriminately.
It is fine to disagree with “the other side”. It is fine to scream at each other. It is not fine to disagree and then ruin that person and those around them and that’s is when we need to call them out on it. Will it change things? Probably not. At that point, you stand up to the bullies (even if they had been bullied before). But there is a difference between standing up to and setting out to destroy.
