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Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

Good points. As mentioned, I think its totally fair (even encouraged) to debate political views.

There is a clear difference between debating political views and witch hunting though.

People are having to write public apologies for having their own views or engaging in free speech. This is NOT ok in my opinion. People are getting fired or threatened for being Trump supporters. Also not ok IMO.

The clear difference is when it turns from political debate ("free speech") into real-world consequence.

And some things should have consequence. If a person engaged in racial discrimination in the workplace, I would totally fire them. However, if someone supported political candidate of dubious values, its a different ballgame - maybe they support that candidate for their economic policy, who knows. The crazy thing is Luckey is not even a Trump supporter, at least according to his public apology.

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My frustration is that the right wing has been doing this to people on the left for 70 years.

It's not OK that the left has started doing it to the right, but the people I see going on about "liberal witch hunts" and "Literally Hitler" and "This is why Trump won" I didn't see having a problem back when Jonah Goldberg wrote a bestselling book about how Hillary was "Literally Hitler", or a problem when Limbaugh/Hannity/OReilly were saying that anti-war protesters were terrorist lovers.

These people didn't have a problem when entertainers who spoke out against George W Bush were blackballed. Or when people who opposed the DOMA were accused of being anti-Christian. Or all the bullshit about Vietnam vets getting spit on (it never happened, but it's still accepted as conventional wisdom that it did.) People have gotten threatened and fired from their jobs for supporting gun control - why no outrage about that? People who are pro-choice still get accused of being baby-killers. Where's the outrage about that from the frozen peach lover community?

Being accused of being a traitor to America or to Christianity for holding leftist political beliefs has been the social norm since the 1950's in this country. I wish people would quit acting like some 13 year old liberals on Tumblr started this shit.

Suggested Reading: Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, by Sean Hannity The Crucible, by Arthur Miller Literally any post on Breitbart, ever.

There is a clear difference between debating political views and witch hunting though.

People are having to write public apologies for having their own views or engaging in free speech

So would you see a boycott as a "witch hunt"? After all, the point is to force an organization, or its leaders, to disavow opinions or positions. Do people not have the right to collectively speak in that fashion?

Because ultimately that's what these "witch hunts" people wring their hands about boil down to: organized action by people who disagree.

What's worse is that while trying to cloak yourself in "free speech", you're really making an argument that is virulently hateful to it. The only way not to have the "witch hunts" you're so terrified of is to stifle speech. The only way not to have people pressured into public apologies is to stifle speech. You cannot have "free speech" and not have the potential for consequences in the form of large numbers of people disagreeing with or disassociating from you. What you really seem to want is a freedom of first speech -- in other words, someone who speaks first gets a special privilege of never having to deal with people disagreeing, or consequences of the general public's views of their speech. And if that is what you want, you should stop calling it "free speech" and start calling it "privileged special protection for certain speakers", since that's what it would actually be.

I think the major issue is polarization and stereotyping. You cannot have a sensible discussion without being labeled this or that. You cannot agree/disagree with anything anyone says or you'll be labeled that person's "supporter" or "hater".

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