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Comment by whiskyseagull | Hacker News Reader

Point 2 is a red herring. No one is arguing that it wasn't in Google's short term interests to suppress thoughts that were controversial to a large part of it's work force. The debate, at least on the surface, is about whether his arguments have merit.

Underneath all that is the real debate: should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts? The left lately seems to want certain things to be beyond discussion, and that list seems to grow as time goes on.

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> Underneath all that is the real debate: should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts?

I think "the fact" that Damore continues to air his views in public, and no one is stopping him from doing so, is proof that we have this freedom in spades.

The fact that the people at Google don't want to work with Damore anymore is also freedom. Would you force Googlers to work with someone they disagree with so strongly that they cannot be civil?

Of course he still has the legal right to do it. The US hasn't gone so far yet, as other western countries have, to ban "hate" speech, and he hedged his arguments well enough that it would be hard to ban that kind of talk outright without exposing that you really don't care about the arguments, but that it's really about that he's daring to make them at all. That's why, in my opinion, he draws so much seething hatred - he was too careful about hedging and inviting discussion for the left to be able to dismiss him easily as a dumb retrograde hate monger, but they didn't want to address the arguments on the merits either (yes, I'm aware that there were exceptions, no need to list them, this is about the left as a whole). His speech has been effectively banned because he's been made a pariah and dismissed.

Of course the left hasn't completely won yet, so he's found a home in some parts of the right. But that's not the point, it's about what the left ultimately wants, and what we should expect if it wins. This serves as an example - the left is happy and comfortable when certain controversial points are suppressed and their advocates exiled.

"Would you force Googlers to work with someone they disagree with so strongly that they cannot be civil?"

Why can't they be civil? Is there a line where uncivil behavior is permitted because someone's thoughts offend you?

Uncivil is defined as being discourteous or impolite. I thought the right was all about ending PC culture and speaking your mind. Trump ran an entire campaign on being uncivil. Where is the line on uncivil behavior? Is it only appropriate for political enemies and campaigns? Is it okay to Twitter rant about various American’s with whom you disagree? It used to be impolite to bring up politics at work at all..

Isn't it the left that has aggressively pushed politics into the workplace under the guise of fair treatment and equality?

> should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts?

Truths, yes, but what Damore had was pseudoscientific guff.

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