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Brendan Eich was ousted at Mozilla (after considerable pressure) for donating to a congressional candidate and an associated proposition. And I think you'll find plenty of people here who support that ousting given that the proposition was in support of banning same-sex marriage.

Presumably there is some line that many of us would agree you can't cross but opinions will differ on where and what the line is.

> Holy shit. Am I reading this right? 53% of Americans would support firing someone based on a donation to a presidential campaign?

Are you against this in principle, for all possible presidential candidates regardless of how bad their views and policies and actions are (by your own definition of "bad")? Or do you just think that, right now, no major candidate is "bad enough" that you would advocate firing someone for supporting that candidate?

> Are you against this in principle, for all possible presidential candidates regardless of how bad their views and policies are

Not the GP, but of course yes. If someone is good enough for your political and legal system to advance his candidature at the elections and be voted by citizens, then who has the right to damage me for my legitimate political choice?

So even if someone is a literal neo-Nazi who supports killing all the Jews, imprisoning gay people, and enslaving black people, donating to such a person's candidacy isn't disqualifying in terms of the basic character one might expect (or at least hope for) of someone leading a company?

I don't see how an endorsement of a vile racist couldn't be seen as disqualifying for positions of authority.

I don't get it: if someone's ideas are so universally considered horrific and dangerous, why do you even allow that person to run for the elections?

The state defines a frame of things that are lawful and that every citizen should be able to perform in perfect safety. If you think that the laws of your country are not sufficient, then seek to change them; instead you seem to advocate for vigilante justice in the absence of shared and agreed upon rules.

Because of freedom of speech? The idea is that the state should not generally be in the business of determine what political speech should be legal, lest it always turn out that only the speech the benefits the powers that be, be allowed to remains standing.

Do you seriously not see the difference between, "this opinion should not get you thrown in jail" and "this opinion should not belong to someone in a position of power"?

If you think that the opinion should not belong to someone in a position of power, vote against that candidate. But if enough others vote for that candidate, then that's a strong democratic signal that this opinion reflects many people's will and needs consideration and representation.

In essence, the opinions of your opponents and enemies are just as valid as your opinions, no matter how much you dislike these opinions (it's plausible that they dislike your opinions just as much) and you should not get a veto to say that their opinions don't belong to someone in a position of power but your opinion can do so; people have the right to have their opinions represented in politics.

Fringe opinions deserve only trivial representation and that's what they get, but this article is about various mainstream opinions held by as much as 62% of people, it's obvious that most of these opinions should be allowed to belong to someone in a position of power.

> In essence, the opinions of your opponents and enemies are just as valid as your opinions

I think that this is not true and that society and individuals can and should reserve the right to suppress intolerant ideologies.

What's sauce for goose is sauce for gander - if this justification is considered valid, it will be primarily used by those in power against the minorities they don't like; e.g. Trump reserving the right to suppress ideologies that are intolerant to "Blue lives matter" cause or conservative politicians reserving the right to suppress ideologies that threaten christian family values. You won't succeed in claims that your ideology is special and deserves protection that the opponents' ideology does not - that hypocrisy simply won't be accepted by everyone who doesn't already share your ideology. Your enemies have similar motivations as you do, they consider your political agenda as harmful and dangerous to society where it would be morally justified to ensure that the politions of power are cleansed from (for example) the liberal agenda.

A line in the sand of "we won't harass people because of their political views" generally works as protection against oppression, even if you have to include oppressive political views as well in that basket.

In essence, the choice in this matter is simply about escalation or living side by side with your political enemies by agreeing to specify where "the battlefield" is - IMHO, ideally, limited to debates and votes by elected representatives and discourse in media and social circles. If it's escalated to "let's fight our enemies" in the field of employment or providing services then it's not as bad as street fights (which were used in political 'discourse' a hundred years ago) but still going to lead to a lot of people harmed on both sides.

> What's sauce for goose is sauce for gander - if this justification is considered valid, it will be primarily used by those in power against the minorities they don't like;

All modes of justification can be invoked fraudulently. This does not invalidate my mode of justification any more than it invalidates very basic uncontroversial modes of justification such as "we should reserve the right to use force to suppress murder." Sure, those in power can and do invoke that mode of justification fraudulently by falsely claiming that people are murderers and thus using violence against them. We do not throw up our hands and say "well, we cannot ever use that mode of justification, because who can really say for sure what is and isn't murder?"

> Trump reserving the right to suppress ideologies that are intolerant to "Blue lives matter" cause or conservative politicians reserving the right to suppress ideologies that threaten christian family values.

Just like my even simpler example above, this is not a problem for my argument. I can and do claim two things: that we are justified using violence to suppress intolerance, and that it's bad when people use violence to suppress things that they falsely claim are intolerance.

> The idea is that the state should not generally be in the business of determine what political speech should be legal

I understand, but how can the same state allow mobs and employers to harass people and sometimes destroy their lives because they do what the state allows? The state doesn't just declare freedoms, it protects them. For example, if the state doesn't throw you in jail for your opinions, can someone else do it without the state intervening?

> Do you seriously not see the difference between, "this opinion should not get you thrown in jail" and "this opinion should not belong to someone in a position of power"?

I see that the first statement comes from the state and it is valid for everyone; the second is subjective and is made by a group of people who have taken on themselves the role of judge, jury and executioner. Granted, it's a statement that is in your right to make; but if you act on it you can become responsible of harassment, stalking, mobbing.

> why do you even allow that person to run for the elections?

What do you mean? Who among us gets to decide who is allowed on the ballot?

There are a lot of very fringe political parties; getting on the ballot in at least a few states isn't that big a hurdle. Without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing, if you're a CEO (and the context of the question was around business executives) is it necessarily unreasonable if a board decides that their CEO's support for some controversial fringe presidential candidate is a distraction? (This seems less clear with a rank and file worker but they're also more expendable if something is becoming an internal controversy.)

I understand that fringe political ideas can have a negative impact on the personal relationships in a work environment, especially for people in prominent roles.

However I guess the keyword is can. Tolerance should be exercised from all sides and political ideas should not be a motivation in and by themselves. However it's also true that the CEO of a company is in some cases him/herself a political figure, so I guess it depends on the case.

>However it's also true that the CEO of a company is in some cases him/herself a political figure

That's certainly the case. And, at some level, a political figure doesn't get to have a private life beyond some constraints. In principle, this doesn't apply to lower-level employees--although in many cases those employees are public faces to the company as well. And companies will much more quickly dismiss individuals who become a headache for whatever reason than they will their CEO.

What is your response to the paradox of tolerance?

That the solution to it- becoming intolerant towards intolerance- is an option that needs to be regulated. The default of society should be tolerance, and very well defined limits should be put on it, if the need arises. If any actor in society is free to decide what it is fine to to be intolerant to, then you have effectively given people license to be intolerant. Which is what is happening now.

So, to be clear: intolerance should be frowned upon by default. The community can decide to be intolerant towards some things, but those things must be agreed, shared and made clear once and for all. And at that point, that agreed-upon intolerance becomes a law and can be actually enforced by the state itself.

So who is deciding these limits on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable? Will they be published in a paper somewhere?

Like any other law. As it is done in other countries, where for example hate speech is a crime, and firing an employee for political or ideological reasons is illegal. In other words: actively protected freedom inside the boundaries of the law.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but it sounds similar Popper's standard response to the paradox: that we should reserve the right to use force to suppress intolerance, but it should be a last resort. And I agree.

However, I'm not sure what kind of "regulation" you're referring to, because if you mean that, say, only the government gets to decide when to use force to suppress intolerance, there's the obvious problem of "what happens if the government is intolerant?"

> there's the obvious problem of "what happens if the government is intolerant?"

Well, I guess that at some point you have to accept one risk or another. Any system can fail in one way or the other.

I personally don't like laws limiting freedom of speech; but I also don't like angry mobs that openly and proudly exercise intolerance of anything that falls into their own entirely subjective definition of intolerance.

I would like the state to protect me from those who try to set the limits of freedom of speech as it suits them; but I understand that if the state wants to take from the people the power to silence unacceptable speech, then it must provide some minimum guarantee by taking it upon itself. Best of all would be no laws, but education and common sense, and of course tolerance, from all parts: but again, what do you do if that fails?

I think my discomfort with the idea comes from my inability to know where to draw the line. If I think a person should be fired for a 2020 Trump donation in 2020, why would I think that person shouldn't be fired for a 2019 donation or a 2018 one? I don't think a donation should make someone completely unemployable, so I have trouble reconciling "should be fired from whatever their current job is for a thing they did in the last few years" with "shouldn't be excluded for a few years from the job market."

That and imagining it the other way around. I'm adamantly pro-choice and have donated to orgs supporting this. From the right wing perspective, I support literal murder. What better justification than that to fire me? The only reason I can think that I shouldn't be fired for being pro-choice is that, well, my worldview is the right one.

It doesn't strike me as much harder than drawing the line for more common reasons to fire someone, like incompetence or inappropriate workplace activity. Those are also continuums, and it's certainly not easy to know where to draw the line, and reasonable people will disagree about where to draw the line in each specific case. But we don't throw up our hands and say you can never be allowed to fire anyone for those reasons.

It seems like many people think that "political" actions should enjoy a special protection and that no such actions should ever draw any criticism or consequences. The same attitude is common for actions labelled as "religious." I reject that special status.

> Are you against this in principle,

Yep and for the same reason free speech is protected. Because nobody can be trusted with being the arbiter of correct speech, or which candidate to support. Sure, it sounds good for extreme right-wing examples, but there's no guarantee you can limit it to the worst extremes once people have that arbitrary power. Might be your job the mob decides to go after some day, because you chose the wrong candidate to support, according to whatever criteria they're using.

Also because donating to a presidential campaign has nothing to do with their work performance.

Note that we’re talking about material support for a cause, not merely speech. You may conflate the two, and some legal systems do as well, but I don’t.

Not the parent commenter, but I'd consider that to be a key part of democracy, the right of political association. I'd consider firing someone for belonging to a particular political party the exact moral equivalent of firing someone for belonging to a particular religious denomination or ethnic group.

As far as I know, in USA the employment discrimination laws draw a distinction between these classes (ethnicity and religion are protected classes, politics is not), however, my local laws and my personal moral compass puts them in the same basket; I'd consider someone being fired because they're, for example, a card-carrying member of the local radical communist party to be equivalent of firing someone because they're Jehovah’s Witness or have sexual practices of which the local church disapproves. They should be able to run as a candidate for that party in some elections while not having their employment threatened for that - this is needed to prevent e.g. the owner of a town-dominating factory from suppressing political opposition to the current elected town officials.

> I'd consider firing someone for belonging to a particular political party the exact moral equivalent of firing someone for belonging to a particular religious denomination or ethnic group.

I support firing someone for supporting a harmful cause, and particularly from intolerant causes. If, for instance, you provide material support for stripping voting rights from a minority group, or denying hospital visitation rights to couples with a certain sexuality, I would support your employer firing you for that. That applies regardless of whether you’re providing that support via a political or religious group. Political and religious groups shouldn’t enjoy any special protection when they’re doing harmful and intolerant things.

No, the question was about business executives. So among other things you can't say "53% of Americans would support firing someone based on a donation to a presidential campaign" since that wasn't the question, it was about business executives.

I'm not sure why it was phrased that way. It seems to be hinting at wealthy people controlling the outcome of elections.

I think it's more that business executives, to a greater degree than people in the trenches, are faces of the company. Being a known supporter of a political candidate who is vilified among the people who buy from you or who you otherwise depend upon for support and cooperation can be a problem.

You cannot add the percentages like that because they may overlap. Some percentage of people can support firing an executive who donates to either campaign.

It's troublesome, but I find it relatable if you boil things down to strong ideologies and hyperbole which is a lot of the problem with our current state of political discourse.

For example, it might be your stance that all Trump supporters are racist. Would I hire someone who was openly racist? Absolutely not.

Is the reality that all Trump supporters are racists? No, probably not.

A counter-example, you believe that abortion is murder. Would you hire someone who supports murder? absolutely not.

Is abortion murder? Not definitively. It depends on your personal outlook.

Hiring/firing is just not an objective process anywhere, and you're going to be subject to the personal biases of the boss... and we're in particularly biased times. On the bright side, I suspect historical numbers would be worse... and at least it's not a civil war.

It happened in 2014 to Brendan Eich for a donation he made in 2008 to California Prop 8.

Sure, I support the right of people to do both of those. I'll compress the moral argument:

A: Support for liberty means I don't want to restrict who works with whom.

B: Veil of Ignorance means I don't want circumstances out of someone's control to result in use of A to discriminate in hire/fire.

C: Individual freedom is important.

D: Societal success is important.

The nuance is not quick-expressible in text, but that's the short form. I believe principles are only useful if they lead to desirable outcomes, so I have no problem special-casing exemptions to these, but I don't think political opinion is worth making a protected hiring class. This is a point where I disagree with California employment law (which does make political affiliation a protected class) and agree with Federal employment law which is more circumspect in its.

On the other hand, I wouldn't fire a person for political affiliation, generally. If it would almost certainly sink my business, then I would.

Hopefully some of those who support firing the executive have enough moral compass to support the firer regardless of what political views the firee expressed. It might be 31%, not 53%.

Why would you hope for that? Do you think there is no way to distinguish any qualities of different political views and that they are all equivalent?

No, but I find "businesses should be allowed fire people they disagree with" a more tolerable position than "businesses should be allowed fire people I disagree with".

My conclusion above is independent of my own political views. Supposing I were a fervent Trump supporter, I should hope in that case that the Biden-firers are mostly non-partisan supporters of right-to-work laws rather than haters of my guy. Not saying I'd expect that to be true, just that I'd prefer it.

That's a libertarian moral compass, not a general moral compass. Though I think people should be imprisoned for murder, it doesn't make me a hypocrite if I don't think people should be imprisoned for jaywalking. I don't have to support prison no matter what crime is committed.

Well, I consider that for at least one of the candidates, donating to him is not abhorrent enough to meet my bar for "this political speech should be censored". I'd have trouble taking seriously anyone who thought that both candidates were abhorrent enough to favour firing their supporters on ideological grounds. Allowing businesses to fire people who don't agree with them is much more acceptable to me than that.

Thinking about it this is not surprising. Most people dream about being at high-positioned jobs/top ranking politicians. Political views is just a noticable part of stuff. Along with perceived incompetency, clan component of relationships (can't find English term for свояченичество), etc. that number perfectly fits into the picture to explain how we justify that dream.

Palmer Luckey, the young founder of Oculus had his future career basically ruined for putting up a Pro-Trump billboard, if I recall. It’s terrifying, and there’s no winning stating any political opinions at work. It’s really sad because I feel like I can’t talk about anything of substance or interesting with coworkers aside from a few people whom I’ve known a long time and know they’re accepting of me even if they disagree.

the Left power structure has convinced 50% of America that Trump is on the verge of installing the Fourth Reich and opening the concentration camps.

the Right powerstructure has convinced 50% of Americans that Biden will be the re-animated corpse of Stalin, and that he will sieze all private property and throw us all in gulags.

the net effect of this hyperpartisan polarization driven by fake news filter bubbles is that none of us can have a plain old reasonable discussion with each other, and agree to disagree about certain fundamentals, while finding a practical compromise going foward. being forced into being an extremist foot soldier of either Party or risk being destroyed by the partisans of the other Party is the worst lose-lose outcome of Prisoner's Dilemma.

i think the Deep State wants us divided and at each other's throats so that we don't team up and topple them.

I bought a Trump bumper sticker way back when he was still considered a joke. I thought it would be a fun souvenir for later on. The idea I could be “cancelled” because of something like this is ridiculous. This is why courts of law you are deemed “innocent before proven guilty”. I can’t believe we as a society are going through the same mistakes hundreds of years later.

The US isn’t a first world country anymore, it is devolving into a political and cultural mess.

Oh god, I did the same thing with a shirt! I eventually threw it out, after I found it in a closet. Not cause I thought I'd get cancelled, just cause it was gross.