Blackburn asks Google if employee who criticized her still has a job

politico.com

4 points·throwaway5752··3 comments

Politico is right -- Blackburn in her official capacity should not give the slightest hint that a Google employee should be fired for criticizing her. As a conservative she should value free speech more than that.

> As a conservative she should value free speech more than that.

That's just a current talking point, not an intellectually consistent part of the Trumpist (which I would argue isn't conservative anyway) platform. You may remember Trump going on about strengthening libel laws in 2018 because the nasty media was being mean to him, for instance: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/business/media/trump-libe...

Until the relatively recent rise of cancel culture, I unthinkingly failed to realize how little -- in the US, anyway -- free speech has to do with the government. The government is rarely the problem. The problem is with mostly left-wing activists who would destroy those who don't embrace their secular religion.

Daniel Suhr wrote a great editorial in the 15Oct2020 issue of the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Justice Ginsburg and the Value of Anonymity" extolling the late justice for her work defending anonymity for donors for political causes. That is perhaps the best way that government can protect freedom of speech.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-ginsburg-and-the-value-... (paywall)

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