Punishing unpopular opinion

Maybe we first realized it was happening in 2014 when Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was forced to resign because he donated $1,000 to Proposition 8, the California anti-gay marriage initiative. You are not supposed to lose your job because of your political beliefs in America.

Just last month, the enormity of the rot became apparent when a programmer at Google (now known as “Goolag”) was fired for submitting a memo criticizing the “Ideological Echo Chamber” of political correctness emanating from the search engine giant’s diversity policies and procedures.

James Damore’s paper was polite, well written and scientifically sound. He talked about how forcing diversity in the workplace would create conformity and a dull monoculture. He talked about how women and men were different, hard wired by evolution and biology with some generally different outlooks and aptitudes. Four scientists with decades of experience in neurological evolution confirmed his scientific reasoning was perfectly sound and is the mainstream consensus.

Damore even had the temerity to suggest Goolag should treat conservatives in the labor force with respect and allow them to come out of their ideological closet and express a different opinion in the echo chamber once in a while without fear of retribution.

The left is winning the culture wars. It has won a total and complete victory on the gay marriage issue. All it has left are a few mop up actions against the non-compliant wedding cake bakers and transgender bathroom hysterics. Planned Parenthood hasn’t been de-funded. With luck, it can continue to get tax dollars for the abortions.

Now, the cultural Marxists know the biggest victory lies in winning the workplace diversity wars. Many decades ago, dedicated Marxists realized that capitalism works for most workers. Rather than class warfare, most American workers preferred class advancement. So, some European intellectuals decided the new Marxist thing would be to dissolve the bourgeois bounds of marriage and patriarchal power structures that they claimed irrationally permeated capitalist production. Then create the classless society from the bedroom out to the boardroom.

But capitalist production, although hardly perfect, does improve the quality of life for most people. And there is the opportunity for vast wealth that is becoming easier for racial and gender minorities to access.

What Google did to Damore was reprehensible, but we should consider the pressures U.S. business is under to avoid costly workplace litigation. Google is under federal investigation for possible wage discrimination against women. Google had good reason to worry that if it did not react negatively to Damore’s memo, it could be- considered as evidence by federal investigators that Google had created a hostile work environment.

Damore calls himself a classical liberal who strongly values individualism and freedom. His paper describes how when the left promises that state-enforced equality will be morally and economically superior to capitalism, in practice it quickly becomes morally corrupt and economically inefficient. Political correctness originated with concern for the weak. It has become a justification for violence and public shaming.

As classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote: “Unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them.”

The kind of honest and open discourse Damore’s paper tried to encourage is becoming more difficult because the state and its corporatist media enablers discourage any discussion beyond the strictest boundaries. I encourage you to Google, er, Duck Duck Go Go, Damore’s 10-page paper. A lot of people are.