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Liberal Mob Claims Another Scalp — Jon Gabriel
Brendan Eich, a successful developer and tech legend, was recently named the CEO for Mozilla Corporation. The for-profit venture is most closely associated with their open-source Firefox web browser.
But after his appointment, a dark secret emerged about Eich’s past. Was it embezzlement or child endangerment? Terrorism or even murder? Even worse. Six years ago, he donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages in the state.
This personal view, which in 2008 was supported by the majority of California voters and President Obama himself, is now a firing offense in the U.S. Under intense pressure from Silicon Valley activists, Eich has stepped down as CEO and also from the board of the nonprofit foundation which wholly owns it.
Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman of Mozilla announced the change on the company’s blog:
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.
Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.
We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.
Of course, this statement utterly contradicts the company’s cowardly submission to a technofascist lynch mob, but that’s beside the point. Diversity is Conformity. Tolerance is Intolerance. Freedom is Slavery.
As the witch hunt grew, Eich insisted that he would not step down. “I don’t want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we’ve been going,” he said in one interview. “I don’t believe they’re relevant.”
But in a world where the press exposes political donor lists and the IRS demands to know the content of our prayers, the personal is always political. And now, professional.
Published in General
I can’t find any way on their website to contact them. The “contact us” link goes in circles to office location maps. I love the Firefox browser, hate Chrome and it’s clones, and would love to send them my two cents, but they seem to not want to hear it. That may be by design. Any suggestions for new browsers? The thing that I love most about Firefox is the No-Script and Ad-block extensions. I tried Comodo Dragon but it’s too much like Chrome.
What do you hate about it?
I wonder if these liberals really have incorporated the newspeak of “tolerance” and “openness” and “equality” or if they consciously know they are twisted?
Here’s a “new media” group’s take on this controversy – he had it coming and deserves to be ridiculed. This media group just got Ezra Klein to launch his new project with them. Behold the banal future of how people will get their news and weep.
The nascent issue here is mandatory disclosure in issue elections. But for the government requirement that Eich disclose his donation to the Prop 8 campaign, he could never have been publicly bullied out of his position with Mozilla. So, as usual, we can blame the government for mucking something up with a regulation.
We’ve been discussing SSM on Ricochet since Ricochet’s inception, pretty much. Even here, where we lean right and value open discussion, the non-bigoted position opposing SSM is either not known, not understood, or rejected by a not-insignificant portion of Ricochetti and even suspected to be a front for bigots-at-heart. For a long time now with precious few exceptions, when our public representatives either in government or other arenas have been asked their position on SSM, the response rarely goes beyond “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman” or “this is what President Obama believed only a few short years ago.” Those arguments are no arguments at all, and they cannot possibly withstand charges of bigotry when the underlying reasons for opposition aren’t exactly obvious to everyone and the reasoning can be complex and reliant on a view of culture and history that has also been waning.
Whatever the reasons for this, and there are many, we just have not done a good job of insisting on room for this position in the public square. Anti-bigotry can and has filled that vacuum with ease. At best, opposition to SSM is treated like we treat bouts of racism in crazy old Uncle Jimmy: he’s from a different time, and he’s family, and he’ll be gone soon enough. I understand that Eich was not really in a position, as CEO with fiduciary responsibilities, to enter the cultural fray. And neither was Mozilla: unlike crazy old Uncle Jimmy, Eich was not family and the controversy could have a real impact on their business. For Mozilla, and big corporations in general, the customer is always right, even on issues where people have done a better job of making the case than SSM opponents have done.
Any “libertarian” who still supports these people are fools at best. The marriage redefinition movement is an enemy to liberty, and should be opposed by those who claim to love freedom. If you still support marriage redefinition, this is what you are supporting. Simply saying, “Of course I’m against this, but…” doesn’t cut it anymore.
So if we’re looking to corporations to be defenders of principles (even principles more firmly grounded in public opinion than opposition to SSM), then we’re going to be sorely disappointed.
Notice the title is ‘liberal mob’ and not ‘gay rights fascists’ . Sorry proponents have been swallowed by the collective and there is a reason for this. Don’t be a Tool of the Left.
They just might have a few. The Robertson’s privately held company, Duck Commander, has added 60 employees in the past 12 months. They are sponsoring the Duck Commander 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race this Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway and they’ve also signed on to be the sponsor of the Independence Bowl next year– now the Duck Commander Independence Bowl. They’re looking to expand the DC I-Bowl brand into an opening week season kick-off game too as Chick-Fil-A has successfully done in Atlanta. So, I’m sure they’d have an opening or two with all of that booming business going on.
Of course, like Mark Steyn and unlike Mozilla, the Robertson family doesn’t cower before bullies. Apparently that isn’t the default position in America now.
< devil’s advocate mode = on >
From all the (way too many) articles I’ve read on this topic, I’ve yet to see a single instance of coercion involved.
Half the Mozilla board resigned in protest of Eich’s promotion. Clearly, that’s their right.
OkCupid suggested to its users that they switch browsers. It did not “block” Mozilla browsers from its site. i.e. OkCupid exercised its 1st Amendment right of free speech.
Some developers withdrew their own software from being included in the Mozilla app store. Again, it’s their right to do so.
Ultimately, Eich resigned voluntarily. I’ve seen no evidence that he was “forced” to do so.
Boycotts, voluntary resignations, free speech.
< devil’s advocate mode = off >
Libertarians help manufacture ‘consensus’. Immigration issue next. Links won’t work with iPad but see Roger Simon’s article in PJMedia, and the comments. When will these new converts learn that Conservatives are right on social issues, too?
On the other hand, what really drives me nuts is the many millions of dollars worth of free advertising that has been given to OkCupid (a for-profit corporation) over this non-story.
The media outlets that pumped this story up to boost OkCupid’s revenues at the expense of one man’s job (at a non-profit organization) is disgusting.
Already exists.
https://freenetproject.org/
In fact, there are several different options.
http://prism-break.org
I’m unsure if it is wise to take such a sanguine attitude to these events. Consider the lesson being imparted to activists, from Slate:
Some of my colleagues are celebrating. They call Eich a bigot who got what he deserved. I agree. But let’s not stop here. If we’re serious about enforcing the new standard, thousands of other employees who donated to the same anti-gay ballot measure must be punished.
More than 35,000 people gave money to the campaign for Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure…Let’s go get them.
That article is satire. The final paragraph: “If we’re serious about taking down corporate officers who supported Proposition 8, and boycotting employers who promote them, we’d better get cracking on the rest of the list. Otherwise, perhaps we should put down the pitchforks.”
As long as the tactics they use to “get them” are limited to peaceful, voluntary measures, such as resigning from boards and switching to a competitor’s product, they are simply exercising their free speech rights on an issue where I happen to disagree with them.
When they cross the line to coercive measures, such as termination without cause, IRS harrassment, privacy violation, hacking, theft, violence, property destruction, etc, then I’ll happily denounce them.
Their “weapon” to “get him” was to switch browsers. They simply followed the old advice, “if you don’t like how we run our business, don’t use our product.”
The fact that social pressure, and not government coercion, was used should be only marginally comforting. First, living in a society in which there is no debate or discussion, rather only punishment for dissenters, bodes poorly for our country’s future. We should be able to go about the business of daily life (including holding our jobs) without fearing that our neighbors are a totalitarian mob. And second, law follows society. How long before a company declines to fire its employees, and the mob uses the legislative, regulatory, or court system — rights and constitutionalism be damned — the get its desired outcome?
“Fetters and headsmen were the coarse instruments that tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has perfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothing to learn. Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as the will which it is intended to coerce… the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose proudly superior. Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved.”
“The master no longer says: “You shall think as I do or you shall die”; but he says: “You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow citizens if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence worse than death.” ”
Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter 15
I am not so certain. It is written in a somewhat satiric fashion and yet the author clearly approves of what happened to Eich, it strikes me as somewhat wistful. If only…
That is something that happens all the time, and I denounce it as strongly as any other conservative.
But that’s not what happened in this case.
In this case, people disagreed with a company’s hiring decision so they chose to do business with its competitors instead. That’s it.
Jon,
What is especially pathetic and galling is that it is Brendan Eich who is the real deal. This isn’t the inflated Zuckerberg and the fad of Facebook. Brendan is a Bill Gates quality figure who did his own software at the operating system level (the highest most sophisticated level). He did Javascript. He is responsible for the success of Netscape and Firefox, the only Browser competitors to Explorer and Chrome.
This is major work. He is eminently qualified to lead a silicon valley cutting edge high tech firm. To destroy him over something so trivial as a campaign contribution to a political cause that somebody doesn’t like is sick and stupid.
I’m with PracticalMary on this one. “Gay Rights Fascists” would be more appropriate than just plain ordinary “Liberal Mob”. I call on all the proponents of SSM on Ricochet, of which there are many, to denounce Mozilla’s behavior. Unless they won’t mind me calling them “Chairman Mao’s Pink Guard”.
Regards,
Jim
I was a long-time firefox user, but no more. Will use Chrome for now and continue to evaluate other options.
Judging from the twitter feed Mozzilla is losing FAR more customers than it gained.
Which may help explain why he was so quick to resign. He’ll have no trouble finding alternative employment with a company that isn’t as cowardly as Mozilla.
If the majority can’t tolerate the idea of minority points of view in society, eventually it will not tolerate them in law either. And as we’ve seen from the behavior of the IRS, DOJ, etc., people don’t suddenly become objective when they work for the government. The Progressive vanguard continues to seek and find ways of imposing their personal views by bending the official apparatus to their will.
Morning Bro gets it right: “Firefox was invented to be not as bad as Internet Explorer … It’s the Pabst Blue Ribbon of web browsers.”
Firefox users aren’t even the majority of browser users, let alone the majority of Americans.
WC, our president has changed his position and you must do likewise. It is almost as if our solons of tolerance have lifted their philosophy from another famous national leader.
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato (“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”). Benito Mussolini
What if someone was fired for donating to the “Vote No on Prop 8” campaign. Do you think the ACLU would get involved?