Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This Hateful Fool Shouldn’t Lose His Job
In a surprising twist on the usual social media pile-ons, a left-wing Alabama man has just lost his job after posting mean comments about the victims of the Sevier County, Tennessee fires on Facebook. Bringing to mind the Left-wing social-media-fueled persecutions of Justine Sacco and Brendan Eich, this case is one where the Right has done the pile-on, and the man has apparently lost his job.
Perhaps it’s easier for me to make my point when I might be expected to be on the other side of this, and I can stand up for principle without people thinking that I have an interest in this man’s case.
I want to make a stand for the right of any fool to say stupid, cruel things and not be in danger of an online mob of villagers with virtual pitchforks and torches spreading his name around and pushing his employer to fire him. Surely we can agree on that. Right, America?
Published in Culture
from wiki
While Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Senator, Barack Obama stated that while he personally considered marriage to be between a man and woman,[101] and supported civil unions that confer comparable rights rather than gay marriage,[102] he opposed “divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution… the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.
We don’t know that he made his Facebook settings “public.” He may have the privacy set to friends only, for all we know, and one of them spread this around. I know what you mean about restraining yourself, but people do, in fact like to vent, even in a mean way, on Facebook when they think they’re talking to friends and acquaintances, but it’s too easy for someone of ill will towards you to spread what you’ve said beyond that circle and spark the social media pile-on. That’s wrong.
I’ve got two friends, both connected with each other on Facebook. One is divorced and has a lot of complaints about women. The other one screen shots him and spreads his posts around to other people with criticisms of what an awful guy he is.
This is the kind of cruel thing that needs to stop. If some random unimportant person is acting badly online, don’t go spreading it around for other people to take shots at.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the second point. These cases are useful for the hypocrisy charge, and it’s important to show them that they do this stuff, too. But I disagree on your other point—there’s no need or call for me to object to him, because I don’t know him, and I would never have any reason to interact with him. His existence and opinions don’t intersect with my life, except when a mob has started spreading his awful rant around the internet. None of us outside of his real life need to chime in.
Not even close to funny.
I believe that what @randyweivoda means here is that the principle of a society that is tolerant of a variety of opinions, including mean and unpopular ones, requires more than just the First Amendment protection against the government punishing you for believing or saying the wrong thing. It also requires a healthy culture that won’t descend into mob action, just like our Founding Fathers warned us against.
Yes, other people are legally free to do this kind of pile-on and punish him this way, but it is wrong to do so. As I’ve said, it violates a clear, strong teaching of both Christianity and Judaism. It cannot be justified in a moral framework, and it’s a breakdown in the culture we need for a republic to work.
Turn the situation around. As someone earlier proposed: an earthquake happens in a crazy, left-wing place. One of us makes a comment like, “Well, it’s a start.” It’s possible I might even make such a comment, if I were in the wrong kind of mood (not to say that would be right or even likely, just that it might happen). Is that a firing offense? Heck, no. It doesn’t have anything to do with my job or anybody I work with.
Have I ever celebrated an air raid on Iraq or the Taliban? Heck, yes! Even though innocent people were killed? I can imagine someone shrugging and responding, “they were supporting that awful bunch and got what was coming.” I bet a lot of comments like that have been made. (Again, I don’t say that’s the right response, but it’s not a crazy response.) Should the person be fired for it? Absolutely not.
But most importantly: In both these cases, there is no reason for people on the internet to spread the guy’s name around and ruin his life. Stay out of it!
Isn’t it the argument that anti-discrimination laws are not needed because the free market will exert its force on employers?
It may well be true that the guy wasn’t the best employee to begin with. But he was still employed, and there was no justifiable reason for other people to jump on him for being a jerk and pressure the company to fire him. I’m not disagreeing that it might have been in the company’s best interests to fire him, but it’s certainly not in his best interests. My criticism is of the mob, not the company.
Yes. I don’t care how bad I think someone’s opinions are; it’s no one else’s business to pile on and ruin their lives.
I think I see what you mean. I’m sure we know all kinds of people who spout off about people remote from them and wish bad things on them. But those unhinged attitudes are encouraged a lot because they are remote from them. This guy doesn’t live in the Smoky Mountains, and he doesn’t (I gather) know a lot of East Tennesseeans. He’d just visited. We’re remote from his life, he doesn’t like us, and he seems satisfied when a fire runs through and burns houses down and kills people. But it’s not his neighbors or people in his town he’s talking about—even those with the same attitudes we have (probably a lot of them in northern Alabama). If he were happy with the deaths of people right around him, I’d be more worried, because the moral instinct is more likely to kick in when our hatred is directed against people we’re around.
In short: he’s not the guy I expect to go on a shooting spree against local Trump voters.
Indeed. Shame and shunning in response to (legal) bad behavior are the society-sustaining tools of a free people.
Choosing where you shop is one thing. I don’t care about the politics or social attitudes of the companies I buy from, but it’s not that big a deal if other individual people do.
But a boycott is organized action to get other people to join in and destroy someone’s business (or the economy of a state, like South Carolina, North Carolina, or Arizona of a few years ago) because you don’t like what they’re doing or what they support.
That’s what I think is wrong.
Not everyone is a Christian. I know you know this. I can only be responsible for my own actions and you, yours.
These people are not engaging in illegal behavior. We do not know the state of their faith. I wholly concur it is revenge which is a sin which is unchristian, but we are called not to judge the world by the same standards we judge Christians. We do not know the individual beliefs of the people who engaged in this onslaught. The only thing we are called to do is share the Good News so they might become Christians themselves.
As I told a close friend recently, after they convert, then we can judge them all day long ;) (I kid, I kid)
But people are free to look at the facts and join or reject the boycott. For every conservative that boycotts Ben and Jerry’s there is a liberal that specifically chooses Ben and Jerry’s for their political activism.
Agreed. But there’s a qualitative difference between reveling in the tragic loss of others and resisting change to a tradition as old as time based on a “love the sinner, hate the sin” philosophy. The latter can be perceived as gross injustice, but it is not so clearly hateful of people.
Shaming and ostracism are Biblical. The apostles commanded Christ’s followers to shun anyone who persists in gross immorality, as opposed to those who regret their sins and seek amends.
Avoiding business with the unrepentant who persist in evil is proper Christian behavior. But charity should make us hope for conversion and reconciliation, which actively ruining a person does not promote.
Ostracism is just. Refusing business and encouraging others to do the same is just. Angry mobs punishing an employer until he fires an employee is not.
I see where you’re coming from on this, Phil, but I disagree that shame and shunning are the proper responses in a free society. There’s the division between “shame cultures” and “guilt cultures,” where the former are places like ancient Greece, modern Japan, and the Moslem societies in the Middle East. They maintain social control through the shame, embarrassment, and ostracism of those who violate society’s norms. But guilt cultures, like Christianity and Judaism, operate differently. There’s a write-up about the differences by a rabbi, who explains it pretty well.
Our society has been a guilt culture, but with the social media pile-on cases, I’m afraid we’re turning into a shame culture. Shame cultures can be nasty places if you don’t conform, and I don’t think our kind of society would last if we completely turn down this road.
when you say angry mobs, you are referring to people threatening to boycott or quit an employer, or what? What is an example of this?
You’re right in your second sentence, but “shaming” is not part of it, and I don’t believe it is Biblical—at least not in the New Testament. Furthermore, I have seen no evidence anybody tried to speak to this man in person and gently turn him to the right path. Furthermore, this is no business of any of us who don’t know him and don’t interact with him. According to Jesus, it’s the job for his church, if he has one.
Agreed with the second sentence, but I don’t know about the first. I can think of nothing in the Bible about buying goods and services from an evil person. Again, I recommend this rabbi’s explanation of the difference between a Judeochristian guilt society and other shame societies.
Agreed.
Chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians offers an example of excommunicating an unrepentant sinner after gross injustice.
Even ostracism is properly a medicinal method, meant to make the sinner realize the severity of his offense and to seek reconciliation. But it must be preceded by fervent appeals to repent.
Refusal of business is just another form of ostracism. Business is not separate from personal interactions. But I agree that an offense committed outside of business shouldn’t necessarily result in an individual boycott. It depends on how integral that business is to the relationship and if profits contribute to evil behavior.
As Tim said, there’s a difference between acting within one’s own community for justice and joining a campaign to punish some distant stranger one would otherwise ignore.
I think we can all agree that this is a bridge too far
https://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2016/12/man-fired-gatlinburg-victims/
Oh, no!
We don’t pay enough attention to this. Beyond accepting or rejecting a proposed boycott, countermeasures need to be considered.
For example, when organizations, especially from outside the state of North Carolina, threatened to boycott NC business and cancel scheduled events in response to the bathroom law in an effort to bully the government into acting contrary to the will of its citizens, we should have organized a counter-boycott. If people are attempting to exercise extraordinary control over your life by undemocratic means, the proper response is to fight back. For me the contents of the bathroom law didn’t matter, normally I couldn’t get too worked up either way. It’s the reaction by the SJW’s and their cronies in C-level offices that requires a response.
Tim-
We can have all the intellectual discussions on treating others as we expect to be treated, even those who wish us vile and, as they see it, deserved circumstances but this is delicious:
‘Hoisted with one’s own petard’- this individual was as disingenuous as possible with their ‘liberalism’ and I’d bet a $100 steak he’s be the first person to raise pitchforks against anyone saying any like thing about any of his pet ‘concerns’.
We should hold firm principles but until the repercussions and realities of the lefts ‘principles’ have reciprocal repercussions we are whistling in the wind here.
BTW- no one forced this fellow to be this vile so maybe he should take some responsibility for his actions. Waiting for apologies… waiting… waiting… waiting… anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
How do you know? This seems like a silly thing to say.
I use Brave. It’s been talked about a lot on Ricochet.
yeah… on the one hand, if you say something like that, expect people to be pretty upset. While I certainly don’t condone strangers piling on to this extent, I’d say he’s certainly reaping what he has sown. Walk into a cowboy bar and start ranting about stupid hicks, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get punched in the face. That knowledge is a big part of what keeps us civil much of the time. It’s a bummer that the internet makes us feel immune to social consequences… and, as I said, there are varying degrees. I don’t feel bad for this guy in the slightest. But I still agree with at least part of your broader point that we should not be overly concerned with random internet strangers who say nasty things.
Off topic here. Let me just put in my 2 cents that I think parents do a lousy job with the topic of bullying in general and Internet bullying specifically.
Thanks to a couple of different issues I had a couple of lousy years in middle school. (However, the bullying I suffered looks like nothing compared to current stories I hear now)
Regardless, it was an important subject when I raised my 4 children and a point I harped on constantly. One of the ways I made the point was to point out: hey! that was me. I was the new kid. I was unattractive. Picked on by boys and girls alike. Don’t make someone feel the way I felt.
The important part, like so much of parenting, is to be specific. Don’t say: don’t bully. You need to say: don’t x, y and z. If your kid makes a comment about someone who is fat, answer: who cares? And now you need to tell me two things you like and admire about that person.
I hardly allowed any criticism of anyone – if my kids slipped up and said something negative, they were called on it. BUT when they stood up to a bully on their own behalf or someone else’s, they were praised.
My experience, sad to say, is that most parents don’t do a good job with this, especially if their kid is on the “winning” side.
I think it worked.
I agree on principal, but maybe it’s time for leftists to suffer under the systems they have created. Why should we on the right always take the high road?
I reject that explanation. While Judeo-Christian society is focused on guilt, that doesn’t eliminate the need for shaming and shunning. Mainly because guilt doesn’t work by itself as a social control for those not raised in a Judeo-Christian environment, nor for those who reject Judeo-Christian ethics. For those cases, the natural not-so-good humanity, shaming and shunning are needed in place of guilt.
The flaw that makes the referenced shame cultures so evil is not the shame itself, but the enforcement of it by law, and the transference of shame from the individual to the family.
I stand by my assertion.
Because we don’t just want to win, we want to be right.
Forget about right and left – as individuals, we should always aspire to take the high road, so to speak. That shouldn’t change when we’re looking at people who don’t…