

“Political Views” - dirtyaura
http://www.marco.org/2014/04/04/political-views

======
crazygringo
Recent articles defending Eich are being flagged from the front page, sending
them to the fourth page, effectively censoring people from expressing one side
of the issue here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533362)
(56 pts)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533055)
(26 pts)

It will be curious to see if this thread gets censored as well, since it seems
to take the "approved" side.

(Wow, that's impressive -- I've been downvoted within seconds!)

(2nd edit: this is the first time I've ever seen an HN thread where _all_ of
the root-level comments have been downvoted. This is just getting bizarre,
really.)

~~~
badman_ting
Lots of items about it have been moderated off the front page in the last
couple weeks, taking various viewpoints on the issue. You aren't being
silenced, HN mods seem to think this is either not worth talking about or
outside HN's scope for some reason.

~~~
mkr-hn
Given how these threads tend to go, I can't really fault the mods for wanting
it off the front page.

~~~
badman_ting
But what about free speech??!???!?

------
yypark
If everything in the world turns into a political boycott, you effectively
don't have free speech either. There is always some cause people feel strongly
for or against, and consider it a violation of their fundamental rights. It's
completely valid to not go nuclear on every single political issue.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526663)
"I keep hearing people saying that gay marriage is more than just a political
view, but so is every other political view. Don't support welfare? You're
against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're
pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women."

You know what's different? Because this particular issue has a clearly
decisive split in this country.

If you want to play the ostracism game, don't ostracize a majority of a
society (a majority of Californians back then).

Ultimately it's all about fitting in to your tribe - if you had donated to
Planned Parenthood as the CEO of a Southern family restaurant chain, people
would say it's the exact same thing. Abortion is not a "political view", it's
murder of unborn children, and you deserve to lose your CEO-ship because of
it. If you disagree, you are "completely wrong" and unworthy of time.

The lofty rhetoric about unacceptable and "political views," bigotry,
offensiveness is the same as tribalism - the Silicon Valley tribe agrees that
you must accept gay marriage, the United States tribe in 2014 agrees that you
must accept gay marriage. At a different culture in a different country in a
different time, the standards may be completely different.

It's actually perfectly understandable to feel loyalty to your tribe. Just
understand that some principles are in fact not universal.

In the end it might be about lines in the sand and certain things crossing
from the realm of acceptability or unacceptability, depending on tribe. The
winning group CAN ostracize Eich for it, in 2014, so they are. The winning
group couldn't do a thing like that in 1999 when Eich was busy founding
Mozilla.

Anyone can play the game and Paul Graham's essay deals with precisely this
form of thought limitation:
[http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

------
baldfat
Against Gay Marriage does not equal the ban of marriage to blacks. That is a
false comparison.

This is Classic Straw man Logic! Only attack the position not a substitute
position!

~~~
badman_ting
The logic is meant to refute the idea that "personal opinions" should not
affect business. Changing the issue shows that business is indeed political --
that for each of us, there indeed are issues that will cause us to refuse
doing business with another. To paraphrase Churchill, we already agree on what
we are, we are just haggling over the price.

If you think gay marriage shouldn't be such an issue, well, sorry but the rest
of us have spoken. That's how it has always worked, it's just a different
group of people who are now experiencing the other side of the table.

------
baldfat
I guess Open Web = My belief on this one subject!

I am done with Hacker News and Mozila.

This is so illogical and anti-web. No one share anything or else!

~~~
rbanffy
Should the Dalai Lama be the next Pope? Should the Roman Church accept an
Anglican instead? Should we ask Steve Ballmer to be the next president of the
Linux Foundation?

If your job is to lead a group of people, you have to share values cherished
by them. You cannot have values they despise.

~~~
baldfat
He made a donation there is not one word or action ANYONE can say he did that
was inappropriate.

