'Shut up,' Mozilla explained

In response to Mozilla Clams Up As It Reaps a Whirlwind Of Disapproval :

Nothing says “wide diversity of views” and “culture of openness” quite like nailing boards over the window to the company press office while thousands of disgusted users uninstall its products!  You’d think our champions of tolerance would be eager to discuss the wonderful thing they just did.  Come on, guys, polish up those jackboots and give us a victory parade!  Brendan Eich even co-authored a book you could burn at the climax of your frenzied celebration.

You’re quite right to call that blog post from Mitchell Baker “Orwellian,” although it probably seems less bizarre to her fellow fascists and useful idiots.  Totalitarians are always eager to steal the language of freedom.  That’s why “tolerance” now means blacklists, and “diversity” means conformity.  At the far end of that ideological crime spree lie “democratic elections” in which the dear leadership wins 100 percent of the vote, with 105 percent of precincts reporting.

There’s been some talk in these quarters about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s McCutcheon dissent, in which he inverts the First Amendment to become protection for the “collective” (which he means in the Communist sense: the inescapable entirety of the people) against individual dissenters with dangerous ideas.  Breyer merely put a scholarly veneer on the ugly totalitarian sentiments expressed by Mozilla when they gave Brendan Eich the heave-ho.  The “collective” interest in freedom of speech is served by gagging people with dangerous ideas, as defined by the wise and benevolent masters of the collective.  Tolerance for everyone… except of course those ruled intolerant, who cannot be tolerated on the long march to tolerance.  Joyous diversity must be policed by enforcers who tackle and handcuff narrow thoughts.

This is all, quite frankly, terrifying.  It’s the same will to power that turned the Twentieth Century into a bloodbath.  It’s something America’s founders were very much on guard against: the tyranny of the majority.  The Mozilla purge is a fairly direct expression of such tyranny: a slim majority has spoken, so the issue is settled forever, and the minority had better shut up, if they know what’s good for them.  Breyer’s theory of collective rights allows the majority to “defend free speech” by deciding what the minority is allowed to say.  It’s basically the application of leftist thought on the Second Amendment to the First: Well-regulated speech being necessary to the security of free speech, the right of certain people to keep and bear authorized opinions shall not be infringed.

Collectivist thought always rolls into this dead end, sooner or later.  Power must be exercised, to force people to live according to what Thomas Sowell describes as “the vision of the anointed.”  Dissent dilutes power.  The high-octane blends of power used in American society today – a society in which bakers are forced to bake cakes, devout Christians are forced to pay for abortifacient drugs, and every citizen is forced to buy products from government-approved health insurance companies – cannot tolerate the impurity of dissent.  Unhappy citizens abuse free speech to spread disobedience, which power abhors.  

So let’s not have any further expressions of surprise when the Ruling Class and its volunteer militia tell us what we’re allowed to say, or even think.  That was never a very long journey from telling us what to do.