Posted on 08/03/2020 4:59:42 AM PDT by Mount Athos
The Cato Institute just released a new report showing that 62 percent of Americans are inclined to self-censor what they say politically “because others might find them offensive.” Even moderate leftists report they feel increased fear of offending the offendable, while only the most “staunch liberals,” as Cato described them, feel free to speak their minds. The “very conservative” have been pushed deepest in the closet: they are most likely to refrain from saying what they think politically, at nearly twice the rate of the “very liberal.”
Buried deeper in the report, however, is a stunning data point that might be one of the most troubling current cultural indicators. Forty-four percent of Americans younger than age 30 believe a company is correct in firing an executive because he or she personally donated to President Trump’s reelection campaign.
The companion finding was also disturbing. Twenty-seven percent of people under 30 said they were fine with an executive being fired because he or she donated to the Joe Biden campaign. The means that of Americans under 30 years old, 73 percent think it would be wrong to fire an executive from a company for donating to the Biden campaign, while only 56 percent believe it would be wrong to do so for a Trump donation.
While this problem is most pronounced among those under 30, it isn’t exclusive to young people. Across all age ranges, 78 percent said it would be wrong to fire an executive for making a personal donation to Biden, while only 69 percent believe it’s wrong to fire one simply for being a Trump donor.
This means a remarkably high number of fellow citizens believe it’s virtuous to punish you for your personal political beliefs, even if you express them merely through one private political donation, with the loss of your family’s livelihood.
People throw the word “fascist” around today much too carelessly for it to be useful. If that word can be applied to an everyday person, however, someone who believes you should lose your job based on who you vote for is a pretty sturdy working definition. Of course, this has less to do with the names of the 2020 candidates and more to do with how an alarming number of Americans today seem to know precious little about what it means to live in a representative democracy.
This brings us to the second most disturbing revelation of this report: the declining cognitive and logical rigor of today’s youth. Would these findings have been any different if the question had been, “Would you support firing a business executive solely for holding political beliefs you disagree with?”
There is only one right answer among decent people. “Yes” and “It depends” are unacceptable. But a disturbingly high number of Americans think such a firing would be perfectly fine when triggered by specific politicians’ names.
To consider just how troubling this turn is, let’s improve the polling question to see if it sounds any better: “Would you support an employer, without any threat of job loss, trying to reason with and persuade by way of facts and data why executives should vote for one candidate over another?” It’s scary to think what the polling numbers for this might be.
It was not all that long ago that the liberal clarion value was the misattributed Voltairean principle, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today that seems to have been replaced with the brutally authoritarian, “I disagree with what you believe, and I will make sure you lose your livelihood because I went digging and found out you made a private campaign contribution to someone I think is evil.”
If, God forbid, the autopsy of the American experiment is ever written, this growing expectation that political submission be a condition of one’s employment will certainly be noted as a significant stage in its demise. It demonstrates that the world’s most hopeful self-government is moving in a very bad direction, and that should profoundly bother us all.
Thank you publik skrewls and the parents who are happy to use them to raise their kids.
But doing the same to obama/biden supporters would be morally wrong and racist...
We have managed to raise a generation of fascists.
Today’s Millenials will whisper to their grandchildren in the basement “there was a time in the USA when you were allowed to say whatever you wanted.”
Of course 20 minutes later they will be picked up, never to be seen again, by the Ministry Of Truth Officers who caught it on the housewide version of Alexa.
Hitler was very popular with the young.
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Willing-Executioners-Ordinary-Holocaust/dp/0679772685
More Americans need to read this.
He had those brown shirt camps for kids.
“We have managed to raise a generation of fascists.”
No. We let someone else do it. We failed to exercise proper oversight.
This is a very disturbing trend.
In the past, a lot of young people didn't care about politics and had no strong opinions. That's not great, but it's not terrible. They knew that they didn't know the answers.
Today, everything is political, and everyone is politicized. They still don't know the answers, but they sure think they do. I recently had a conversation with a young person who thought I was a "terrible person" because I had doubts about the benefits of masks. I tried to discuss the mask issue, but it suddenly turned into a BLM discussion. The magic of diversion. So, I was willing to have a discussion about BLM. And the discussion suddenly became about poor people suffering under capitalism. Oh? Shall we now discuss economics?? Are you prepared for that one? They "gave up on me" and ran away.
They just want to shout and declare victory. If you don't play along, they change the subject. They have no idea who intellectually weak they are.
I don’t know what the big deal is. It is absolutely okay (and legal) to fire someone who disagrees with you politically. If I owned a company and someone showed up every day with a Biden or Hillary or Udumbo sticker on their car, I would likely fire them. There is no right to free speech in a private setting and political beliefs are not protected under the Constitution. In most, if not all, states you can fire anyone for any reason unless they have an employment contract or they can claim you discriminated against them based on race, sex, age, or religion.
“Violence never solved anything” except for most of history, including now the violence of the cancel culture that will take away your livelihood, key your car, graffiti your buildings, publish your address so your kids can be threatened, toss incendiaries, etc.
You think I would get in trouble if I fired everybody who works for me that doesn’t support trump?
Now this is the real problem...these kids are brain-washed...unable to distinguish right from wrong...
That's what you CAN do.
But should you?
I think what we're seeing is a set of companies firing good workers because -- perhaps 5 years ago -- the worker said something on social media.
Yes, you CAN fire someone for that. But SHOULD you? What kind of country are we?
“People throw the word “fascist” around today much too carelessly for it to be useful. If that word can be applied to an everyday person, however, someone who believes you should lose your job based on who you vote for is a pretty sturdy working definition.”
Why, yes it is. In fact, soon little kids in school will be taught that it’s a good thing to tell their teacher if their parents support Trump. That they will be rewarded if they do so.
So it’s maybe a good thing that schools will be cancelled.
And they call our president “Hitler.” Hah! As if.
That particular name-calling, I think, is called “projection.”
We have AntiFa Universities now.
Yes, that's a different question. If it's a valuable employee, probably not. But if the person supports candidates who are or will make things more difficult for my business, it would be difficult to sign that paycheck every week.
“You think I would get in trouble if I fired everybody who works for me that doesn’t support Trump?”
You may or may not get into trouble, but if you were somehow able to find out (people tend to hide their support for him), you might find yourself with a pretty small number of employees.
And those that were left would be as dumb as Biden is.
So you’d be in quite a pickle. ;)
And this will not change until we start getting them fired.
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