Sometimes the people you do business with have political opinions you don't agree with. The melodrama over Thiel's political opinions is pointless. If you demand Thiel steps down, are you personally just going to stop doing business with 49% of the country that voted differently?
Personally I lean liberal, but I'm pretty disgusted with all the theatrics I've seen in this election from the left. The Trump phenomenon arguably occurred because half the country felt ostracized and decided to lob a brick through the window of washington in the form of donald trump. Maybe we should all get to understand our neighbors instead of doubling down on us-vs-them tribalism.
If people are no longer free to use words or social stigma to advance their views and opinion, because "tolerance," then what do we have left?
It exactly means that no matter how subjectively and personally odious somebody's beliefs are to you, you can still respect their personhood, and evaluate any associated business & products at face value.
"Tolerance" does not mean enforcement for or against selected beliefs. Waging a stigmatizing crusade against a belief is enforcement.
The moment you think you can deem and enforce absolute right & wrong upon others, you open yourself up to it happening to you without defense. That is not the path of liberty.
What on earth kind of law do you want to set up where I can't preferentially trade with people whose opinions I like, or preferentially not trade with people whose opinions I don't?
Again, tolerance means I don't want to imprison or kill people with distasteful opinions; it doesn't mean I have to like them or their distasteful opinions.
People can be bigots, they can be jerks. Go nuts, folks, be bigots or jerks, I don't care. But I'm not going to trade with bigots or jerks, I'm not going to hire them, and I'm sure as hell not going to say "hey, you're a bigot and a jerk but tolerance so let's have a beer".
Some people have no place in my life, and the beliefs they hold are a big determining factor in that decision. If they really wanna be my friend or business partner, they can change their beliefs.
The alternative is actual argument rather than punishment, something overgard in no way ruled out.
...which unfortunately may not be a great tool given the current situation. I think we are at the point where playing nice may no longer be a serious option.
But that doesn't mean we should just, lke, punish all the bad people because they're bad people. That still isn't helpful. It just feels good, it doesn't necessarily accomplish anything.
In the particular case of people joining the Trump administration, I think Megan McArdle makes a good case against punishing capable people for joining it: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/there-s-n...
Still. We're in a situation now where argument is unlikely to get us anywhere -- but in better times, that's the ideal, not using words to punish people.
People prentend that politics is a purely abstract thing, but consider. Bush is directly responsible for well over 500,000 deaths. The blood of his victims is directly on the hands of everyone that voted for the idiot. Trump might not be as bad or he might start WWIII.
It's true that few of us have the time and energy to dig through all the bullshit and achieve understanding of everyone we find abhorrent.
But where we are able to do so, we usually learn some important things about others and about ourselves - mostly, that when it comes down to it, we all just want to feel safe and loved.
True compassion is hard, but unless we can offer it to others, we can't expect it to be offered back to us.
PS: Some people really don't care about safety others don't care about love.
There's a difference between "advancing your views" and "demanding someone get fired because they disagree with your views". See? If you want to call Thiel a dickhead for his support, feel free, you even have my agreement. But this is the CLASSIC go-to-move of overzealous social justice creeps, to demand banishment of the person for thought-crimes.
That's obviously a false equivalence. On the one hand, the candidate was encouraging his supporters' violence. On the other... well, not that.
The overwhelming majority of the videos I have seen are Hillary supporters beating Trump supporters.
The supposedly "tolerant" side has been looking awfully intolerant of late.
With the exception of Hillary-planted agents provacateur, as verified by DKIM-validated Podesta emails, who is beating up whom?
By this definition, business owners in Indiana who don't support gay marriage could legally not serve those customers. Is that the world we want?
I agree with you. But we cannot disregard the dishonest behaviour performed by most leftists/liberals over the years. The leftists/liberals hurl so much social stigma against the republicans/Christianity but they dishonestly and criminally keep mum about e.g. Islam. Sam Harris and Bill Maher have pointed this out beautifully at [1] and [2].
The leftists have never allowed anyone to socially stigmatize Muslims about their faith in the very vicious, barbaric and most importantly "the most intolerant" ideology of Islam. So now this has came around them.
Mainstream left/liberal camp is completely dishonest about its take on the issue of intolerance of Islam.
Sadly but not surprisingly people like Trump will succeed to exploit such thing.
The saner people in the left should reflect on this dishonest behaviour of the mainstream/vocal leftists and must do something about it, else the intolerance will just grow.
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
"All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination."
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
You lean liberal? What?
Not so long ago it was a perfectly valid opinion that there should be slaves. Try that today.
(Incidentally that same level of society would have seen Thiel stoned to death, he is openly gay after all)
So what's not "open to discussion"? It seems like fundamentally everything about this election has been open to discussion, it's been a weird fucking election. Are you literally saying supporting Trump is a crime so bad that it's not "open to discussion"?
"The line tends to shift as society progresses." You talk about this "line" as if it's a real thing. Let me pose a fairly obvious question, in almost any time period, who imposed the limits of "what is not open to discussion", and what were their motives? Keep in mind, things that are obviously true don't need to be "not open to discussion", because nobody is bothering to discuss them.
I'm serious. I don't have a good answer. I think it depends on the issue, but I know people are going to draw their lines differently. Thoughts?
Yes, they do. However, opinions and material support are different things.
> are you personally just going to stop doing business with 49% of the country that voted differently?
Expressing your opinion with a vote and funding a campaign with >$1M are not anywhere close to equivalent.
> half the country felt ostracized and decided to lob a brick through the window of washington
That's exactly what happened, as expected[1]. Unfortunately, most people were more interested in playing political games or blaming their favorite scapegoat.
