I really find it very difficult to understand why someone as smart as Andrew Sullivan can be such a complete ignoramus when it comes to understanding our First Amendment rights. Before I even address what he wrote, I am going to give you the First Amendment to read:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Okay. Let’s begin.
Obviously, the first word is the subject here. We’re talking about Congress. The United States Congress. The legislative branch of the federal government. The First Amendment gives us certain protections against Congress making certain laws. One of the areas where we are protected is in our ability to speak freely. We can say what we want and Congress can’t shut us up.
Now, let’s say that we are the CEO of a major corporation. And let’s say that we say some things that are very unpopular in certain circles. Or, maybe we make a political contribution to a cause that some people find very distasteful. Are we protected under the First Amendment from people (not Congress) voicing their displeasure? Are we protected from people demanding that we be fired? Are we protected against people boycotting our company?
Not under the First Amendment, we’re not. In fact, let’s say that we’re not the CEO of a company but one of the middle managers. Is there any reason our boss can’t fire us for saying things that embarrass the company, alienate clients and customers, or that violate company policy? The answer is no. The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to say whatever you want and not suffer any consequences. It only says that Congress cannot tell you to shut up or punish you for speaking.
So, then, why would Andrew Sullivan write the following?
The guy who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists. After an OKCupid decision to boycott Mozilla, the recently appointed Brendan Eich just resigned under pressure.
You don’t “express” your First Amendment rights. You have them. If you want to donate to an anti-gay marriage cause, that’s your right. And if people want to call for your head, that’s their right.
The bottom line is that there is price to be paid for CEO’s who want to delve into hot button political issues. They will alienate either the right or the left, and that can lead to bad press, boycotts, and damaged revenues. Why can’t CEO’s say whatever they want and donate to whatever they want without fear of bad consequences?
Because people care about the values of the companies they do business with. And it’s their First Amendment right to talk about it.
So, what is this next bit from Sullivan?
Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.
“Intimidating the free speech”? By telling CEO’s who oppose gay marriage that we won’t do business with them? Really?
You don’t want to be tactful, then don’t become a diplomat. You want to wade into the culture wars? Don’t become a CEO. Let’s try to understand the job description here.
And let’s try to understand the First Amendment.
God, Andrew Sullivan Can Act Stupid
It’s not an act. He’s been stupid for 20+ years minus some lucidity during the 2nd half of C- Augustus’ presidency.
Get real, Calvin.
Andrew Sullivan is an exceptionally intelligent human being.
That doesn’t mean he always makes sense. What’s dumbfounding is how stupid he can act.
He’s smart. And he’s honest about many things, foremost of which is that he’s conservative. In any rational system, he’d describe the rightmost boundary of intelligent conservatism. And it’s the conservatism that stupidifies him.
This whole First Amendment CEO bullshit is how a ‘smart’ conservative reacts to a wealthy, prominent, CEO being attacked by the rabble. That’s all.
See, if he restricted himself to arguing that it’s bad form or bad strategy or somehow unseemly to make your political opponents unemployable, we could have a debate about that.
But the First Amendment is not the right to take publicly controversial political stands and be an effective CEO nonetheless.
If you’re a CEO, you have a lot fiduciary responsibilities, and not causing a boycott of your products is one of them.
Isn’t Sully the guy that wanted MSNBC to get rid of Alec Baldwin? Consistency would be appreciated.
Nah. The First Amendment thing is shorthand. Sullivan doesn’t actually think the guy’s First Amendment rights were infringed.
He thinks: “There you have the illiberal mindset. Morality trumps freedom. Our opponents must be humiliated, ridiculed and “isolated as perverts”. I mean “bigots”, excuse me. Orwell wept.”
He believes, like most conservatives, that wealthy people are fundamentally entitled to their jobs in ways the rest of us aren’t. The CEO owns his job; the burger-flipper serves at his pleasure. So denying the CEO his freedom to insult without consequences is stealing something from him.
Bingo. He’s a Tory at heart, and Lèse-majesté is one thing he cannot abide.
CEO’s are our betters, and we’d better damn well know our place!
I like “stupidifies”. It’s bad faith (Sartre) or false consciousness (Engels) and it’s not incompatible with intelligence at all. The purpose is to build a rationalization for being on the Right side of the issue, in spite of how smart you are.
well put. In the end, despite reading his blog 5 days a week for nearly a decade in the end he remains a conservative and so there is a major part of his existence that I find repulsive.
All the fascinating links and honest discussion in the world can’t cover that up. That’s why I’ll never ever give him money.
Am I a sinner for throwing $20 his way? I do like the links his staff finds…
A little. He doesn’t even allow comments!
“Exceptionally intelligent”? Usually that describes someone who can organize facts quickly in a coherent analysis. Often it’s misapplied to people who can write well, but whose actual analytical abilities show defects. I haven’t read enough of his work to determine how incisive his mind is.
But from his past performance, I think Sullivan is blinded by what he wants to be true, which is a frequent problem even with people, intelligent and otherwise. He hasn’t the insight to recognize that problem. How else to explain the inability to realize that the public were being propagandized in the Iraq War? It’s a stunning failure of intellect that a lot of credentialed and ostensibly very intelligent people made–while the rest of us looked on in bemused horror.
Now I’m ready for a post explaining the Second Amendment. It’s just as misunderstood as the First Amendment. The media should have to pass a serious test on the Constitution before they are allowed to open their bazoos.
Sullivan’s never had a job where he had a “boss”. He’s a privileged little shit who thinks you’re free to say shit without repercussions. He’s someone who posted pictures of scrotums on his blog before readers were like “motherfucker I’m at work when I read your blog. Don’t post pictures of testicles because I can get fired.”
He didn’t even get it until more and more readers emailed him. The dude is smart. He’s just privileged as fuck who has no idea how the normal world works.
Would he have the same sentiment to, say, a white supremacist? I’m not sure. Something tells me “not.” But he for some reason puts religion on this pedestal. Of course…
Andrew Sullivan is a white supremacist. He published The Bell Curve. And he argues for it to this day. Can we just accept that Sully’s a scumbag? Everything he writes makes sense when you see him in that light.
Sullivan is, in my view, a traitor to the cause of gay rights by virtue of his conservative politics and religious beliefs. But in this case he I think he is partly right. Gay marriage advocates are being unnecessarily aggressive. I don’t particularly care about marriage equality and will never get married. It does bother me that someone who opposed something unimportant to me would lose his job over it. Lots of gay people have lost jobs over the decades too.
Yes – I do understand that many gay people (including Sullivan) think marriage equality is vitally important. Good for them. We’re not going to destroy religious fanaticism by taking out some CEO of some company I’ve barely heard of. We’ve come a long way in a very short time. We can afford to relax a little.
By “we” I assume you’re including Mozilla’s developers, employees and tech partners, who applied a large portion of the pressure on Eich to step down because they didn’t feel his intolerance fit with their corporate culture, right?
Also, while you’re calling for activists to chill, do you think the forces working against same-sex marriage who are trying to claw back the gains you’re applauding are also “relaxing”? It’s called a struggle for a reason. If you relax, you lose ground.
Sullivan is being a jackass. He does it often enough that I’ve stopped reading him, because the stupid stuff was far outweighing the thought-provoking stuff. He’s not “partly right”, he’s entirely wrong on this one.
You are right… I should not have presumed to speak for employees of Mozilla. And I do understand the risk of relaxing, but sometimes I think it is OK to call a cease-fire and see if it holds. On the SSM marriage issue, which as I said is not even something I particularly care about, I do not think it necessary to purge every opponent from the public discourse.
We (as in LGBT) make up some relatively small part of the population. We will always be at risk from religious fanatics and conservatives. Sullivan is both! So I don’t know what to make of him at all.
Progress on gay civil rights was never a political struggle. It is a personal one that’s been fought with friends, family, and co-workers every day for some 50 years or more. I attended work related parties with my partner way back in 1993, so I’m not too worried about losing progress by giving some space to the other side.
???? it’s about attending work-related parties?
20 years ago there was already general acceptance in many companies and families. As far as I’m concerned, not much has changed in the last 10 years. Again, I am not too concerned with the sappy sentimental marriage BS. The war was over 10-15 years ago when many companies were offering benefits to same sex couples. Now we’re just mopping up and, as I said, we can afford to relax. That’s my experience anyway. Others may have different views.
We have more important economic justice issues to pursue now.
Marriage equality is about the legal status, so is civil rights protection. some work places may be fine on a social level, but that’s not the issue.
Minor point: I think it would have been good for you to make clearer that you are LGBT in this comment. Because as it is, all you are saying is that you don’t care too much about marriage equality, and for all I know you are a straight person saying that. Which would raise MAJOR red flags. I didn’t realize the misunderstanding until a few replies down.
And I also think it’s worth pointing out that while you may not care about it too much personally, there are a lot of people who sincerely do care about it a lot.
Sorry for any confusion on that point. Gay man commenting here.
The fact that some of my fellow travelers want to punish some stranger for opposing something I don’t need is disturbing. I hope they start to back off before things get out of hand.
well that’s what I find puzzling – see my comment above, and I guess my first try got hidden. what is it about marriage equality that you don’t need? it’s about the legal status not the romance.
Speaking for myself… I’ve not found any barriers that legal status would break down. I don’t have kids. I recognize that those people with kids might have different issues and so do those passing on estates. This is all very much symbolic and it’s been helpful in a general way to have this debate. But, for me, that’s all it is.
So you agree, then, that the First Amendment does not bind the states and has no bearing on electronic media?
That it obviously does not create a right of journos to refuse to reveal sources or share their notes and recordings under subpoena or court order?
That the 14th Amendment pertains, quite literally, to police and law enforcement conduct, binds state governments and not the federal government, and has nothing to do with segregation, whether legally mandated or de facto, in public schools or anything else, and nothing to do with any form of discrimination by private employers, clubs, or businesses, whether regarding employees, customers, suppliers, members, or guests?
You’ve gone all Originalist on us, have you?
Next you’ll be agreeing that South Carolina can, under the federal constitution, honestly interpreted, establish Protestant Christianity as its officially sanctioned and tax-supported religion, to be taught exclusively in all its public schools.
And that the Air Force and paper money are unconstitutional.
And then it might occur to you to recall that, only recently, everyone agreed that the most important liberal victories over the last century in court were won by Supreme Court justices engaged not only in constitutional disobedience but constitutional fraud.
And that maybe your security from employer punishment for free speech is at least as important in a democracy as your security from employer punishment for being gay, black, an atheist, or whatever.
Maybe Andy’s onto something, eh?
Maybe it’s best, especially for a liberal, not to be too literal about the First Amendment?
Or anything else in that silly old thing, the US Constitution.
Are you brain-damaged?
Have to be, to bother with you.
I’m not talking about any part of the First Amendment except the part that deals with free speech.
I’m not arguing that against the incorporation of the First Amendment.
I’m saying that the plain language of the amendment protects you against an act of Congress, not against private citizens, your boss, or whomever else.
I think you posted this comment on the wrong thread. And the wrong blog.
Re: personal beliefs representing a corporation, if it works for Holly Hobby, then it damned well works inversely for Mozilla. These people never think things through, do they?
The Law of Unintended Consequences is a lovely thing, is it not?
Much of the culture wars has to do with setting the bounds on what is socially acceptable, and progress for our side is achieved much faster by resetting those bounds than by political action. You could even argue that often the former is a necessary precondition for the latter. Making homophobia socially unacceptable is as legitimate a strategy for accomplishing the goal of a bias free society as is making same sex marriage acceptable. It bothers me not a bit that the progressive side can and will release the flying monkeys when it may be productive for establishing social norms, just as the wingnuts often try to do.
I’m thinking maybe Sullivan needs to read up on his gay rights history and boycotts. He wouldn’t enjoy all the freedoms he has to be out and employed today if not for all the hard-hitting tactics employed by post-Stonewall activists up to and including today.
“Andrew Sullivan is an exceptionally intelligent human being.”
The evidence for this being – what, exactly? He’s been wrong on issue after issue, he contradicts himself with no apparent awareness that he is doing so, he is so frequently in error on the facts that it’s laughable, his blog is noteworthy mostly for links found by his staff, and Sullivan himself has produced no writing or analysis that will stand the test of time. He’s an exceptionally self-promoting human being, certainly, but that isn’t quite the same thing.
In reichwinglandia, Bill Kristol is intelligent, and therefore, Andrew Sullivan can only be “exceptionally intelligent.” Those on the left that get it right almost every time are “shrill” and therefore, are properly dismissed and ignored.
The “exceptionally intelligent” claim was made by none other than our own host, who, unless things have changed dramatically, is hardly a member of the right wing kleptocretinocracy.
Thought he was merely repeating CW, but I could be wrong.
This is semantics, nothing else.
Andrew Sullivan is highly educated and holds degrees from Oxford and Harvard. He is very well-read. He has encyclopedic knowledge on host of topics and converse at an expert level on literature, to give one example.
That doesn’t mean he is right about everything. Bill Kristol is also exceptionally intelligent, and also almost always wrong about everything.
Disagree. People with significant “thinker clinkers” aren’t exceptionally intelligent. They’re people that are allowed to punch above their weight class and that’s why they get in wrong at an exceptionally high rate. And they’re not even intelligent enough explain how and why they got it wrong and learn from their errors.
It isn’t semantics. It’s a discussion of your (unproven) claim that Sullivan is exceptionally intelligent. Believe me, you don’t have to be exceptionally intelligent to get into Oxford or Harvard, much less to prosper once you are in the system. You can do just fine with a reasonable level of intelligence, a good memory and a talent for repackaging other people’s thoughts.
His contradictions stem from his obsession with “acceptance”, which is tangentially related to the issue at hand. Conservatism was cool when he came of age, Thatcher was all the rage (although not in the beginning of her premiership, when she was especially vulnerable to losing the election). And thus, this identity of Sullivan’s blinds him again and again. This “conservatism.” He sees no contradiction between his conservatism on the one hand, and his written screeds about the dangers of inequality on the other. Even more contradictory, calling for Social Security cuts in the same exact column as warning about the dangers of inequality.
He’s not quite the embodiment of a Villager, but he definitely identifies with that crowd. And he desperately wants to be accepted. It’s why he was obsessed that gay marriage is the solution to gay tolerance and equality. Rather than being queer, gays need to assimilate and become like straight people. He continues to lambaste the gay left because they had the gall to care about other issues related to gay identity outside of being accepted within the patriarchal institution of marriage.
Remember when “gays” cared about issues outside of beloved marriage? They still do; they’re just not inside the HRC and Andrew Sullivan tent.
Eich demonstrates that one can be “exceptionally intelligent” in a given discipline and also have the social and philosophical intelligence of Fred Phelps.
Eich violated the 1st Commandment of Capitalism, take no action that will damage the bottom line.
Live by the dollar, die by the dollar.
Simple as that.
I personally do find it troubling that he was forced to resign. I think what was done was completely legitimate — you’re right that people can call him out — but that doesn’t mean I think it was the best option.
The impetus for this decision may not have come from Eich himself, but quite clearly his company made a business decision that their bottom line was more important than having Eich in the CEO position. If Eich was forced to resign, it’s instructive to consider who exactly forced him and what alternatives did he have?
It’s too bad anytime someone loses his job, particularly due to circumstances beyond his control, I think Eich will do all right. If we’re to avoid this sort of situation in the future, maybe CEOs should form their own union?
Oh, and Andrew Sullivan is stupid; sometimes he can act smart, but stupid is his default setting.
Isn’t the Mozilla Foundation a non-profit?
The troubling thing to me is that it implies that Prop 8 was illegitimate per se. That being on the wrong side of a public election has consequences for non-politicians engaged in the political process. As I understand it, the CEO didn’t make any public statement or take any action against employees but his enemies found his contribution from (required) online records. Does that imply that another company can fire it’s CEO for making a private contribution to NARAL? Prop 8 was odious but this sort of witch hunting has unintended consequences. Can an employer legitimately refuse to hire me because I am a member of NARAL? Can he fire me for no other reason even if I never make a workplace statement or identify my employment in any public statements?
In the private, non-union sector, an employer can fire an employee for no reason.
Ethically, Prop 8 was indefensible, but once the courts weighed in, it became illegitimate as well. Eich could have taken the opportunity to say he’s “evolved” since he made that contribution but he chose not to. His other political campaign donations are similarly “unenlightened.” He gave money to the “white-supremacist, crypto-Nazi crackpot” (to quote Charles Pierce) Pat Buchanan.
It’s not the position. I’m not defending that. It’s “the slippery slope”, that concerns me, the thought that one’s political affiliation could have financial repercussions. We have a secret ballot, but not secret support and for good reason, I know. But the internet and electronic databases make a lot more public than used to be.
This looks to me as if it’s more of a one-off than a slippery slope situation. Although that’s not easy to recognize given all the half-assed comments and writings that have appeared in the past few days. Eich chooses to be a homophobic bigot and in this country is free to choose that. However, he crossed a line and refused to retract it when he financially supported inequality under the law for those that aren’t heterosexual. That’s no different from any other legally sanctioned discrimination of any group. Not so long ago women were discriminated against in employment, education, and credit because we were “less than” men. The rightwing would like to bring back those days — and if the only way to defeat those regressives and their money is with a female mafia, so be it.
I hope you are right. It seems there was something wrong with the guy anyway because there was a large pushback against him before this surfaced. That’s why it surfaced. They were digging for it.
Don’t want to belabor the point. I don’t want the guy in charge of my software either.
Re:
Public confession is an excellent suggestion and has an honorable tradition (see Zinoviev and Kamenev). It’s great that self-proclaimed liberals are making the case.
I really find it very difficult to understand why someone as smart as Andrew Sullivan
Stopped reading right there.
“Why Are Obama’ Critics So Dumb?” That’s the question posed by Andrew Sullivan in the cover story of this week’s Newsweek.
But you’d have to be stupid, fanatical, and dishonest to argue-as Trig Truther Sullivan does-that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious “long game” that is destined to succeed.
If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for re-election is the weak Republican field.
agentii recrutare
In my version of reality re-election is something Obama never has to worry about again. 2012 and all that, don’t you know?
Does someone else want to hide this as well? It’s a link-spam troll.
who is a link-spam troll
agentie recrutare