Saturday, April 5, 2014

Two Religious Companies: Firefox and Hobby Lobby

I have removed the Firefox browser from all five of my computers and smart devices. No great loss; it wasn't my default browser on any one of the machines, and I replaced it as my third-string browser with Opera. I did this because I oppose the hypocritical intolerance of the Progressive/Left elitists wherever I encounter it. I usually have no connection to these Liberal Fascists (see Jonah Goldberg's book of that title here), but in the case of Firefox owner Mozilla, I did have a connection. So I can act, and publicly encourage others to do so.
Firefox parent Mozilla, a non-profit, fired their CEO for heresy.


Much has been made of Hobby Lobby not being a church, notably by Attorney General Eric Holder and other Obama Regime acolytes. While showing mastery of the "bleeding obvious" in regards to the Christian-owned crafts retailer, I'm not so sure  Mozilla isn't a church. These tech companies often say they want to change the world (Apple most famously), pronouncements I'd always thought were harmless corporate gobbledegook. I don't think that anymore.

In this most recent dust-up, the first place I noticed signs of religious fanaticism was the Mozilla press-release announcing Brendan Eich's "resignation." If you didn't already know the CEO had resigned under pressure from the Mozilla board for supporting California's Proposition 8 endorsing traditional marriage, you would think the statement by Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker was a defense of why the company had decided to keep him. It was confessional in tone, included a recitation of Progressive Dogma du jour (it is always changing), and these two paragraphs of Magical Thinking:


Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. 
We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, 
culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, 
sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. 
Mozilla supports equality for all.
We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture 
of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to 
share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to 
distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a 
higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, 
and to be guided by our community.
That ain't verbal gymnastics, clever wordsmithing or advanced Bureaucratese: it's a reality-defying mantra. It's Progressive Glossolalia, uttered in a state of altered consciousness. If those paragraphs are true, Eich should have been celebrated and held up as a shining example of Mozilla's culture. But they're not true. When the mob (in Mozillaspeak, "community") howled for blood, the tech Sanhedrin convened and decided it was "expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” Diversity, my auntie.

But that was only the beginning. The braying Leftists had to be mollified, and several would-be high priests came forth to lead the Eich Inquisition. The best example is from the sub-literate "Managing Editor" of ValleyWag.com, Owen Thomas, who, prior to the resignation, called on Eich to publicly recant, and make a propitiatory payment (indulgence?) to earn absolution. Evidently Eich refused to renounce his views or his actions, so he was put on the rack for all to see.

I don't at all agree that Eich's First Amendment rights were violated. The government didn't shut him up, and he still has a right to speak his mind. Nobody has a constitutional right to work at Mozilla, and their board can (presumably) fire the CEO for any reason or no reason. And hence the connection to Hobby Lobby. Just as the government can't force hair-on-fire Progressives to keep employees who disagree with their Corporate Values, the Feds must not be able to force Conservative companies to violate their Corporate Values, or pay a fine for doing so. I hope at least five Supreme Court Justices agree with me.

UPDATE: five justices did, in fact agree.