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1. Hampton Catlin was confused about Federal immigration law and enforcement vs. California Prop 8 or any state law. DOMA, not Prop 8, prevented his spouse from

1. Hampton Catlin was confused about Federal immigration law and enforcement vs. California Prop 8 or any state law. DOMA, not Prop 8, prevented his spouse from immigrating, and its overturn by SCOTUS was the remedy: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2013/07/01/implementation-supreme-court-ruling-defense-marriage-act https://www.dhs.gov/news/2013/07/01/implementation-supreme-c... I've been on the record against DOMA for years, on constitutional grounds. 2. Catlin didn't just try to persuade me, his condition was that "Brendan Eich is completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla": https://web.archive.org/web/20140401004029/http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/24/goodbye_firefox_marketplace/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140401004029/http://www.teamra... Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic called out the self-deceptive, self-pitying ending of Catlin's followup blog post for claiming to be sad about my leaving Mozilla, and for rewriting an explicit demand to remove me from any job at Mozilla, spinning his stance as just an citizen-to-citizen attempt to "try and change someone's mind": https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/mozillas-gay-marriage-litmus-test-violates-liberal-values/360156/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/mozilla... 3. All the "I'm asking @brendaneich to step down as CEO" tweets were from six people who worked for the Mozilla Foundation, not for me at the Mozilla Corporation. The two organizations are arms-length due to non-profit tax law, with separate management and boards (Mitchell Baker is the only common member, and long-standing chair, of both boards). No one who worked for me in fact tweeted asking me to step down. You yourself quote from Catlin's wikipedia page which states my point (2), but you missed the meaning of the "Mozilla Foundation" reference there, which undermines your argument here. None of those people worked for me. They had asked the Foundation executive director, Mark Surman, for permission to tweet as they did, and he gave them a "go" sign. Again, no connection to the Corporation I was running. Obviously there's no guaranteed cancel button that people on the left or right can press, but the left is much better organized than the right in general, and it uses soft power more effectively (see Alinsky). Some on the right aim to play by the same rules and take as many scalps as they can. This won't end well, especially as HN commenters keep misstating facts of my case to support false equivalence or "no such thing" narratives about cancel culture, reopening an old wound and making themselves look like unreliable narrators of recent history. Of course every culture, every society, defines deviance and punishes it. This never goes away, even under classical liberalism (I'm Catholic; English penal laws weren't repealed in full until the 19th Century). It would be great if people could just get the facts of my case, attested by web.archive.org primary sources, right for a change, and move on to more current events.

eesmith 6y ago
Define "cancel". I've given mine several times in this discussion: "rich, powerful, or famous people facing unwanted negative consequences of actions or expressions that liberals disagree with". Obviously I don't agree there's no such thing. What I disagree with is that we should avoid "cancel", because the active definition is little different than "liberal complaints shouldn't affect anything." Classical liberalism (quoting John Stuart Mill) says: """We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. """ so of course there's no appeal to classical liberalism because "unfavourable opinion" and "deviance" are closely connected. The "more current event" discussed here is that Seuss was neither "banned" nor "canceled".
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  I'm not defining cancel culture (a phrase I avoid; it's the opposite of culture), but people who use it have a working definition and it's not just "liberal complaints". Anyway, Liberalism is dead, Patrick Deneen wrote an (overlong) obit. This just flew by on Apple News: "Cancel culture strikes again: Mumford & Son banjoist steps away from band after praising anti-Antifa book". Whatever you call it, this is not classical liberalism. Something new has emerged with social media combined with Critical Theory, etc. It's worth studying, not dismissing as little different from past boycotts or campaigns.
  - eesmith 6y ago
    I haven't found that working definition. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26365934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26365934 for a couple of examples I quoted. If the NRA stops giving campaign contributions to a Senator who voted for gun-control laws, then is the NRA cancelling the Senator? Some definitions are so broad that they include this otherwise totally acceptable behavior. Since most people say "cancel" is a universally bad thing, those definitions cannot be correct. If a low-level service worker is fired for supporting the LGBTQ movement while not at work, then have they been canceled? Some definitions only apply to the rich or famous ("public figures and companies"), so exclude those people. Yet obvious if the roles are reversed, with a CEO fired for being against the LGBTQ movement, then people have no problems applying the "cancel" label. Which is why I argue that "working definition" you refer to appears mostly like a rhetorical technique against left-leaning views. So far no one had given me any definition, much less one which appears to be a better fit than the one I gave. Even within the context "public figures and companies", you tell me: by your understanding of "cancel", was Kaepernick canceled? If so, then Trump was a one of the loudest people calling for his cancelling, yes? If not, why not? Was Cooper (in the direct parent comment you replied to) canceled after he was fired from being CEO at the company he founded? If not, why not? > "This just flew by on Apple News" If my thesis is correct, that "cancel culture" is little different from "liberal complaints", then of course it would be a headline on Fox News. > this is not classical liberalism This is exactly classic liberalism. It's hard to get more classic than John Stuart Mill, and I just quoted the relevant text from "On Liberty".

eesmith 6y ago

Define "cancel". I've given mine several times in this discussion: "rich, powerful, or famous people facing unwanted negative consequences of actions or expressions that liberals disagree with". Obviously I don't agree there's no such thing. What I disagree with is that we should avoid "cancel", because the active definition is little different than "liberal complaints shouldn't affect anything." Classical liberalism (quoting John Stuart Mill) says: """We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. """ so of course there's no appeal to classical liberalism because "unfavourable opinion" and "deviance" are closely connected. The "more current event" discussed here is that Seuss was neither "banned" nor "canceled".

BrendanEich 6y ago
I'm not defining cancel culture (a phrase I avoid; it's the opposite of culture), but people who use it have a working definition and it's not just "liberal complaints". Anyway, Liberalism is dead, Patrick Deneen wrote an (overlong) obit. This just flew by on Apple News: "Cancel culture strikes again: Mumford & Son banjoist steps away from band after praising anti-Antifa book". Whatever you call it, this is not classical liberalism. Something new has emerged with social media combined with Critical Theory, etc. It's worth studying, not dismissing as little different from past boycotts or campaigns.
- eesmith 6y ago
  I haven't found that working definition. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26365934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26365934 for a couple of examples I quoted. If the NRA stops giving campaign contributions to a Senator who voted for gun-control laws, then is the NRA cancelling the Senator? Some definitions are so broad that they include this otherwise totally acceptable behavior. Since most people say "cancel" is a universally bad thing, those definitions cannot be correct. If a low-level service worker is fired for supporting the LGBTQ movement while not at work, then have they been canceled? Some definitions only apply to the rich or famous ("public figures and companies"), so exclude those people. Yet obvious if the roles are reversed, with a CEO fired for being against the LGBTQ movement, then people have no problems applying the "cancel" label. Which is why I argue that "working definition" you refer to appears mostly like a rhetorical technique against left-leaning views. So far no one had given me any definition, much less one which appears to be a better fit than the one I gave. Even within the context "public figures and companies", you tell me: by your understanding of "cancel", was Kaepernick canceled? If so, then Trump was a one of the loudest people calling for his cancelling, yes? If not, why not? Was Cooper (in the direct parent comment you replied to) canceled after he was fired from being CEO at the company he founded? If not, why not? > "This just flew by on Apple News" If my thesis is correct, that "cancel culture" is little different from "liberal complaints", then of course it would be a headline on Fox News. > this is not classical liberalism This is exactly classic liberalism. It's hard to get more classic than John Stuart Mill, and I just quoted the relevant text from "On Liberty".