I'm not defending this but as an important data point, in most states in the US it is entirely legal to fire people for political speech. This is not a First Am

I'm not defending this but as an important data point, in most states in the US it is entirely legal to fire people for political speech. This is not a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment restricts the government and extensions of the government. Whether you agree with this action or not, let's still deal with facts. Agree with them or not, they're taking a stand for something they believe in that comes at potentially great cost to them and you have to at least respect that. Now I want to bring up Time's 2019 Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg. Remember her? The teenager who spoke out for climate action, something she was widely lauded for. You don't hear much about her now even though she's still active (eg [1]). Why is that? Because she started criticizing capitalism [2]. Why do I bring her up? Because she was praised while doing performative speech over climate change and sidelined when her criticism was at odds with the bottom line. That's exactly what's happening at Google and most other companies. They're happy to put up rainbow flags and celebrate Pride because it's performative. It doesn't affect the bottom line. It's good PR in that way. But these protestors were demanding action that would put Google at odds with the US government policy and that cannot be tolerated. We've seen this before. Google famously pulled out of China over censorship many years ago [3] but the bottom line meant they tried (and failed) to go back in years later [4]. For the record, what I've described above (with both Greta Thunberg and Google) is simply materialist analysis. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68749936 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68749936 [2]: https://fortune.com/2023/02/13/gen-z-activist-greta-thunberg-rips-capitalism-market-economics-new-book-climate-change/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/13/gen-z-activist-greta-thunberg... [3]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704266504575141064259998090 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704266504575141... [4]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/07/19/confirmed-google-terminated-project-dragonfly-its-censored-chinese-search-engine/?sh=39752c47e843 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/07/19/confirm...