In an ideal world, the purpose of political speech is to persuade. Mackey's piece, while inflammatory in parts, is an argument that he intends to persuade at l

In an ideal world, the purpose of political speech is to persuade. Mackey's piece, while inflammatory in parts, is an argument that he intends to persuade at least some people. In an ideal world, the appropriate response to political speech that one find's wrong, objectionable, erroneous, or otherwise misleading is to engage in political speech yourself. The cure for political speech is more political speech. However, I agree with you that the average person does not have the same level of access to venues for political speech that Mackey does. It's not easy to get pride of place on the WSJ editorial page. Not even terribly easy to get your letter to the editor printed. Nevertheless, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of the boycott is. We can all agree that free people are necessarily free to spend their money where they like, going out of their way to avoid certain brands in favor of others. Usually, we avoid brands because the products that the brand represents are flawed, sub-par, or fraudulent. Obviously, this is not the case with the Whole Foods boycott. Boycotting Whole Foods for the political speech of its CEO is an action not directed at Whole Foods per se, but at the political opinion of one man responsible for the company. Will affecting Whole Foods' bottom-line persuade Mackey? Will it persuade the rest of the public? Unlikely in either case. A boycott of this sort is not meant to persuade, it's meant to punish. This is why people like the author of the linked article and others think that this kind of boycott crosses the line from civil speech to incivility. The rationale seems to be: if we can't persuade Mackey or achieve a place on a soapbox comparable to his, then perhaps we can punish him enough that he will regret having spoken up. Seeking to punish Mackey for expressing his opinion is not an equivalent act of free speech. It crosses the line into incivility.