Do you have a problem with a world where those who oppose homosexual activity, corporations and racists are socially shunned and economically excluded?
> I should have the total freedom to refuse to hire anyone who advocates for more women/non-Asian minorities in technology?
Do you have total freedom to refuse to hire anyone who advocates for merit-based hiring?
> The Hollywood Blacklist - published by the Hollywood Reporter and implemented by studios - was totally fine?
Was the NBA's lifetime ban on Donald Sterling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling#Racial_remarks...) totally fine?
> This is a very libertarian position. But those of us who are part of the left wing are somewhat cognizant of the dangers of marginal voices being economically and socially excluded, even if it's not done via state sponsored violence.
I'd argue that the groups you mentioned are far less marginalised than those I mentioned. That was, of course, not the case until recently.
That's why I take the libertarian position: freedom of association is sacrosanct; you are free to associate with whomever you like and I am free to associate with whomever I like (I suppose I should note that I've no desire to associate with racists and sexists, just to forestall that line of criticism). Anything else is fundamentally unjust: it uses the threat of force to compel someone to associate with those he wishes to remove himself from. It's wrong.
Yes.
I haven't reached epistemic closure. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html?_r=1 if you are unfamiliar.) I believe we may be incorrect about a variety of things we currently believe - we have not yet reached the pinnacle of human knowledge.
In order to discover places where we currently are wrong, we need to be tolerant of people expressing dissenting points of view. For this purpose, preventing a (possibly correct) dissenting view from being expressed via social ostracism is just as harmful as preventing it via force of arms.
I agree, but I distinguish between tolerance & acceptance. Tolerance means you do your thing & I do my thing; acceptance means we do the same thing. The problem is, if we each have opposing ideas of the good then we can't accept one another's ideas. Acceptance of opposing ideas can only really work by pretending that the ideas themselves don't matter, but tolerance can respect the importance of the ideas themselves while agreeing to disagree.
I'm suggesting that you should prove yourself correct rather than simply making me afraid to speak. If your ideas are correct, why is that so difficult?
I don't see any problem here. This is a conflict between two corporations (the NBA and whatever holding corporation Sterling used to own the Clippers) where one (NBA) decided to terminate the relationship.
As a libertarian, how can you not agree? If freedom of associate is sacrosanct, as you state, then isn't this the NBA choosing not to associate with Sterling? He can seek redress from the courts (which he did, case still pending) if he wasn't happy.
The Hollywood Blacklist, too, was between private corporations and private individuals.
I think that in both cases folks had a right to act as they did, but I think one can also argue that they were wrong to do so. What's harder IMHO to argue is that one was right but the other wrong.
It sure doesn't look like that is the case, since it is overwhelmingly leftists that are trying to silence things they don't like, trying to get people fired for having "wrong" opinions, and justifying their attacks on people with "but I'm on the right side of history".
This is a very libertarian position. But those of us who are part of the left wing are somewhat cognizant of the dangers of marginal voices being economically and socially excluded, even if it's not done via state sponsored violence.
(Incidentally, is there also no problem with freedom of association applying only to the government? I.e., if I choose not to associate with women/non-Asian minorities in my business, that's ok too, given that I'm not the government?)