It's not that long ago that a significant fraction of people worked on farms and did what they wanted.

It's not that long ago that workers discussed so much politics that they got together and had shootouts with their employers.

> It's not that long ago that a significant fraction of people worked on farms and did what they wanted.

Up until 1860 or so, most people across the world were working on farms. And most of those people were at best sharecroppers, if not serfs or slaves. Something tells me there wasn't a lot of freedom going around :-)

>“keep religion and politics out of the workplace” was advice that had been in place for a while

Sure, but said Facebook employee has a greater chance of having action taken against him for wearing a MAGA cap than for wearing an Antifa shirt. Of course Facebook have all rights to do so since they're a private corporation but that sort of thing is what GP was talking about.

Sure, and I'll probably get into greater trouble at the lunchroom of a conservative law firm if I read the Communist Manifesto rather than Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, and I probably shouldn't whip out one of Dawkins books at a church gathering.

What has always confused me about this discussion about say, a left leaning bent at Facebook or whatever is that this has always been the norm in virtually every conservative place, which is like 90% of provincial small towns, from which all the liberal and creative people have to run away in the first place.

An interesting point, but I don't think that's actually true. I doubt there are many places where you'd actually get in trouble for reading the Communist manifesto.

(But admittedly, this is spoken as someone who mostly has exposure to more liberal workplaces - so I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)