No, it does not matter. If you are on the wrong side of history the size of the company you keep is irrelevant.
The US has no problem with capital punishment last I checked (nor do they have a problem with life imprisonment without a trial), maybe not the best example?
So basically, one shouldn't have wrong opinions, especially if they're publicly visible persons. Or rather, one is allowed to have wrong opinions (in private), but voicing them or goodness forbid, acting according to those, ist verbotten und un-Amerikane.
No, it is fine if you have wrong opinions. But be prepared to get the flak associated with those.
Nobody forced Eich to make a donation, but doing so publicly set him up for a confrontation with a substantial chunk of Mozilla's employees further down the line.
Just like a 'mild case of rape' could trip up a supreme court justice nominee. (Or at least, it should have.)
>No, it is fine if you have wrong opinions. But be prepared to get the flak associated with those.
That's not different than Stalinist Russia, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, McCarthyism, some conservative backwater, etc.
If having "flak associated" with having wrong opinions is acceptable by your book, then those examples were all about free speech too. Their victims just got some heavy flak for their opinions.
Or is it bad only when it involves an execution? Rest assured than in most cases in those regimes an execution wasn't needed either. Most were just fired, or beaten up, or ostacized, or disallowed to advance etc., so that's ok I guess.
Doesn't even have to be the state to give "the flak". In the case of the Inquisition it was the church. And in other cases it has been an angry mob.
> If Prop8 had won, would it have been on the right side of history?
Prop 8 did win. I don't know if it is still on the books; it was rendered inoperative due to a later Supreme Court decision based, so far as one can tell, on neither the text nor the intent of the Constitution. In other words, whether one agrees with the decision or not, it was unconstitutional.
Right, fair point, but I mean, the "wrong side of history" narrative tends to presume that either in the long run, whatever side is right will win, or that whichever side wins will be the right one. I think that's a very dangerous assumption either way that should really not be made into the core of a moral argument. Argue from universal principles, argue from universal emotions, argue from social health, argue from self-interest. But don't argue from your eventual presumed victory as if that's a reason in itself.
>No, it does not matter. If you are on the wrong side of history the size of the company you keep is irrelevant.
Sorry, that sounds like something Nazis or the Maoists in the "Cultural Revolution" would say. "Wrong side of history" is historical determinism and teleologism.
Who is on "the wrong side of history" determined by consensus itself. And it can be as fickle and temporary as anything.
The US has no problem with capital punishment last I checked (nor do they have a problem with life imprisonment without a trial), maybe not the best example?