I feel obliged to establish my standing for what follows by declaring up front that I am, and have always been, a proud liberal. And I have the ideological scars to show for it.
Mozilla CEO
The term “liberal jihadists” is clearly oxymoronic. Yet it fairly describes the thought police who forced Mozilla’s co-founder and CEO, Brendan Eich, to resign last week. After all, Eich’s only (corporate) sin was that he dared to support California’s Proposition 8, which called for a ban on gay marriages, way back in 2008.
Mind you, back then, no less a person than presidential candidate Barack Obama also opposed gay marriages. Moreover, to clarify his position and save his job, Eich pleaded that, like Obama, he had evolved to a point where he would not countenance unequal treatment of LGBT individuals at Mozilla in any respect.
Even so, his inquisitors, led by mullahs from the dating site OKCupid, demanded his head on a platter. And they made it clear that, if it did not comply, Mozilla would face a boycott that rivals the historic one Blacks mounted against the Montgomery bus service in 1955.
Eich bowed out before Mozilla chopped off…:
I have decided to resign as CEO effective today, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader.
(ABC News, April 3, 2014)
Unlike Eich and Obama, I’ve always expressed unqualified support for gay civil rights, including the fundamental right to marry. But I think demanding the resignation of a CEO just because he opposes gay marriages is as much an affront to the democratic freedoms we take for granted as demanding the resignation of one just because he supports abortion.
Indeed, if you think these liberal jihadists were right to demand Eich’s head, you must reconcile how you would feel if conservative jihadists had similar power to demand the head of every CEO who supports abortions, which they regard as murdering the most innocent and vulnerable of all human life. And bear in mind that Eich was rebuked for opposing gay marriages as an expression of his personal conscience, not as an enforcement of Mozilla’s corporate policy.
Islam Critic Hirsi Ali
Now come reports that liberal jihadists forced Brandeis University in Massachusetts to rescind the offer of an honorary degree it made to the internationally acclaimed critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Here, in part, is the statement the university issued, trying to explain its antic decision:
She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.
(foxnews.com, April 9, 2014)
A Talibanic alliance of Muslim students and liberal professors demanded this rescission. Which is why this explanation is patent nonsense. Not least because Brandeis deemed Hirsi Ali a suitable recipient primarily to bask in the reflected fame she earned by making the very statements (about the way self-appointed guardians of Islam treat women and girls) it now claims are inconsistent with its core values.
Not to mention the irony that nothing could be more inconsistent (i.e., hypocritical) in this respect than Brandeis discouraging the free expression of ideas by publicly rebuking Hirsi Ali to appease dogmatic students and faculty. Indeed, you’d expect this from a Pakistani madrassa, not an American university.
‘This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students,’ said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor. ‘A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.’
(foxnews.com, April 9, 2014)
As it happens, I’ve been commenting on Hirsi Ali’s advocacy of women’s rights in Islamic countries for over a decade. And I can attest that calling her Islamophobic is like calling Gloria Steinem misogynistic.
Hirsi Ali is clearly a very provocative and controversial woman. Nonetheless, her advocacy of women’s rights and pleadings for the dignity of her religion are unassailable. Her contrived deportation is a loss for the Dutch and a gain for the Americans.
(“Dutch Regrets and Recriminations Over Revocation of Hirsi Ali’s Citizenship,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 19, 2006)
But, frankly, after having the Dutch government revoke her citizenship to appease Muslim Jihadists, Hirsi Ali is unlikely to be too bothered by having Brandeis University rescind her degree to appease liberal jihadists.
Still, it’s an indication of the fear liberal jihadists instill that even administrators at a liberal institutions like Brandeis would rather look like mendacious cowards than incur their wrath.
Incidentally, I know firsthand that faculty members at such institutions suffer acute professional insecurities and jealousies. Therefore, those at Brandeis who endorsed misguided student demands for this rescission were probably also motivated by good old-fashioned resentment: not only over Hirsi Ali’s international fame and acclaim, but that of her husband, the telegenic Harvard historian and academic contrarian Niall Ferguson, as well.
Whatever the case, with respect to the rebuke of both Eich and Hirsi Ali, I have long argued that conservatives who believe they know what’s best for the rest of us are surpassed in their dogmatism only by liberals who know they know what’s best….
Here, for example, is an excerpt from “Word to Democrats: Get Over Alito” (January 10, 2006), in which I protested attempts by liberals to rebuke a George W. Bush Supreme Court nomine the way they just rebuked that Mozilla CEO:
It’s foolhardy for liberal Democrats to demonize him for holding views that are shared by almost half the American population. After all, one does not have to be a racist to oppose affirmative action, or a misogynist to oppose abortions, or a fascist to endorse executive powers that allow the president to wiretap American citizens in the interest of national security.
It behooves the party’s White Brahmans to appreciate this distinction. Not least because a vast majority of Black Democrats have more in common with conservative Judge Samuel Alito (e.g., on abortion and gay rights) than they do with liberal Senator Ted Kennedy (who has some nerve lecturing people about civil rights after referring to Bush’s Black female judicial nominee as a Neanderthal)….
_________________
Until the next rebuke then?
Related commentaries:
Dutch regrets…
Word to Dems…