Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire
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:date: 2014-04-07T09:55:00
:category: computer
:tags: homosexuality, cultureWar, BrendanEich, mozilla

Let me quote here one comment_ in the current discussion about Brendan
Eich and his contribution for Prop 8:

    I’ve decided I will let my web browser provider think whatever they
    want, so long as they don’t support fascist segregation of ideas

    -- ertdfg

.. _comment:
    https://commonspace.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/mozilla-is-human/#comment-11884

I have struggled since the start of this one particular battle of the
Kulturkampf with a question how should I react.  I certainly value
honoring your opponents in the discussion (which is IMHO much better
concept than mere freedom of expression, which is rather limited and
legalistic) very highly, and if that was in stake, I wouldn’t mind to
loose my browser for it (or job, or many other things; I grew up in the
Communist Czechoslovakia, so I know a little bit what I am talking
about). However, is this the case? And is loosing Firefox which
otherwise IS the most freedom-loving browser around (switching to Chrome
feels to me truly like jumping straight out of the frying pan into the
center of the fire).

Thinking about some other hot topic issues (actually participation of
a Protestant in Eucharist; tell me about controversial issue, this was
the one actual battles with dead people lying on the battlefield were
fought for!) I came to the preliminary conclusion that the worst thing
is when your opponents drive your decision by negation. Back to the
issue of Firefox, Brendan, and tolerance. The worst thing we can do is
to switch from Firefox, and let ourselves drawn on the shitty
(literally, that's the stuff fought with over there) battlefield of
these cultural wars. If we want to keep our discussion on more civilized
level, we shouldn’t let be drawn to the level of bigots. “Answer not
a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”
(Proverbs 6:24 KJV; or in the modern paraphrase “Don’t argue with idiots
because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with
experience.”)