> Dollar donations made to political causes are not fungible when done in the name of the donor (as per the law). And that's the root cause. Whether or not employees would have walked or not you can not know, they very well might have because Mozilla made a big point of attracting those very people.

And they might not have cared and moved on with their lives as well. The point of the exercise was to get a scalp to scare anyone else in an executive position from making a public donation. The end result was losing a competent executive.

>> Oh but it does. The issue you seem to be having is that you do not want anyone to hear opposing view points. If your ideas are so great they should be able to stay standing when the masses learn about alternatives.

> I think you have your parties muddled up here and I think that you are not so much arguing for Eich's benefit as you are arguing for your own and your own views which you have made plenty visible on HN in the past.

I'd argue you're doing the same in reverse.

> The people that don't agree with you are 'leftists'.

> For instance: "That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range. "

And this thread has a perfect example of it in reply to that very comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24565502

You also manage to both quote my reply and misquote me back to back. I did not say, "leftists", I said, "the left", which is a standard term to refer to that side of the political aisle. Just as "the right" is a standard term to refer to the conservative side.

> Traditional conservative bigoted values are what they are, if you want to publicly associate yourself with those then you are opening yourself up to - at a minimum - ridicule.

You're free to have whatever opinions you'd like. I really don't care. If you want to label everyone that disagrees with you with terms like that it's your prerogative.

> No horse in the race, so not scared. Why would I be?

You're arguing that anyone that who disagrees with you and has the means ($$$) to promote those disagreements should not be able to do so.

People who are confident that their beliefs will win out in the market of ideas tend not to act that way.

> In other countries it is called bribery, in the USA it is normal.

So buying advertising is bribery now but operating a newspaper at a loss to continue to publish a liberal agenda is somehow perfectly fine?

> But that is an aberration, one that is hard to fix because both of the powerful parties in the USA are benefiting from this and effectively manage to keep out any outside contender that does not manage to take over one of the parties (like what just happened to the Republicans).

Interestingly Donald Trump spent less on advertising in the 2016 primaries than his opponents. IIRC, Jeb Bush spent something like $120M for 3 primary electoral votes and Hillary Clinton spent $1.2 B (yes billion!) in the general election (double Trump's amount). Now that is trying to buy an election.

> Or do you honestly believe that Trump embodies 'traditional conservative values'?

Ha! Not at all. But I believe he's done more to promote conservative ideas and ideals than any other politician of the past thirty years.

In particular reshaping the federal bench and the SCOTUS will have a lasting impact for the next 30-40 years.

> Which effectively limits the speech of those not so privileged that they have money to spare,

Breaking news, people with money can spend it more freely than people without it!

They also get to eat better food and live in safer neighborhoods. There's a lot of advantages to having money and there's not necessarily something wrong with it.

> ...who - coincidentally - also happen to be the ones disenfranchised by tricks like Gerrymandering, voter identification, roll purges and a host of other strategies.

Okay so now that you've given up on arguing against freedom of expression you're trying shift the topics.

> I read manufacturing consent the year it came out.

It shows.