Name: Would AOC Blacklist 73 Million Americans? | Ben Johnson
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Would AOC Blacklist 73 Million Americans? | Ben Johnson

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Employees should be judged on performance, not political orthodoxy.Should a qualified employee’s political views determine whether he getsor keepsa job? For a growing number of Americans, they already do. As :[] a Pennsylvania police chief was&nbsp;&nbsp;by his “progressive mayor” after 26 years on the job. His offense? The chief’s&nbsp;wife &nbsp;a Facebook message supporting President Donald Trump.&nbsp;Lancaster Police Chief Jarrad Berkihiser might be the latest victim of cancel culture, but he won’t be the last.&nbsp;The article was written before the 2020 election. Since then the female African-American police chief of Portsmouth, Virginia, lost her job. The town’s progressive leadership Angela Greene after she pressed charges against rioters who decapitated and a Confederate statue, in the head. The injury left the man temporarily , caused him to as his swelled dangerously, and required months of therapy to teach him to again. City officials fired Greene on , a little more than two months after placing her on paid leave. She said she plans to sue.Greene will have company in the unemployment line, and not merely because of another round of proposed COVID-19 lockdowns or impending . A number of political figures have in effect declared a against the Trump administration: They will make no distinction between the 45th president and those who “enable” him. For instance, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Reich a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to discover the names of anyone who helped “enable” the Trump administration.Rep. , D-N.Y., tweeted of the Trump Accountability Project, an effort to blacklist “Trump sycophants” to their employment prospects. (After the blacklist backlash, TAP announced last Thursday that “this project will no longer be active.”)“Employers considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values,” former Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan, threatening not only Republicans but those who hire Republicans.When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.— Robert Reich (@RBReich)Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)Depending on how broadly one wants to define “helped,” this description could encompass Americans. It could go well beyond Trump administration alumni to include anyone insufficiently supportive of , and perhaps the whole point is to instill the maximum level of fear in the greatest number of political apostates.This is alarming. Americans of all political backgrounds should seek to reverse this lamentable trend for several reasons.First, threatening to lock someone out of “” over run-of-the-mill political differences normalizes discrimination. While some find it more acceptable to discriminate against people based on their beliefs rather than immutable factors such as ethnicity, sex, or gender identity, legitimizing employment bias against any group of bias against every group. Worse, researchers have that Americans already indulge political animosity “to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race.”Second, employment bias denies people the opportunity to share their God-given gifts and talents with others. It deprives their families of an adequate livelihood, entirely out of spite.But discrimination does not simply hurt those who are discriminated against. It also violates the bigot’s self-interest. Viewpoint discrimination in the workplace denies a firm the most productive talent on the basis of often-irrational biases. That lowers the office’s efficiency, productivity, and ingenuity.Two researchers, and Sean Westwood, bore this out by conducting an experiment that allowed participants to award scholarships to either the most qualified applicant or a student who shared the same political views. When it came to , they , “partisanship simply trumped academic excellence.” Discriminating against the best and the brightest leaves bigoted firms competing for second place.Politically prejudiced hiring also harms businesses in another way. One source the late economist Gary S. Becker’s groundbreaking work on the economics of discrimination this way:Suppose that an employer does not want to employ members of a particular group even though these workers are as productive as any others. If the firm has to pay all workers the same wage it will simply not employ members of the disadvantaged group. However, if it is possible to pay these workers less than those from other groups the firm then faces a trade-off: it can employ members of the disadvantaged group at lower wages and thus increase its profitability, or it can discriminate and employ only workers from the high wage group even though this will mean lower profits. Discrimination in the latter case therefore imposes a cost on the firm.Finally, if the neo-McCarthyites really believe that President Trump and his supporters are revolutionaries, the last thing they should want is for this group to find itself unemployable, aggrieved, and awash in free time. If they honestly think that “cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” it would behoove them to see their political enemies busy themselves punching time clocks, creating goods and services, and entangling themselves in the joys of family life. One can only speculate how better employment prospects might have thwarted previous revolutions. What if Adolf Hitler had been a ? What if Fidel Castro had been a ?For economic as well as philosophical and moral reasons, we should oppose viewpoint discrimination in secular education and employment. As I at American Greatness:We must stand up for Jarrad Berkihiser. We must demand our right to offend and be offended. We must insist on being judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.Among those rights is the right to be judged on our performance, not our political orthodoxy.This page relies heavily on JavaScript.Please, and reload the page to enjoy our modern features.Open CommentsThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE.Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author and mention that this article was originally published on FEE.org

Employees should be judged on performance, not political orthodoxy.Should a qualified employee’s political views determine whether he getsor keepsa job? For a growing number of Americans, they already do. As :[] a Pennsylvania police chief was&nbsp;&nbsp;by his “progressive mayor” after 26 years on the job. His offense? The chief’s&nbsp;wife &nbsp;a Facebook message supporting President Donald Trump.&nbsp;Lancaster Police Chief Jarrad Berkihiser might be the latest victim of cancel culture, but he won’t be the last.&nbsp;The article was written before the 2020 election. Since then the...

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Rev. Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a libertarian economic think-tank dedicated to the "economic, ethical and legal principles of a free society." FEE publishes books, daily articles, and hosts seminars and lectures. Founded in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, Henry Hazlitt, David Goodrich, Donaldson Brown, Leo Wolman, Fred R. Fairchild, Claude E. Robinson, and Jasper Crane, the foundation is the oldest free-market think tank in the United States.

Would AOC Blacklist 73 Million Americans? | Ben Johnson

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