CAN’T STAND FREE SPEECH? YOU’RE FIRED! A proposal for dealing with the young bigots now holding publishers and newspapers hostage:

So here is an idea — and I give it out there for free. One of the great moments of Ronald Reagan’s presidency was his firing of the airline traffic controllers. In August 1981, these federal employees held the public of the United States government and public hostage. Their unreasonable demands were jeopardizing the American public’s travel plans at peak holiday travel season. In one of the great stands of his presidency, Reagan overnight fired 11,000 air traffic controllers who had refused to return to work unless their demands were met. New, non-recalcitrant staff were immediately brought in to replace the deeply replaceable workers and business soon returned to normal. The President also instituted a lifetime ban on rehiring of these workers.

If publishing house after publishing house and paper after paper is going to be held hostage by the young army of bigots like the anti-Rowling brigade it is high time that somebody made an example of them. The people who cannot bear to work at a publishing house that publishes The Ickabog are a very good and agreeable place to start. There are at least 100 people at Hachette who have now identified themselves as ignorant of the tenets of a free society and utterly unsuited to the industry they have chosen to work in.

I don’t know that there should be a lifetime ban on them working in the publishing industry. Some among their number might grow up. But there should certainly be a large number of much-desired job vacancies coming up at Hachette soon. 

At some point, employers in a wide variety of industries are going to have to push back against all of the safetyism that has been programmed into their young employees.