People who aren’t already the President of their things should keep their traps shut.

You know who should be allowed to blog?

Presidents of things.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justice.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justices before working in the White House.

You know who shouldn’t be allowed to blog?

Employees of things.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job but are vulnerable to managerial whimsy.

Such is Ed Whelan’s “argument.” If you work for a company that manufactures cat food, you shouldn’t be able to pseudonymously blog about your liberal politics if your boss is a conservative, because “revealing [your] identity breaches no ethical norm,” so everyone you argue with has the “right to tell [on you], for whatever reason it suit[s them] to tell it—including no particular reason at all other than that [they find] it useful at the moment [they do] it.” If your boss fires you because he disapproves of what he now knows to be your views, it’s your fault for having them while not being the President of your thing.  (Because when you’re the President of your thing, only you can fire you for your views.)

But if you’re not the President of your thing? That makes you an employee; which, following Whelan’s logic, means that you don’t have anything important to say, because you can’t have anything important to say, because people who haven’t already risen to being the President of their thing are worthless people. They shouldn’t be allowed to blog because, when they chatter about their unimportant views, the compel Presidents of things, like Ed Whelan, to listen and respond to them—even though whatever it is they say is, by definition, worthless.

Because anything written by anyone with a threatenable job is, by definition, worthless.

Unless, that is, they have “extraordinary circumstances in which the reason to use a pseudonym would be compelling.” Having “extraordinary circumstances” indicates that someone’s extraordinary enough to acquire high-caliber circumstances, which means that—despite not being the President of their thing—they are somehow important. What kinds of circumstances does Whelan consider extraordinary? Hard to tell what they are, but we know what they can’t be: they can’t be “private, family, [or] professional,” because when those were offered as reasons not to out someone, Whelan went ahead and, without ever inquiring as to what those reasons might be, outed publius anyway.

That can only mean that “extraordinary circumstances” never fall into the categories of private, family, or professional matters, otherwise the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center would’ve violated his own ethical standards by outing someone who potentially had circumstances of the sort; and, being that he’s the President of an ethical thing, the laws of logic preclude from being the case. As for how he became the President of an ethical thing, I think we have a blueprint for how that happened:

It begins by acquiring a small amount of power, then using it to silence your critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut. Then, you acquire a bit more power and use it silence your new critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut.  Then:

Rinse.

Lather.

Repeat.

Because that’s what Whelan’s done. He has yet to indicate what his preferred outcome to this was—that is, whether he wanted to see publius lose his job; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet and provided no health insurance, so that he might have to choose between feeding his family or bringing one sick member of it to the doctor—but we do know that one reason he outed publius was because he had tired of people thinking less of his character, his integrity, and his intelligence on the basis of his exchanges with publius.

Given the reaction to this episode, you almost feel sorry for him. Because bing the President of a thing is much like being the Captain of a thing, and what Whelan did here was very brave indeed. In order to prevent the enemies of the U.S.S. Reputation from destroying it, Captain Whelan did the noble thing and hit self-destruct.

(x-posted.)

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

Yeah. Except that there's no evidence yet to suggest that there are any consequences to outing liberal bloggers.

I've written Jonathan Adler at Volokh to suggest that he do something other than blog politely out of sight. I doubt he will: NRO is too good exposure for him to resign in protest over a mere abuse of the first amendment.

[M. Bouffant]

Excellent expression of the real issues here. Class warfare. (Real class war, the wealthy attacking the less powerful, admit it or not.) The fact that Whelan essentially takes wing-nut welfare to do just what publius said he does sums it all up.

P. S.: No actual First Amendment issue here, the gov't. hasn't done anything. It's just some jerk's inability to reason or argue in his own defense.

[Jonathan M]

I find it quite bizarre that in America you can apparently freely sack people because you don't like their face. Because this is what we are, in effect, talking about. Liberal blogging, unless blogging directly and at great length about the company you work for, has nothing to do with your work performance and presumably is down to the fact that conservatives in positions of power can freely sack someone whose politics they disagree with.

In the UK you'd find yourself at an employment tribunal for that kind of thing. Wrongful or even constructive dismissal.

I can see where issues of class come into the question of the ethics of pseudonymous blogging but I also think that there are ethical issues within the blogosphere. Namely one of equal playing fields. When the racefail thing went down in the genre blogosphere you had people sniping at people who used their real names. Saying really horrible things. Making really horrible accusations. Now if you google those people's names and dig through you'll come across those accusations. Until the blogs containing them die, that person will forever be associated with those accusations. But there's no turnaround for exactly the reason you cite : "oh I could be fired from my job so I'm fully entitled to blog pseudonymously". There's a power imbalance there : Some people blog under their own names because they're willing to stand by their words and take the risk that, for good or ill, their online behaviour will follow them. Others refuse to take that risk and yet they are still willing to fuck with the reputations of others by saying potentially libelous things about them.

To my mind, if you believe what you believe then you should be willing to stand by what you say and have those words follow you. Partly because other people do have that courage and partly because this is something that honest people do.

Yes, it's an unjust system and people shouldn't have to risk their jobs in order to blog but at the same time, that's the system and if you haven't the wontons to stand by your beliefs then I personally would question your commitment to those beliefs in the first place.

[David R. Block]

That's pretty elitist list there, Scott. Doesn't do much for that first amendment thingy, either.

But Whelan should not have done what he did. And he came off (to me, anyway) as an elitist jerk in the process.

So why should only elitist prigs have blogs?

[Ahistoricality]

Satire Detection Fail