As a long-time champion of free speech, I was shocked and appalled on Monday to discover that I’d been let go from my job at Linens ’n Things, simply because some of my so-called co-workers were “offended” by the lengthy manifesto I posted in the breakroom explaining my plan to exile them all to a system of prisons on the dark side of the moon. As a classical liberal, I believe in the free exchange of ideas—specifically, the idea that my coworkers should be forced into the shoddily-constructed rocket ship I’m building in my garage and blasted to the moon immediately—and I find this kind of clumsy censorship to be extremely troubling.
As many other anti-idiotarians have already pointed out, it’s a mistake to dismiss my “Moon Prison Manifesto” simply because I wrote it in crayon. Despite its appearance, it was a carefully documented work drawing from many well-regarded scientific sources. For example, I traced the design for my “Moon Prisoner Transport Rocket (ONE-WAY ONLY)” from a scan of the cover of The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon that was published in Wikipedia, which is more or less peer-reviewed. And where was the outrage in the Linens ’n Things boardroom when Guy Pearce made an entire feature film about Moon Prison? Of course I can provide a source for that assertion: I’m a rationalist. Strap in for a Moon Prison trailer, snowflakes:
Lock-Out’s prison is not technically on the moon, but if you think I care about nuance, you clearly haven’t read my “Moon Prison Manifesto.” So unless you were out manning the picket lines against Lock-Out back in 2012, spare me the fake outrage over my Official Moon Prison Top Secret Blueprint Briefcase and the “If Your Name Is On This List, I Hope You’re Looking Forward to Moon Prison” flyers I put under everyone’s windshield wipers. If the work environment is so “hostile” now that my co-workers know I am doing everything I can to exile them all to the moon as quickly as science allows, perhaps the solution lies not in firing me, an innocent bystander in all this, but in allowing the rest of the Linens ’n Things team to live out their natural lives in a way that’s more suited to my estimation of their potential: in an underground Moon Prison buried deep beneath the Korolev Crater. While this, too, may be a “hostile work environment,” in the sense that the moon is hostile to all human life, it will also ensure that Linens ’n Things is much less hostile to me, personally.
What’s more, I will be much less hostile once my work enemies are all sent to the moon, which will undoubtedly make Linens ’n Things a much more hospitable environment for our customers. (At least until Phase Two: Moon Prison for Customers.) Only by ensuring I face no negative consequences for my stated desire to send my co-workers to a prison on the moon can we build a truly free society in which everyone who looks and thinks exactly like me (i.e., me) participates in the marketplace of ideas without fear. On Earth, I mean. Moon prisoners are on their own.
