"I do not agree with what you have to say. . .

. . . So I'll try to hound you out of your ability to make a living" appears to be the new liberal replacement for the old Voltaire bon mot:

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

Take for example the case of Josh Olin: via Stacey McCain - It’s Come to This

Ace saw this and could scarcely believe it, but it’s true: Some guy with an online gaming site got fired — fired! — for a Tweet — a Tweet! — about L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling:

Josh Olin, the community and eSports manager at Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios, is no longer with the company in the wake of a series of remarks related to vilified Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Olin, a former community manager at Treyarch Studios (Call of Duty: Black Ops) and Riot Games (League of Legends), said on Twitter on Wednesday, “Here’s an unpopular opinion: Donald Sterling has the right as an American to be an old bigot in the security of his own home. He’s a victim.”
. . .
After Olin’s remarks hit Twitter, some of his followers — he has some 142,000 — challenged the original tweet. “When you were raised in an era where segregation was perceived as ‘right’, that will stick with some people,” Olin later said. “Doesn’t make him a monster.”
Olin later clarified that he believed Sterling was a victim because of “illegal wiretapping resulting in a MASSIVE, life altering breach in privacy.” Today, Olin tweeted he was “expressly not defending [Sterling's] remarks or actions.” 

This is insane: Person X says foul and offensive things in private conversation, which is recorded by Person Y. When the recording is made public, vehement condemnation descends on Person X. Everyone agrees his comments were offensive, but when Person Z says merely that Person X has a right to privacy and the right to his own opinion, unlimited personal destruction must be unleashed against Person Z because . . . ? Well, why, exactly?

By this logic, Hobby Lobby would be free to scour it's workers Facebook pages and Tweets, and fire those who don't agree with those support abortion, and some of birth control methods.  Moreover, they could fire people who do not support abortion, but choose to openly defend the rights of those support abortion etc.  This is insane. And it gets worse...

Also via Stacy: It’s Completely Out of Control Now

Having previously noted a guy who got fired — fired! — for a Tweet — a Tweet! — now we can report that a black Christian minister may lose his day job in California because of his sermons:

Pasadena city officials placed Public Health Director Eric Walsh on temporary paid administrative leave Thursday after they learned of controversial statements he had made about homosexuality and evolution in online videos and audio clips.
In sermons uploaded to various websites, Walsh, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, calls evolution “a religion created by Satan,” compares Disney to a “dark empire” of superstition and witchcraft, and criticizes homosexuality.
Walsh’s comments came to the city’s attention after he replaced Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black as Pasadena City College’s commencement speaker, said city spokesman William Boyer.

Note that Walsh is potentially being fired from his public job for comments he made totally outside his job's purview. Won't this imply that conservatives may purge the ranks of public officials of secular humanists whenever and wherever they may get the opportunity? Or will we suddenly discover, within the penumbras of the first amendment a constitutional right to espouse only liberal opinions?

And finally, I had wanted to mention this piece by Ace earlier, but never quite found the opening:

The Economics of Political Correctness

. . .In economics terms, political correctness would be called a "positional good," a good acquired not for its own inherent usefulness, but for what it signals about the owner. (He says "signalize" -- I guess this is a term of art.)

He notes that positional goods only retain their power to signal something about the owner -- that he is high-status -- so long as a relatively few people also possess the good. Once many, many people possess the good, it can no longer serve the function of being positional.

Think about any faddish mode of dress; the fad's ability to signal that the wearer is fashion-forward is destroyed the moment "everyone" begins wearing it. At that point, the fashion-chaser will have to find some new outrageous variation to wear in order to signal his high fashion status.

And of course he wouldn't be caught dead wearing the togs that everyone else is wearing.

Political Correctness works the same way. As 90% of the population has adopted the basic idea of tolerance, the basic ideas of tolerance can no longer serve as a positional good, as "everyone is wearing it now," and new, ever-more ostentatious signals of Moral/Intellectual High Status must be conceived.

Thus, for example: microaggressions. Begin by noting the "micro" that introduces the term; only those of exquisitely fine taste in Racism can detect such subtle notes. Rather like a wine connoisseur's acute palate permitting the detection and appreciation of trace notes of blackberry and even wet manure.

Those who wish to signal their absolute tip-top status in the #NoH8 camp now talk endlessly about microaggressions, because this signals their (self-believed) membership in a cognitive elite. Should "microaggressions" ever become a generally-accepted way to think about racial slights, they will immediately abandon this term, searching out a Hot New Fashion in Anti-Racism. . . 

Thus, tolerance has transmogrified into the new intolerance.