All his proposal would do is expand state interference in speech.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is the newest candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination. You can read about his agenda in The Wall Street Journal. It’s heavy on trendy populism, but his embrace of meritocracy and economic growth is an improvement over the dour dead-end statism of the “post-liberal” right.

But his most unique proposal, one that will probably sound enticing to many people, is a terrible one — and one that would expand state interference in speech and end up boomeranging on those it claims to protect: //

Why should any business owner be forced to hire a person who holds views they find ethically abhorrent? Political expression is already protected by the First Amendment. What Ramaswamy proposes is transforming the negative liberty of free speech into a positive “right,” which is to say, a “right” that compels others to accept, endorse, and sometimes fund political viewpoints they disagree with.