> while the views that usually result in people being fired are fringe and, in a word, vile
That is not true, a large majority don't agree with many radical lefts views, but would still get fired if they voiced those opinions publicly.
For example, should trans people compete in sports of their chosen gender? Almost two thirds thinks that they shouldn't, but saying that will get you labelled anti-trans and fired from many jobs, even though you might support trans-rights completely in every other regard.
> It would be deeply unpopular and ineffective, but I don't see why it should be illegal.
It would be extremely effective as most business owners are right wing. They just don't do it because they don't care what their workers thinks, they care more about profits. But if they banded together and made this policy at every right wing owned business you would see huge consequences, as the workers can't really choose to go somewhere else.
What jobs would that get you fired from? Name one.
(this is precisely the issue with "cancel culture" discourse that Popehat identifies: there's two phenomena, one of people being removed from their jobs or facing actual life consequences. This is thankfully usually rare, and usually applies only to relatively powerful people who say relatively awful things[0]. There's also a second phenomena of people receiving any sort of criticism for a controversial statement, and panic-mongers conflate the two, to suggest that any criticism is an attempt to silence you or ruin your life. That's simply not the case. Yeah, you'll get criticized online for saying trans-women shouldn't compete in women's sports. You'll probably also be criticized for the opposite view. You're not going to get fired for either, unless you're explicitly making an issue out of it in your workplace, and then the issue isn't the particular view, it's being disruptive).
[0]: And to preempt this, yes I know it sometimes results in normal people losing their jobs. This is unusual, even among the relatively rare aspect of people losing their livelyhood.
It would be deeply unpopular and ineffective, but I don't see why it should be illegal.