On January 14, 1514, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull against slavery.
On the same date in 1639, the first written constitution to create a government, the “Fundamental Orders,” was adopted in Connecticut.
The U.S. President, along with his most influential followers, has been banned from Twitter and from other social media while also facing yet another impeachment effort.
So who cares whether some silly realtor group imposes an anti-“hate speech” code on members?
Us.
We had better care.
Why?
Bureaucrats and politicians don’t act alone.
They are empowered by individuals who consent to, cheer for, do whatever they can to promote and enable repression. And by all the private organizations and institutions who do the same kind of enabling of repression.
The “hate speech” ban just imposed by the National Association of Realtors on its members to govern their conduct 24/7 (a “blacklisting,” says Reason’s Eugene Volokh) could impose fines up to $15,000 for violations. (I assume NAR would be unable to collect from members who don’t stick around to pay.)
The goal is to make at least the most submissive members struggle never to say anything that could offend some anti-speech client.
If you are a realtor with NAR: quit. Don’t cooperate. Don’t fund and don’t sanction these aspiring tyrants. You can find client leads another way. Join a competing organization that doesn’t ban speech. Or work with other realtors to form one.
Governments do not tyrannize in a social and cultural vacuum.
Do we want a world in which everyone who values freedom is silent — even “voluntarily” — for fear of “hatefully” offending the infinitely tender sensibilities of those who hate freedom of speech and any fundamental disagreement?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.
On January 13, 1833, United States President Andrew Jackson (pictured, top left) wrote to Vice President Martin Van Buren (pictured, top right) expressing his opposition to South Carolina’s defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis. Jackson insisted that “the crisis must be now met with firmness” and “the modern doctrine of nullification & succession put down forever.”
South Carolina had blamed protectionist high tariffs for the severity of the economic slump of the time, and Andrew Jackson’s compromise Tariff of 1832 was still too much special-interest “protectionism” for South Carolina, which threatened to nullify the law as unconstitutional. Jackson, a nationalist at heart, had no sympathy for dissidents in the southern states. (The tariffs were designed by northern politicians to encourage the growth of industry. The belief among most economists of that time was that such high “protective” tariffs favored certain businesses at the expense of the general consumer, particularly farmers and agricultural producers.) After the crisis subsided, tariffs were further reduced from the 1832 level, much lower than of 1828’s “Tariff of Abominations,” which had been signed into law by President John Quincy Adams — and written mainly by Martin Van Buren as a way to precipitate the election of Jackson.
Since the somewhat ambiguous end to the Nullification Crisis, the doctrine of state prerogatives — “states’ rights” — has been asserted by opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, proponents of California’s Specific Contract Act of 1863 (which nullified the Legal Tender Act of 1862), opponents of Federal acts prohibiting the sale and possession of marijuana in the first decade of the 21st century, and opponents of implementation of laws and regulations pertaining to firearms from the late 1900s up to 2013. State opposition to ObamaCare has also recently conjured up the issue.
On January 13, 1898, Émile Zola’s J’accuse exposed the Dreyfus affair.
Yes, you can make this stuff up.
But long before you could add your implausible idea to your farfetched script about the weird dystopian future or recent tyrannical past, some big-tech social-media company will have galumphingly implemented that notion.
Former Congressman Ron Paul said the following on Facebook, reprinting a column on his site:
“Last week’s massive social media purges — starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets — were shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas.
“The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense, and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two ‘offending’ Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.”
Then Facebook blocked Dr. Paul.
“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ Facebook has blocked me from managing my page,” he reported on Twitter, itself no sturdy redoubt. “Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”
Can humongous corporations really jerk people around so dishonestly? Is it legal?
Paul further argued that “this assault on social media” is not merely “a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans.”
“As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out,” explains the doctor, “this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.”
The narrowing of opinion down to what elites find acceptable is one definition of fascism: a no-opposition-allowed corporatist state.
I’m not making this up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.
On January 12, 1904, Henry Ford set a land-speed record of 91.37 mph on the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair in Michigan, driving a four-wheel vehicle, dubbed the “999,” with a wooden chassis but no body or hood. Ford’s record was broken within a month, but the publicity from Ford’s achievement was valuable to the auto pioneer, who had incorporated the Ford Motor Company the previous year.
On January 12, 1904, Henry Ford set a land-speed record of 91.37 mph on the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair in Michigan, driving a four-wheel vehicle, dubbed the “999,” with a wooden chassis but no body or hood. Ford’s record was broken within a month, but the publicity from Ford’s achievement was valuable to the auto pioneer, who had incorporated the Ford Motor Company the previous year.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are on a de-platforming binge.
The official rationale? Anyone “associated” with rioting must be expelled from virtual society.
Yet these social media outfits have hardly ousted endorsers of violence against innocents with anything like consistency. Iranian Boss-man Ali Khamenei still has a Twitter account. Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez, who has opined that some people “have no choice but to riot,” is still merrily blathering on Twitter.
The latest victim of Big Tech’s assault on speech is not an individual but a competing platform, Parler, whose support for free speech is its main selling point.
Apple has kicked Parler off its app store, and Parler got booted from the Google Play store, too.
Now Amazon, which provided storage for Parler, is kicking Parler off its servers with essentially zero notice because Amazon employees “were lobbying the company to disconnect Parler from AWS for hate speech,” which is like arguing that USPS or the Constitution must be shut down because it enables hate mail.
Apparently, once enemies of speech employed by a big-tech service provider scream “Deplatform so-and-so,” any erstwhile reservations of top management — Jeff Bezos, in this case — pop like a soap bubble under a hot iron.
Parler was one possible landing place for the President of the United States, booted from Twitter for allegedly inciting the capitol riot.* It now seems that Trump may find refuge at Gab.com, where his tweets expunged from Twitter have been republished.
But note: Gab has long been out in the wilderness, denied service on Google’s and Apple’s systems.
Folks who demand inclusion sure do practice exclusion well.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Rush Limbaugh deactivated his Twitter account in protest of Twitter’s action. And I deactivated mine as well — something I meant to do when Twitter blocked the New York Post’s truthful reporting on Hunter Biden during the election.
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[T]o destroy an error is to build up the truth that stands opposed to it.