“We had vision. We saw the vast possibilities of the oil industry, stood at the center of it, and brought our knowledge and imagination and business experience to bear in a dozen, in twenty, in thirty directions.” —John D. Rockefeller
An awesome integration from an interview with Higher Ground’s Matt Bateman:
“Look at Steve Jobs, who is a great model for, “Wow, what are the 21st Century skills that allowed him to integrate art and technology and create all these things?” But, then look at Frederick Douglas. It’s the same thing, and, these are two men who were separated by 200 years. Both of them are fundamentally autodidacts. They taught themselves in a context where the traditional education wasn’t serving them for very different ways and very different reasons. But, something is common there. They both had a deep knowledge and perspective on the world in a broad sense. They both were humanistic and understood communication — things that people say are 21st Century skills, but put that through a lens where you’re understanding that more deeply in terms of human nature, and that is what we want for children.”
The New Liberals podcast has an interview with Higher Ground Education’s Ray Girn and Matt Bateman. From the description:
“Our national conversation around childhood education usually revolves around or devolves into a sort of generic bifurcation of public vs private. But only when we really break a topic down into its constituent parts can we begin to see it more clearly. So what educational method might work best? Ray Girn and Matt Bateman of Higher Ground Education believe that the method they practice will best equip children to flourish as adults”
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” —Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World traces Sowell’s journey from humble beginnings to the Hoover Institution, becoming one of this era’s greatest economists, political philosophers, and prolific authors.
Philosopher Ben Bayer of the Ayn Rand Institute’s New Ideal speaks with Steve Simpson, Senior Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, on the “de-platforming” of conservative websites, Section 230, and censorship.
Related Reading:
Parler’s chief policy officer, the thoughtful Amy Peikoff, has an enlightening interview on Spiked Online on the app’s cancellation by Big Tech. According to Ms. Peikoff, “Parler’s mission has always been to allow people to express themselves freely to the maximum extent possible consistent with the law and with our own business purposes….” and that the answer to so-called “hate speech” is ” more speech.”
In regards to Parler differentiating itself from Twitter and Facebook, Peikoff states that Parler “want[s] to respect the privacy of users. Unlike with Twitter and Facebook, there’s no data mining, profiling, and targeting of ads based on profiles.” She adds: “The people on Parler are not the commodity.”
Peikoff also finds it “scary” that,
“Politicians are hauling tech CEOs before Congress and urging them to remove more and more content, even when the particular category of speech in question would be protected by the First Amendment or similar laws around the world.
“It’s a scary prospect, because we get to a stage where we are not in a completely free country.
In regards, to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for what some describe as “censorship by proxy”:
“Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg supports new regulations under which platforms would be required to issue so-called transparency reports. These are reports in which firms describe what they have done to deal with ‘objectionable content’, including speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
“He has gone further to suggest platforms should be required to prove their effectiveness at dealing with that content. If that ends up being put into law, it would represent the government trying to achieve, via regulation of social-media companies, what it could not achieve by directly censoring.”
Read the full Spiked Online interview here.
In an article on her personal website, Don’t Let It Go (named after a brilliant article by philosopher Ayn Rand), Peikoff writes on Zuckerberg’s proposals:
“Now recall that Mark Zuckerberg, in the most recent Big-Tech-CEO-Hearanguing before Congress, suggested amending Section 230 as follows:
- “Transparency” – each company enjoying Section 230 immunity would be required to issue periodic reports detailing how it dealt with certain types of “objectionable” content.
- “Accountability” –platforms enjoying immunity could also be held to some minimum level of “effectiveness” with respect to dealing with that “objectionable” content. (Recall he also bragged about how effective Facebook’s “hate speech” algorithms are.)
“Perhaps you think “transparency” at least, is good. But imagine what information ends up being collected and retained as ‘ordinary business records’ when complying with this sort of law, and read on.
Peikoff notes that though Parler was singled out by Amazon, Google, and others, the left-leaning Salon “blame[s] Facebook for playing a much larger role in facilitating the planning that led up to the 6th.
Writes Peikoff:
“….What does Salon hope to gain by blaming Facebook and showing sympathy to Parler? I argue that placing responsibility for user-generated content on platforms plays right into the totalitarians’ hands.
“With all the platforms now being blamed for user-generated content containing threats or incitement, the new Congress needs only to accept Mark Zuckerberg’s engraved invitation to amend Section 230 along the above lines. But, as we’ve learned in the last week, no system of guidelines enforcement is perfect. If Facebook, with all its algorithms and other resources could not ‘adequately’ deal with this content, then what company could?
“If it’s not actually possible to be good at this, to the standard that everyone seems to expect, and Zuckerberg is calling for all of us to be regulated according to that standard, then what exactly is he calling for (whether he realizes it or not)? For government to take over, to have arbitrary control. For all online platforms to operate only by permission of government, according to whatever standards politicians (or the Twitter mobs pulling their strings) deem fit—and this will be true with respect to both free speech and privacy.”
I would love to see a debate between Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Parler’s CPO Amy Peikoff on this vital issue.
For context, below is a video interview with Tucker Carlson on the targeting of Parler by Google, Apple, and Amazon:
Top Photo: FoxNews Tucker Carlson Show
Related:
The outspoken and independently minded, former Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, roundly criticized former CIA Director John Brennan, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and big tech “oligarchs” seeking to censor fellow Americans after the January 6 Capitol riot.
“The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear. The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and the oligarchs in big tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed our Capitol.”
[…]
“Now President Biden, I call upon you and all members of Congress from both parties to denounce these efforts by the likes of Brennan and others to take away our civil liberties that are endowed to us by our creator and guaranteed in our constitution. If you don’t stand up to these people now, then our country will be in great peril.”
Here is the entire video:
The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let us be clear, the John Brennan's, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are… pic.twitter.com/Q3VssCiz5l
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 26, 2021
Writes Abigal on “Joe Biden’s First Day Began the End of Girls’ Sports” in the WSJ:
Amid Inauguration Day talk of shattered glass ceilings, on Wednesday President Biden delivered a body blow to the rights of women and girls: the Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. On day one, Mr. Biden placed all girls’ sports and women’s safe spaces in the crosshairs of the administrative state.
The order declares: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the rest room, the locker room, or school sports. . . . All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.” The order purports to direct administrative agencies to begin promulgating regulations that would enforce the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision Bostock v. Clayton County. In fact, it goes much further.
In Bostock, the justices held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited an employer from firing an employee on the basis of homosexuality or “transgender status.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a 6-3 majority, took pains to clarify that the decision was limited to employment and had no bearing on “sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes”—all regulated under Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. “Under Title VII, too,” the majority added, “we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.”
The Biden executive order is far more ambitious. Any school that receives federal funding—including nearly every public high school—must either allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls’ sports teams or face administrative action from the Education Department. If this policy were to be broadly adopted in anticipation of the regulations that are no doubt on the way, what would this mean for girls’ and women’s sports?
“Finished. Done,” Olympic track-and-field coach Linda Blade told me. “The leadership skills, all the benefits society gets from letting girls have their protected category so that competition can be fair, all the advances of women’s rights—that’s going to be diminished.” Ms. Blade noted that parents of teen girls are generally uninterested in watching their daughters demoralized by the blatant unfairness of a rigged competition.
Related: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
Update: She also made an appearance on Tucker Carlson to discuss her views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Sz_7G_coY
Quart provides a list of the Biden administration’s 17 Executive Orders executed on the first-day of taking office. From “Biden signed more executive actions on day one than Trump, Obama, and Bush combined“:
An executive order requiring that people wear masks, and keep their distance from each other, on federal property.
The launch of a “100 Days Masking Challenge” to encourage Americans to wear masks.
The reversal of Trump’s decision to remove the US from the World Health Organization.
An executive order that creates the position of Covid-19 response coordinator and restores the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, a team in charge of pandemic response, within the National Security Council.
Calls to Congress to extend Covid-19 aid, and requests to various departments to extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums and pause payments for federal loans.
An “instrument” that will allow the US to re-join the Paris Agreement on climate change within 30 days.
An executive order reversing actions Trump took that Biden’s agencies judge to have been harmful to the environment, public health, or the national interest, and asking agencies to revise these standards to tackle climate change.
An executive order with the aim of “embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions.” This order will also disband the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission.
An executive order reversing a Trump administration order that excluded undocumented immigrants from the Census.
A memorandum directing officials to “preserve and fortify” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
An executive action repealing two proclamations, informally known as the “Muslim ban.” that restricted entry into the US from majority-Muslim countries.
An executive order revoking Trump’s “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement” and directing agencies to set immigration policies more “in line” with the Biden administration’s “values and priorities.”
A proclamation that will pause the construction of the border wall with Mexico and determine how to best divert those funds elsewhere.
A memorandum to extend a designation allowing Liberians who have been in the US for a long time to stay.
An executive order directing the government to interpret the Civil Rights Act as prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, not just race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
An executive order enacting new ethics rules for government officials.
An executive order reversing “regulatory process executive orders” enacted by the Trump administration.
A Washington Post article indicates that Trump did not incite the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 with his speech. Evidence suggests the attack was planned in advance:
“Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
“While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.
“U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.
[…]
“The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups.”
“This is the first step toward identifying and understanding that there was some type of concerted conspiracy here,” said one senior official with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is leading the investigation.
CNN reported the same conclusion:
“Evidence uncovered so far, including weapons and tactics seen on surveillance video, suggests a level of planning that has led investigators to believe the attack on the US Capitol was not just a protest that spiraled out of control, a federal law enforcement official says.”
Writes Democrat Jonathan Turley in The Hill:
Democrats are seeking to remove Trump on the basis of his remarks to supporters before the rioting at the Capitol. Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.
When I testified in the impeachment hearings of Trump and Bill Clinton, I noted that an article of impeachment does not have to be based on any clear crime but that Congress has looked to the criminal code to weigh impeachment offenses. For this controversy now, any such comparison would dispel claims of criminal incitement. Despite broad and justified condemnation of his words, Trump never actually called for violence or riots. But he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to raise their opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to back the recent challenges made by a few members of Congress. Trump told the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard.”
[…]
The damage caused by the rioters this week was enormous, however, it will pale in comparison to the damage from a new precedent of a snap impeachment for speech protected under the First Amendment. It is the very threat that the framers sought to avoid in crafting the impeachment standard. In a process of deliberative judgment, the reference to a snap impeachment is a contradiction. In this new system, guilt is not doubted and innocence is not deliberated.
Here is the full speech:
https://youtu.be/1OXFmnTtO6s
From “Opinion | How Will President Biden Govern?“:
Left to his own political instincts, Mr. Biden could be the man for this moment. He is a moderate liberal with sympathy for the working class who is inclined to reach across the political aisle. With a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House majority, he also has good practical reason to do so. At 78 years old, he realizes he is likely to serve only one term and could create an admirable legacy as the man who calmed the Trump-era furies. That, at least, is our hopeful case for the Biden years.
***
Yet Mr. Biden also comes to power with a Democratic Party whose ascendant progressives have other ideas. Their goal is to use the federal government as a battering ram to drive economic and cultural “transformation.” Progressives in the House and Senate, urged on by the Democratic media complex and Silicon Valley, view the defeat of Donald Trump as the opening to assert a new level of government control over the economy and cultural dominance over American society.
[…]
Mr. Biden’s rhetoric in particular has been more condemning than unifying. He was right to blame Mr. Trump for contributing to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but comparing Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to Joseph Goebbels is Trump-like excess. His speech writers seem infused with woke ideology, as they cast the riot and most other events in the language of identity politics. Mr. Biden’s early legislative priorities also seem odd given that he has no great election mandate and a narrowly divided Congress. Ron Klain, his new White House chief of staff, described the top priorities as addressing four “overlapping and compounding crises”—Covid, the economy, climate and racial justice. The rhetoric of “crisis” is the familiar progressive trope to scare the public into accepting radical change…
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore.
According to the outgoing Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo,
Our exhaustive documentation of the PRC’s actions in Xinjiang confirms that since at least March 2017, local authorities dramatically escalated their decades-long campaign of repression against Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, including ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Kyrgyz. Their morally repugnant, wholesale policies, practices, and abuses are designed systematically to discriminate against and surveil ethnic Uyghurs as a unique demographic and ethnic group, restrict their freedom to travel, emigrate, and attend schools, and deny other basic human rights of assembly, speech, and worship. PRC authorities have conducted forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families.
[…]
“…the People’s Republic of China (PRC), under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. These crimes are ongoing and include: the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor, and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. The Nuremberg Tribunals at the end of World War II prosecuted perpetrators for crimes against humanity, the same crimes being perpetrated in Xinjiang.”
Parler’s “role pales in comparison to social media behemoths like Facebook, which is used by nearly 70% of American adults, said Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the” left-wing group Media Matters according to an article in the left-leaning Salon.
From “Despite Parler backlash, Facebook played huge role in fueling Capitol riot, watchdogs say”:
“If you took Parler out of the equation, you would still almost certainly have what happened at the Capitol,” he told Salon. “If you took Facebook out of the equation before that, you would not. To me, when Apple and Google sent their letter to Parler, I was a little bit confused why Facebook didn’t get one.”
[…]
Carusone argued that Facebook “had a much bigger role” in the riot, noting that Media Matters and others “brought to their attention” numerous “red flags” they spotted in the lead-up to the riot, but Facebook managers “still didn’t do anything about it.”
“Apple and Google were being extraordinarily myopic and, frankly, hypocritical in singling out Parler,” he said. “Not because I want to defend Parler, but the math is the math. Facebook was worse.”
Though the article is filled with propaganda posing as news, it does as Amy Peikoff. suggests, provide “food for thought” on the hypocrisy of Apple, Amazon, and Google’s actions in canceling Parler.
On Jan. 6 a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol Building because they were upset with the results of the presidential election. How did this happen — in America? What, fundamentally, enabled this shameful event? What philosophic ideas and trends brought us here? And, what do they portend for the future of freedom? Join Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo as they analyze the moral meaning, the implications and the consequences of the attack.
Twitter removing Tweets at its fancy is not censorship if Twitter is doing so of its own free-will.
No one has the right to Tweet, it is a privilege. The right to determine what goes on the Twitter website belongs to the owners of Twitter. If someone (like a government bureaucrat) is forcing Twitter to remove certain Tweets, or forcing them to display certain Tweets, then they are censoring Twitter.
If Twitter bans a user from “speaking” on their platform they are free to speak elsewhere or create their own platform. Their right to freedom of speech remains unabridged.
How is this possible? It is because individual rights form a unity. There is only one right – the right to life – which is the freedom to take those actions necessary to preserve one’s life and pursue one’s happiness so long as one does not violate the rights of others.
All other rights (right to property, right to freedom of speech, etc.) are derivatives of the fundamental right to life and when properly defined do not contradict each other. Thus Twitter’s right to use and dispose of its property does not contradict one’s right to speak freely free from the initiation of physical force (such as threats of imprisonment or threats of physical violence).
Not so with the collectivist notion of “rights” which holds that a property owner does not have an inalienable right to their property, but may only use their property by permission of the collective, the “people”, the state. Ayn Rand brilliantly demonstrates the contradictions inherent in the collectivist notion of “censorship” when she notes:
“For years, the collectivists have been propagating the notion that a private individual’s refusal to finance an opponent is a violation of the opponent’s right of free speech and an act of “censorship.”
“It is “censorship,” they claim, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy.
“It is “censorship,” they claim, if businessmen refuse to advertise in a magazine that denounces, insults and smears them . . . . [“Man’s Rights” The Virtue of Selfishness, 98]
Or: It is censorship if Twitter refuses to display a Tweet on its website that it disagrees with.
Such a confused notion of censorship turns the meaning of censorship on its head:
“[This collectivist notion] means that the ability to provide the material tools for the expression of ideas deprives a man of the right to hold any ideas. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false or evil — that a TV sponsor has to finance commentators who choose to affront his convictions — that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press. It means that one group of men acquires the “right” to unlimited license — while another group is reduced to helpless irresponsibility.” [“Man’s Rights” The Virtue of Selfishness, 98]
Vivek Ramaswamy and Jed Rubenfeld write in the WSJ on “Save the Constitution From Big Tech“:
“Facebook and Twitter banned President Trump and numerous supporters after last week’s disgraceful Capitol riot, and Google, Apple and Amazon blocked Twitter alternative Parler—all based on claims of “incitement to violence” and “hate speech.” Silicon Valley titans cite their ever-changing “terms of service,” but their selective enforcement suggests political motives.”
As an example take this Tweet that apparently meets the criteria of safe content that presumably is not an “incitement to violence” or “hate speech.”:
Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. #Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen. 7/31/91#GreatReturnMarch
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 3, 2018
This Tweet has been up for several years.
Continuing from the WSJ article:
“Conventional wisdom holds that technology companies are free to regulate content because they are private, and the First Amendment protects only against government censorship.”
This is and remains true – as long as those companies are private not just in name (de jure) but in practice (de facto). But what happens when those companies have been co-opted by government officials?
“Google, Facebook and Twitter should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines. Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats, Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.”
“Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats” is the modus operandi or operating method of fascism.
Writes Ayn Rand on the essential characteristic of fascism:
“The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.
The dictionary definition of fascism is: “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism . . .” [The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957.]
“Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. [“The Fascist New Frontier,” The Ayn Rand Column, 98.]
The authors of the WSJ opinion piece then go on to discuss Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which allows website owners to remove user-posted content from their websites (what the authors falsely claim as censoring speech) while not being held liable for content posted by users that remain.
“It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” That’s what Congress did by enacting Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which not only permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech but immunizes them from liability if they do so.
“The justices have long held that the provision of such immunity can turn private action into state action. In Railway Employees’ Department v. Hanson (1956), they found state action in private union-employer closed-shop agreements—which force all employees to join the union—because Congress had passed a statute immunizing such agreements from liability under state law. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association(1989), the court again found state action in private-party conduct—drug tests for company employees—because federal regulations immunized railroads from liability if they conducted those tests. In both cases, as with Section 230, the federal government didn’t mandate anything; it merely pre-empted state law, protecting certain private parties from lawsuits if they engaged in the conduct Congress was promoting.”
“Section 230 is the carrot, and there’s also a stick: Congressional Democrats have repeatedly made explicit threats to social-media giants if they failed to censor speech those lawmakers disfavored. In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: ‘We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.’ New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: ‘Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.’ ”
“Such threats have worked. …It’s no accident that big tech took its most aggressive steps against Mr. Trump just as Democrats were poised to take control of the White House and Senate. Prominent Democrats promptly voiced approval of big tech’s actions, which Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal expressly attributed to ‘a shift in the political winds.’ “
A similar point was made a half-century ago by philosopher Ayn Rand writing in The Objectivist Newsletter:
“Censorship, in its old-fashioned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas — such, for instance, as sex, religion or criticism of government officials — an edict enforced by the government’s scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men’s minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of nonobjective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules — and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide.”
“No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?” [“Have Gun, Will Nudge” The Objectivist Newsletter, March, 1962]
Or in this case, signaling out and canceling a private company – Parler – which at the time of its cancellation was the most popular and most downloaded app on the internet – that provided an outlet that provides serious competition to the established “progressive” far-left tech and political orthodoxy.
What makes this all the more ominous is that the CEOs of social media tech companies are calling out for further regulation to violate their rights, which they find preferable to the pressure of continuous, arbitrary government “pressure” and threats.
What these Big-Tech CEOs do not realize is that when the door is fully opened for the government to partially violate the rights of tech-Companies through regulations, the threats will only become greater, until they only own their companies in name, with the actual company board decisions being made by Congress and the actual CEOs becoming government bureaucrats in another alphabet government agency, so that they become little more than public utilities.