Social Networks are Common Carriers

Twitter and Facebook are not being compelled to speak. They host others' speech. No one thinks that when Donald Trump tweeted it was really Twitter's message, just like they don't think Apple is speaking when an Antifa thug uses an iPhone or that Microsoft is speaking when a neo-Nazi uses Outlook. 

If AT&T just started banning Democrats when they expressed standard issue Democrat political views, you don't think there'd be a problem? Of course, there would. People would lose their shit because no one thinks AT&T is speaking when Democrats use their service to communicate their abhorrent views.

Moreover, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube advertise themselves as places where people can discuss what they want and then, in violation of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing implied into their terms of service (and every contract), selectively censor political speech they don't like and refuse to tell you how you violated their terms of service. If they want to limit you to cat pictures or videos of you dumping a bucket of ice water on your head they should be upfront about that. 

Instead, Twitter, for example, holds itself out as a "an open service that’s home to a world of diverse people, perspectives, ideas, and information." Facebook is a social network, or "an online community of individuals who exchange messages, share information, and, in some cases, cooperate on joint activities." That's all people want to do.

What Twitter and Facebook and YouTube don't do is advertise as places you can submit messages and if they're interesting enough then it'll be published in their finite space - which is how newspapers work. You can post what you like and then if some troll complains that you aren't woke enough, they'll ban you until you grovel enough to be allowed back in. Or they won't. It doesn't really matter. They don't edit posts at all. There's no editorial discretion. If they decide you were naughty because of your politics, then you're done and they won't tell you why.

J6 nonsense

I think Trump genuinely believes the Democrats stole the election from him despite what he was told. Joe Biden hardly campaigned and Harris is widely disliked. How could that bum win? There were all sorts of Covid "emergency" measures that states implemented that made cheating difficult to detect and there wasn't much effort to detect it ahead of the election. The media and big tech conspired to keep the Hunter Biden story out of the news. The media wasn't going to treat Trump fairly as usual, but it also made sure anti-Biden news was limited. They weren't going to allow a 2016 repeat. The late night ballot dumps look suspicious, even if they're normal (maybe they shouldn't be!)

Not that there was voter fraud, fake ballots, etc, but the appearance of impropriety (or irregularity) existed, particularly to Republicans who take it on faith that Democrats cheat to win close elections, like it's an article of faith among Democrats that Republicans try to prevent minorities from voting and only win by oppressing minorities (See Stacey Abrams). The thing about faith is that it doesn't require evidence. 

I don't think the J6 Committee will be able to make its case unless it can show Trump ordered people to storm the Capitol or materially supported in some way to do that. If that evidence existed, we'd have seen it already. Trump telling people things that made them angry is not enough, it's not incitement, and it's not news. It's certainly not news that Trump wanted Pence to refuse the disputed electors and have the house vote on alternative slates of electors. The use of novel legal arguments and an untested political strategy is not a crime. 

Asking politicians to do something they probably don't have the authority to do is naughty, but it isn't criminal. If it is, then pressuring Joe Biden to forgive billions of dollars in student loans, which he lacks the authority to do, is a crime.

Musk DOES Get it

The left has, for some time now, made a concerted effort to punish standard issue conservative political or traditional religious speech. It started by labeling it harassment and then "hate" and now it outright pretends it is violence. It has done this in service to its political agenda which doesn't tolerate dissent mostly because its ideas are bad and can't survive competition. 

The left, disingenuously for the most part, claims the right just wants to use the n-word on Twitter, whereas the right mostly wants the right to speak freely about our society without being barred. The censors can't, or refuse to, distinguish between those two things. Again, many of the left act as if standard political speech it dislikes is the equivalent of the n-word. Have any mainstream conservative folks been kicked off of social media for excessive use of the n-word? I can't think of any. 

The Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter for political satire. @libsoftiktok suspended for showing leftists saying what they really believe. Was PraegerU demonetized on Youtube for repeatedly using the n-word? Why was the NY Post suspended for sharing the Hunter Biden laptop story that is now admittedly true? How many people were kicked off Facebook for saying Covid started in a lab? We're not talking about spam. We're not talking about harassment or bullying or true threats or obscenity. 

Musk is talking about folks who just want to participate in the public discourse - to have opinions about Covid that the government hasn't sanctioned, state basic biological facts, or simply make political arguments against political opponents, even if they don't want to hear it. We want to be able to criticize people or satirize institutions or events. The left wants to operate without criticism, so it labels it hate speech or misinformation. Criticism isn't hate. Is repeatedly labeling inconvenient facts as "misinformation" any different than Trump calling something he dislikes "Fake News?" Not really. 

The "experts" cited in this article are not talking about moderation. They're talking about censorship. They're worried if Twitter lets people say things our Ivy League betters don't like, bad things will happen, like Trump may get elected. Most of their examples have serious causation problems, too. It's also clear they're on one side and the great unwashed is on the other. Better keep THOSE PEOPLE at bay. THOSE PEOPLE aren't smart enough to discern truth from make belief. THOSE PEOPLE may drink fish bowl cleaner if we don't protect them from themselves. These censors are just bullies trying to protect their turf. 

The answer to speech you don't like is speech you do like. That "times have changed" doesn't change that universal truth. There's a lot of "this time is different" in that argument that has no logical stopping point. IT justifies anything. It's amazing how often the "this time is different" excuse to used to doing things that shouldn't be done, like destroying the village to save it.

Free speech proponents understand that we cannot get closer to truth without a back and forth debate on particular subjects even if that means some wrong or bad ideas get distributed in the public square. It's worth it, even if some people go too far. Freedom of thought, if it means anything, means the right to be wrong about things. Make your best argument and let's see who prevails. 

No more lockdowns and mandates

 The problem with the lockdowners is that they don't seem to the understand that if you want to impose these types burdens on people, then the burden of proof is on you to justify them. 

While "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer to a scientific inquiry, it isn't grounds to impose masks or vaccines mandates or lockdown measures. That was the fundamental error many jurisdictions made at the beginning of the pandemic. Using a lack of knowledge or understanding to impose lockdown restrictions. In other words, it wasn't science that was the basis of these measures, it was fear. They knew early on that, however, that these measures weren't required and yet they pushed them anyway. That's why the public health establishment and certain politicians who saw opportunity in the lockdowns, have continually tried to scare people to keep the panic going. 

Even though fear is a great motivating factor, it isn't science and it was never enough to justify continuing these mandates, especially now that science does clearly show that they were wrong all along - masks are not required and unvaccinated children have much lower risk from Covid that even vaccinated adults do. 

But much of the damage has been done. The "cure" was worse than the disease, so if you still think masks are required everywhere, and especially in schools, just take the opportunity to shut your hole. The reckoning is coming, and it's coming for you.

Vaccines work. Masks are almost useless

If you believe masks are effective at stopping the virus, then feel free to wear one and make your kid wear one. If don't believe that, then don't. By now everyone should know the risks. 

If you think your mask works only if everyone else is wearing a mask, then you really don't think that masks work. If you think vaccinated folks need to wear masks still then you don't really think vaccines work.  

As always, freedom is the answer! People know better about their own health and risk tolerance than any government bureaucrat or politician, or even their damn neighbors. Freedom also means the right to be wrong. People will underestimate their own risks and they'll be forced to deal with the consequences, which is mostly likely just mild cold symptoms.  People are, first and foremost, responsible for themselves (and their children). It is not my responsibility to the rest of society to make sure they don't get sick. Vax up and wear a mask if you're worried. Or just stay home. That's your responsibility, not mine. 

It is also not government's responsibility to force people to get vaccinated or wear masks if they don't see the benefit. It is the governments job to provide sufficient information to the public so we can make our own informed decisions. During this Covid crisis, our government has regularly tried to manipulate us and force us into nonsensical behaviors due to fear that they'll get blamed  for bad outcomes. We're not the government's children. Deal with us as adults. Give us information and even make some recommendations and let us decide. Top down, once-size-fits-all micromanagement of our lives never works and it provides way too much authority to government that it won't willingly relinquish. 

Again, Freedom is the answer.

RIP RUSH

When I was in high school in the early 90s, my father told me that he found someone on the radio that said the things that we believe. Even at that young age, I knew the media was biased, and had never heard anyone like Rush before. He quickly became one of my heroes. 

We tried calling into his show on a number of occasions, but never go through. 

My father passed away a couple of years ago. Today, he finally gets to talk to Rush. 

RIP RUSH

Blaming "System Racism" is a cop-out

Princeton gets hoist by its own petard after admitting it is racist.

Blaming "systemic racism" is a cop-out anyway and this is more proof. People who claim these things never offer proof of an actual ongoing racist system, but instead blame past racism in general for problems of today or cite racial disparities of one type or another without proof of causation, let alone correlation. It's just the assumed cause. Princeton is trying to have it both ways. They want to be all woke and blame racism without taking any personal responsibility for their own racism which they, of course, now deny because actual federal dollars are at stake.

It's as if no one is ever to blame for their own actions. There's literally no evidence of racism in most of the police deaths, like George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, but they get to blame racism anyway because it's embedded in the "system." In the old days, they just blamed "the Man" who was always holding people down oppressing them. But under this newer rubric, no one is responsible except the "system" and leftists don't have to actually prove anything with evidence. It's bootstrapping of the highest order: America is racist, so everything that happens is a result of racism. Q: What's the evidence of this systemic racism? A: Everything - it can only be caused by racism. It helps the leftists that they explicitly reject logic and reason and their arguments are more proof of that.