So, Overlord Musk decided to have a democratic poll of whether to bring Trump back to twitter, and the idea won with a narrow margin, so The Donald is effectively unbanned on twitter. And of course, the leftist sphere is freaking out over this, acting like twitter should be shut down and crap.
Before I get into ripping on my fellow lefties, I do want to give my own personal thoughts on bringing Trump back. I'm going to be honest, I've been uneasy about banning him, given I am the free speech absolutist I am. Still, I have come around to the idea, given he did effectively incite an insurrection, and I'm basically going to give a standard "limits of free speech 101" argument that applies in our constitution. Basically, you're free to say what you want with few restrictions, but sometimes there comes times where saying certain things can present a "clear and present" danger to the public. Ya know, like shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater and causing a panic. I would argue Trump's behavior actually did arguably cross that kind of line, given his actions produced an insurrection at the capitol and it's been established that he intended as such. So it did make sense that twitter banned him. I would argue his behavior did meet the "clear and present danger" standard. And that said, bringing him back? Eh, given we're 2 years past that, I can see doing so, but I'm not really enthusiastic about it.
That said, now I kind of want to focus more on the leftie reaction. The left is now starting to say things about how it's good twitter is dying and how in the care of Overlord Musk, that it's a threat to society, and whether we can do anything to remove twitter from the internet. And suddenly, the right is starting to be like "but what about the 'ItS a PrIvAtE coMpAnY iT cAn Do WhAt It WaNtS"...uh...the left never cared. Like, this is why i am so against the left on its censorship sprees in recent years, and why I view wokeism as as much of a threat to society that I do. Because here's the thing. They never cared about private companies doing what they wanted. They just cynically used that argument to justify censoring people. These guys don't care about principles or rights or rule of law. They literally just wanted to be able to censor viewpoints they didn't agree with, and think the end justifies the means. They are illiberal and have dictatorial tendencies. And this is why, as a more principled left libertarian leftie, I generally opposed this. Because I have an extensive political science education, and even took a class all about the first amendment once. And I understand it from a philosophical and legal perspective, and largely agree with its perspective on speech. If you dont allow people to say whatever they want, youre basically putting limits on free speech, and can we really trust people to police what others can say? I would argue no. It just leads to one group telling others what is and isn't acceptable. It should only be in the most grave circumstances that this freedom is infringed upon. Like posing a "clear and present danger" to society by inciting a mob to act violently and attack the capitol.
And sure, the constitution only applies to state actions, but as I stated yesterday in talking about domestic abuse and the freedom to say no, and private companies technically do have the ability to police content as they want. I largely believe they SHOULDN'T. Because I believe private entities have just as much of an ability to restrict peoples' freedom as the state, just by leveraging unequal relationships in their favor. Employers can control employees' actions outside of work via speech, and you can be fired for what people say online. And wokies like to leverage this to get people fired for breaking their idea of what decorum should be. Interpersonal relationships can also be leveraged to police behavior. And the big argument I always had with the "libertarian right" is that they generally overblow the threat of tyranny from states, while turning a blind eye to private tyranny. A lot of "small government" conservatives are quite authoritarian when it comes to private relationships. We saw this with Charle Murray and his ideal society with a UBI. And while I see UBI as counteracting that in situations where money is the big factor of leveraging control, a company like twitter leveraging their position as owning a social media platform can silence people at will. And we should be concerned about this.
The left actually used to care about this. Remember how Obama pushed for net neutrality because he saw the clear problems with the corporations that control the internet prioritizing content and how this represented a real danger to free speech? My own views on social media companies are a lot closer to that. Im not sure how much we can actually regulate this without destroying article 230 and the foundation of the open internet, but im not gonna actively cheer on censorship.
But the "woke left" that leverages right wing arguments does so cynically and hypocritically. They were just using the right's logic against them, and in a sense selling out to the right in the process. Something I always disagreed with. And they really just cared about the end result of censoring groups they didn't like, something I disagreed with. And now that a right winger owns twitter, theyre abandoning the argument and trying to find a justification to punish twitter for daring to give someone "free speech". Now, i aint really gonna defend musk here. I think he's a raging jerk if that makes any sense at all. He's been flat out abusive to his staff and its clear hes running the platform into the ground. And as I said above, I have potential issues with bringing Donald back. I aint FULLY against it, but given he DOES represent that "clear and present danger" to the country, perhaps he should stay gone. But at least I'm honest about my reasonings here and I base them in sound principles that also govern the first amendment. But let's face it, lefties never cared. They value conformity to their ideas over freedoms, or principles, or what have you. They think of the result they want, and reason their way
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