Wouldn’t it be great if there were a platform, a medium that was accessible by all, where differing opinions could be expressed? Where no ideology was privileged and no ideology suppressed? A kind of Mars Hill. One question though. Should this forum be public or private? If it’s private we have a problem. The owner would have the right to determine what, if anything crosses his line. If he allows people to agitate for genocide, if he leaves room for Neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists, child trafficking apologists, his customers might abandon ship. If, on the other hand, he doesn’t allow such things, suddenly the medium isn’t accessible by all.
Maybe then it would be best if this platform was owned by the government. That way no owner could determine what crosses a line and what doesn’t. But then you have this problem- the taxes I pay are being used to help propagate ideas I find reprehensible. Now Holocaust survivors’ taxes are building a platform for Holocaust deniers. Atheists are being taxed to pay for Christians to promote the gospel. Christians are being taxed to pay for atheists to evangelize their own unbelief. Child trafficking victims are being taxed to finance the propagation of the ideas of child trafficking apologists. Now what?
This conundrum, you may think, is being brought to you by the raging controversy over President Trump and the Sith Lords of Social Media. This controversy has revealed differing perspectives. A few of us want to do away with foolish public accommodation laws altogether so that decisions about who we want to do business with can be made freely. Crazy I know, letting people make up their own minds. A few of you believe the government should make all such decisions. Most of you hypocritically believe others should be forced to do business against their will and that you should not.
My point, however, is not about social media, or bakeries being forced to bake cakes for faux marriages. Rather it is about the largest platform in the country, which is controlled by the government, that actually exercises iron-clad control over content that is deeply offensive to many and that taxes citizens to pay for it all. It is the government school system. It is as if conservatives, fed up with Twitter’s silencing of opposing views are told “If you don’t like it, build your own social network.” And “Oh, by the way, we’re still going to make you pay for this social network.” Only this platform costs three-quarters of a trillion dollars every year. Trillion, with a t.
Conservatives are outraged over Twitter’s heavy-handed control over content, and at peace with the far more damaging iron-fisted control over education exercised by the government. We clutch our pearls over the President, the President I tell you, losing his posting privileges but think nothing of millions of little children being taught they are nothing but sophisticated germs, the fruit of random collisions of time, space and energy, being taught that they can decide for themselves whether they are little boys or little girls, being taught by the mere failure to mention His name, that Jesus doesn’t matter.
The Dark Lords of Silicon Valley are not to be trusted. They are disingenuous and diabolical. They are, however, mere teacup poodles nipping at the heels of liberty while the state is a rabid, steroid fueled Bull Mastiff. And we, fools that we are, think we can pet it into submission, train it into obedience, feed it into domestication. While its jaws descend upon our throats.