December 20, 2022 Updated: December 21, 2022
A sign at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2022. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo)
Commentary
The whole thing seems absolutely incredible.
Not that we didn’t suspect it. But it’s even worse than we
could’ve imagined. The FBI/CIA/DHS and other existing and former agents at Twitter had
their own messaging channel at the company. They were continually leaning on
management to throttle and block accounts. They weren’t shy about it.
They even gave Twitter management top-level government
security clearances. Then, the FBI paid $3.5 million for staff time at Twitter.
This means that the national security bureaucracy—the spies who hate us—had a
hand-in-glove relationship with Twitter and, very likely, all social media.
This really happened in the United States. It’s still
happening.
Reading through all the evidence released since Elon Musk’s
takeover of the company is an eye-popping experience. It’s not just what was
going on. It’s how they didn’t bother hiding it within the company. More than
that, the management actually seemed to relish the status they enjoyed by being
in constant touch with government about what speech to allow and what to
forbid.
Did it ever occur to anyone involved in all this that this
collusion might run afoul of the First Amendment? The short answer is no. It
wasn’t even a thing. It’s as if everyone involved just thought it was
completely normal. The Constitution just didn’t matter.
How did we arrive at this place in American history in which
the Constitution no longer has any real standing in elite circles? Isn’t this
the law of the land? It’s supposed to be. But in practice, how much does it
really matter? Not that much.
All of this is being tested in court right now, and the
courts will likely rule against the government. How could they not at this
point? Still, that’s very little solace for what we’ve been through for at
least three years and probably longer.
The platforms we believed were set up by the private sector
for us to have more contact with each other and give new life to the idea
of free speech have
been effectively nationalized.
Even if the courts say this is illegal, precisely what is to
prevent it from happening again? More lawsuits? Where’s the enforcement arm to
stop this and forbid it in the future? Who or what is going to pay the price
for what already happened?
Here we really get to the problem of government itself. No
one has ever really come up with an infallible way to stop it from doing
egregious things to the population. The idea of monarchy was to institutionalize
tradition and extend the period of responsibility over generations so that a
family would feel a sense of pride and refrain from pillaging. That worked
until it didn’t. Democracy seemed like a good plan: Put the people in charge.
But then the politicians approved permanent bureaucracies that live outside the
democratic process. The Constitution is a beautiful piece of parchment but what
happens when the administrative
state ignores it?
Then you have the check of the courts. But there’s a problem
there too. They’re slow. They’re expensive. And judges don’t control the
military. It’s not clear what they control in society except perhaps its
weakest elements. If you’re rich and powerful enough, you can control the
courts too.
This is why so many people throughout history have been
drawn to the idea of anarchism. Just get rid of government entirely. Maybe that
sounds like a decent idea but how to get from here to there? Revolution is too
costly and mostly ends terribly with very few exceptions.
In the end, the only real restraint on government comes down
to public opinion. But for the public to value freedom requires education and
some degree of sobriety and health. When a population becomes corrupt, tyranny
becomes much easier to enact and almost impossible to stop.
Is that where we are today? Sometimes, it seems that way,
but I actually doubt it. There’s enough intelligence and fortitude remaining in
the population to resist and cause the tyrants among us to back off. It won’t
be easy but the critical job here is having access to the right information. An
informed public is far less easy to control.
And herein is why government places such a high priority
on censorship.
I admit that I didn’t know that censorship was such a danger in the United
States. I was raised in a different time. The Federal Communication Commission
(FCC) controlled television and radio but generally endorsed the First
Amendment. It has thus far had no control over online content.
Even now, the FCC website says:
“The limitations on the FCC’s power to restrict or ban
speech begin with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which decrees
that the federal government ‘shall make no law … abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press.’ Accordingly, Congress through Section 326 of the
Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 326, explicitly declared that nothing in the
statute ‘shall be understood or construed to give the Commission the power of
censorship over the [broadcast] communications or signals transmitted by any
[broadcast] station, and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or
fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech by
means of [over-the-air] broadcast communication.’”
That kind of restriction was the old days. These are the new
days. Something about the Trump administration kicked up a wild frenzy on the
part of the national security apparatus that led it to believe that there
should be no limits. The virus hysteria made it worse: The rumor was that it
was a bioweapon and therefore all limits on government had to be repealed as
the whole country went on a wartime footing. Ever since then, our rights have
been severely limited and still are to this day.
It’s going to require massive work to claw back our rights
and freedoms. If you’re unaware that an emergency exists right now, you haven’t
been reading the right stuff. The truth is that we’re veering closer and closer
to a Chinese-style social credit system. The pushback has barely begun. They
already wrecked the internet. The next thing is to wreck the banking and money
system. The process is underway.
The release of the Twitter Files—hardly covered at all by
the mainstream press—should sound the alarm. Anyone who thinks this is normal
isn’t paying attention. Even now, I’m grateful that I can write these words for
this great news source (The Epoch Times). We’re going to have to fight for the
right to read such words in the future.
Views expressed in this article
are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The
Epoch Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president
of the Brownstone
Institute, and the author of many thousands of articles in the
scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most
recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He
writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the
topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/our-worst-fears-about-twitter-were-true_4935120.html
No comments:
Post a Comment