Americans Need Social Media Guided by the Rights Enshrined in the U.S. Constitution

Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

– Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

This past Friday, Alex Jones was de-platformed from the last couple of third party tools he had been using to publicly communicate his message after Twitter and Apple permanently banned him and his website Infowars. This means an American citizen with a very large audience who played a meaningful role in the 2016 election, has been banned from all of the most widely used products of communication of our age: Twitter, Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Apple’s iTunes.

You can point out he still has his radio show and website, and this is unquestionably true, but when it comes to the everyday tools most people interact with to receive information and communicate in 2018, Alex Jones has been thrown down the memory hole. Not because he was convicted of a crime or broke any laws, but because corporate executives decided he crossed an arbitrary line of their own creation.

To prove the point that tech oligarchs are acting in a completely arbitrary and subjective manner, let me highlight the following tweet.

It’s not against the law to be crazy or say crazy things in this country. It’s also not against the law to say hateful things. It’s pretty obvious the main reason Alex Jones was deleted from public discourse by Silicon Valley executives relates to his impact and popularity. As highlighted in the tweet above, unabashed bigots like David Duke and Louis Farrakhan continue to have active presences across social media, and rightly so. The difference is neither David Duke nor Louis Farrakhan played a major role in the election of Donald Trump, whereas Alex Jones did. Jones and Infowars were having an outsized impact on the U.S. political discourse in a manner tech giant executives found threatening and offensive, so they collectively found excuses to silence him.

When the outrage mob consisting of politicians, corporate media outlets like CNN, and even his own employees, complained to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey on the issue of Alex Jones, he couldn’t hold the line on free speech because his company’s own policies are junk. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube should have a clear policy when it comes to speech, and it should be this:  If it isn’t breaking the law — in other words, if it’s protected speech under the First Amendment — it stays up. Period. When you have corporate rules against “hate speech,” you’re relying on a concept that doesn’t really have any sort of legal standing when it comes to free speech in this country. There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution.

As such, when Twitter, Facebook or Google executives throw someone off their platforms for hateful speech, this isn’t because someone broke the law, but because the individuals in charge of these platforms decided such speech wasn’t something they wanted on their products. If these products are the primary ones used for communication in this country, then we lose our speech rights in practice, even though they remain protected under the law.

Americans like to talk a big game about how proud they are of their country and how exceptional it is, but what in fact are we so proud of? Is it GDP growth, a booming stock market, or is it something else? For me, it’s the Bill of Rights. The civil liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned, but we as a people have been dangerously complacent as these rights have been systematically eroded since the post 9/11 power grab. Despite all the anti-freedom trends that have transpired in 21st century America, free speech rights remain quite expansive and very much in place. In theory that is.

I say in theory because in practice we’re learning how easily speech can be marginalized to the point of becoming erased from public discourse. We’ve allowed the digital public square to be dominated by corporations focused on profit maximization and whose policies quite explicitly do not reflect the law of the land and values that we supposedly hold dear.

If you’re like me and you think the civil liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are fundamental to who we are as a people, it must necessarily be unacceptable that a handful of private technology corporations that do not adhere to these principles have dominated the rails of public communication to the point a handful of executives get to decide what acceptable speech is.

This has ushered in suppression of free speech by other means, and reminds me of a 1975 quote by Henry Kissinger:

Kissinger: Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that. 

As such, we now find ourselves in a situation where we as Americans continue to have expansive free speech rights under the law, but face subjectively minimized free speech rights in practice. So what are we supposed to do about it?

First, we need to recognize and accept that this problem exists, and then admit that it will only get worse the longer we rely on these tech giants to provide the rails of public communication. Second, we need to understand that creating digital public squares that adhere to constitutional principles is not a luxury, but a necessity at this point if we want to actually flex our civil liberties in the digital world. Third, we need to think about why the tech giants are so vulnerable to pressure when push comes to shove on free speech. It’s this last point I want to discuss further.

If we’re going to create and embrace communications platforms for both video and text dedicated to protecting the civil liberties defined by the constitution, I don’t think they can be structured as for-profit corporate entities focused on making shareholders happy. Facebook, Twitter and Google rely on advertisers for their revenue, so if big business starts to get uncomfortable with certain types of speech they can effectively pressure these entities to censor. Likewise, if these companies become concerned that “hate speech” could affect expansion into lucrative overseas markets that have laws against such behavior, they will typically make the best business decision as opposed to the best civil liberties decision. As such, in order to create successful, anti-fragile communications platforms guided by constitutional civil liberties, such platforms must be driven by principle instead of profit. Profit focused entities are far more likely to quickly fold under pressure.

The other fundamental problem with our current suite of social media companies is their use of proprietary algorithms. Hidden code can conceal all sorts of practices you wouldn’t want at work in a genuine free speech focused platform. Corporations can use such algos to suppress content from certain people, while promoting that of others. When code is secret, users can only guess what’s going on behind the scenes, while the companies can just brush off concerns as conspiracy theory and claim the code must stay hidden for proprietary business purposes. Speech and human communication is too important to leave in the hands of profit-focused tech oligarchs. Code must be open source.

Let me wrap up by sharing an interesting video on the dangers of our growing acceptance of censorship, by Canadian organic farmer Curtis Stone. While the points he brings up aren’t anything we haven’t discussed before, I find it meaningful when people not hyper-focused on politics begin to get seriously concerned about the existential dangers of allowing tech oligarchs to control the public square of human communication.

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32 thoughts on “Americans Need Social Media Guided by the Rights Enshrined in the U.S. Constitution”

  1. Michael;

    We have options. We just don’t choose them.

    We have open source. We just don’t choose it.

    We don’t choose to use it, because — it’s more work. It’s more work for us to choose for ourselves, than to leave it to somebody else to choose for us.

    I think you are a very sincere and honorable person. But you cannot choose for me. You cannot choose for others.

    Certainly you can implore people to listen to what you say. You can even create your own technology or technologies and share them with others to help promulgate what you’d like to be seen and heard far around the world.

    But I cannot join you in your battle. I think that speech and human communication is to important to let others decide — for me — how to talk, and how to listen.

    You would like for your goals to succeed?

    You would like people to listen for you because …

    Because you have something that they don’t have?

    Onnie

    Reply
  2. The Left has always preached that they are the view of tolerance and they are as long as you agree with them. A Princess once said “The more you tighten your grip the more systems slip thru your fingers”. Hopefully people are realizing whats going on here but unfortunately the left controls our education system and has been programming us since we were 5

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  3. Minus the basic Reuters feed aspect, the entire MSM “news” apparatus has been nothing but propaganda geared to feed the Dialectic for years. Which is why the internet is a gigantic Black Swan event for their monopoly.

    Now they know that their only choice at maintaining control is to try to exert the same power and control over the internet that they enjoyed for decades in the print and broadcast media, or their days are numbered. And “they” is far more than just the legacy MSM by itself. Now, “they” also includes FB, Google, Apple, and Twitter, plus the criminal elitists inside the beltway

    At this point Trump presents a perfect test target to gauge how far they can push the censorship and “fake news” envelope at this point in time. He can’t stay off of Twitter, and from one day to the next his words act as a bullseye on his back.

    What you have to remember at all times, is they are doing all of this because they are terrified. They are like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy constantly obsessing over their “precious” ring.

    We all know what eventually happened to Gollum.

    ..

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  4. I think someone should tell Curtin Stone that these giant internet corporations have been in bed with the intelligence community for years. They are an extension of the government. They are surveillance partners. They have military contracts. They receive special tax treatment and state department muscle in exchange for their cooperation. Their coordinated censorship programs do not originate in the marketing department, but from DC and Langley.

    Reply
    • A most worthy observation, Maxwell, that the internet data collection websites have been subsided by government. And for what end ? Is the pathological obsession of control not obvious ? And where is the funding shown on government records ?

      Is it government control or is it control by a cabal hiding in the shadows utilizing government power for totalitarian oppression ? John Perkins has exposed the methodology of Wall Street to impose control of foreign nations by economic means in CONFESSIONS OF ECONOMIC HIT MAN.
      The resultant impoverishment for the economic benefit of Wall Street is inescapably repetitive.

      David Talbot (DEVILS CHESSBOARD) and Stephen Kinzer (THE BROTHERS) each identified Allen Dulles as creating the CIA to assist his cronies on Wall Street exploit foreign nations. Their first coup led by Kermit Roosevelt put the Shah back on the throne in Iran and gave ownership of nationalized BP oilfields to Wall Street affiliates. William Blum and John Perkins document numerous other joint operations that have relied upon US military and the CIA for enforcement.

      Douglas Valentine in CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME sees the same attributes of oppression being developed in the United States.
      Has Wall Street financed the above nefarious acts ? One allegation is they have embezzled using the Federal Reserve. Ref. https://ppjg.me/2017/11/09/fiscal-bliss-ignorance-is-bliss That same source of money is undoubtedly funding the collection of data on the internet.

    • Thanks, Oldereb. I often refer to Wall Street in my remarks as a “global wealth extraction machine”, but how deep the rabbit hole goes is difficult to gauge because of the levels of obfuscation.

      Central banks and their affiliates like the IMF sit high in the hierarchy, and when looking at the big picture and its trends there appears to be a concerted effort to weaken nationalism (or cultural unity) with the goal of establishing a one world government or NWO. I see the primary drivers for this as: propaganda and censorship, militarism, financial repression, unrestrained immigration, and total surveillance so as to keep one step ahead of any opposition.

  5. I noticed the censorship of “citizen journalists” on Youtube who were exposing the fabricated terror events in Europe last year. Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester, Brussels, Nice were all state (Nato) sponsored fabricated events. Designed to promote the continued “fear of terror” and “war on terror / Isis” nonsense. Multiple Youtube channels and content was deleted by Youtube.

    The censorship of Alex Jones etc, is another example of the censorship of freedom of speach.

    A crowd funded “citizens channel” with no censorship, would be the remedy to the dark side control freaks. This is possible via the internet.

    Reply
  6. It’s really just appalling.

    Not that someone would abuse power, but that the citizens of this nation would allow them to do so.

    I was raised under the mantra of “I may not like what you say but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it.”

    I thought we all felt the same, as a given.

    I thought we were stalwarts of liberty.

    I thought we had courage lent by moral conviction.

    I was wrong.

    We are complacent.

    We are cowards.

    Reply
    • Who is this “We”, you’re referring to?

      I’m no coward. Nor am I complacent. And Michael certainly isn’t either.

      Courage doesn’t come from “moral conviction”. I’ve lost count of the people I have met over my lifetime who thought that they had “morals”. But as soon as it came time to act (“conviction”) like they had morals and demonstrate selflessness they disappeared into the mist.

      There are only two kinds of people in the world. Service to self, or service to others. Once that sinks in, they are very easy to spot, one way, or the other.

      “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

      The Statists are all showing themselves now

      Patience is key. It has taken a long time to get to this point of inflection that we are at now. Let the unjust continue to dig their own hole, while at the same time point out to them that all they are doing is digging their own hole.

      The law will take it from there.

    • WE… “We” as in “We the People”.

      The collective identity of the citizenry of these United States.

      The Declaration of Independence recognized and elucidated certain natural Rights, bestowed by his Creator and unalienable to the Individual. The Sanctity of those Rights was so highly valued that a Government was formed for the sole purpose of protecting those rights, which were enshrined in the Constitution of the United States and its Bill of Rights, to hopefully protect the People from the inevitable acme of all progressive authority: tyrannical despotism.

      This was truly unprecedented. Placing the Rights of the Individual and the Rule of Law above (at least in theory, if not practice) the collective, the aristocrats, the priests and the technocrats was blasphemous to the Old World opinions on authority and society. It typified this American Experiment and established what have come to be known as traditional “American values”… those values were identifiable, concrete, sacred, and accepted as Truth and the Foundations of Liberty, and the citizenry took great pride in them and the uniqueness of them.

      That’s the “We” to whom I refer… It’s an ideal, sure, but it’s who We think We are, or claim to, at least.

      Yes, there are many among us who earnestly cherish those values… and even those among us who will speak about them and not shy from pointing out tyranny when they see it. And sure, many of us are outraged by a press that is nothing but a mouthpiece for moneyed interests and power-seekers and an entrenched technocracy that grows increasingly unabashed in its efforts to disarm us, spy on us, strip us of our God-given rights, and crush us under Mammon’s yoke of debt-slavery.

      But We, do not do anything… We, as a citizenry, cower before name-callers and card-players. We, allow our rights to be eroded, day-by-day, until they are unrecognizable and unexercisable, usually in the name of “safety”, or “the children”, or “tolerance” or some other easily palatable and defensible euphemism for Fear.

      Because We, have grown complacent in our opulence and fearful of reproach, lest We, be mildly discomforted or have Our reputation besmirched and labeled “intolerant” or “bigoted” or “insensitive”, regardless of whether Our speech is well-spirited, truthful, deceptive or hateful.

      What to do? To stand up and scream feels like the soldier that turns to fight while his entire army flees around him… is that courageous or effective? Or is he simply a fool?

      To go further with that analogy:
      If our nation were an army in battle, the soldier that turns and fights while his army flees would probably be shot by a general. The general would be commended and the soldier shamed by the papers for not considering how turning to fight might make the other soldiers feel like cowards.

      The Individual is the atom and the sacred unit of a Citizenry. But an atom alone can do nothing but bounce against other atoms… it must bond to become something functional. I don’t know if we were ever truly bound into an American molecule, but I sure thought we were. With all my heart. And I was proud to be a part of it…

      But now? Meh…

      I live in Northern California now and the only permissible topic of political discussion among ANY company is: “Sooo, how much do YOU hate Trump?”
      Anything else, you might as well say Heil Hitler and goosestep your bigoted-ass back to the Klan Klubhouse from whence your enlightened and now-triggered victim is sure you came.

      The standard, and wholly effective tactic for progressive activists when confronted with dialogue is to surround the ‘oppressor’ and start shouting some chant about fascism… literally bleating like the sheep in Animal Farm… Four Legs Good! Two Legs Bad!

      It takes moral conviction to stand for Liberty… I think our society has become so polarized that any real political discourse is impossible, even between consenting and educated parties…

      And for a politician? UTTERLY impossible.

      I don’t really blame them for their cowardice. It’s tough, man… Case in point:

      Take a school-shooting… Who has the balls to stand in front of a woman who’s kid was shot by some crazy fuck with a rifle and tell her that her idea of taking guns away from everyone is a naive and ridiculous course of action, induced only by her grief and her fear, and counters the ideals of Liberty?

      She doesn’t give a shit about Liberty, she just wants her kid back!… And later on, maybe, to feel like her kid’s death was a sacrifice laid upon the alter of some needed change and not simply the random result of an overly medicated lunatic out to fuck some shit up…

      You’d need real moral conviction to compassionately face down that grieving mother and tell her how sorry you are for her loss and you can understand why she feels that way, but that the REAL answer is MORE guns carried by MORE people, so that when the next fucker goes rabid, there will be armed citizens around to put his ass down before he gets to go thru 3 mags while the cops wait outside until they hear the shooting stop so they can assault the building.

      You gonna have that little chat? Knowing there is army of rival politicians and Yellow journalists just drooling to sound-bite you out of context to make you out as some child-murdering psychopath on CNN, so they can grab your Senate seat and push their pork instead of yours?

      I think not… not without the backup of a politically education citzenry… not without the collective moral conviction that WE no longer possess.

      That’s why We wrote down what’s important: so We didn’t need to debate it later in an environment where logic might be unwelcome rendering virtuous action politically impossible…

      Long one 🙂

  7. You can have all the checks and balances you want, and all the Bill of Rights, and Constitutions galore, but if you don’t deal with outlier wealth which is parasitic and unproductive, then you lose. It’s just a matter of time.

    Reply
  8. Sure, there IS a problem with F***book and the others, but as implied in many comments here, there is perhaps a bigger problem with those “complacent cowards” who use these corrupt platforms. I’ve put our disconnected communication culture in verse –

    I thought that there was no one home
    But then, it chilled me to the bone
    I saw ten people, all alone
    Just sitting there, each with a phone.

    It seemed they were all unaware
    That there was someone else right there
    Their eyes were fixed in a blind stare
    I tried to speak, but I didn’t dare

    They all seemed terribly dejected
    All conversation was rejected
    Each of them desperately suspected
    That they might get disconnected

    Reply
  9. Nightnthebox – Your commentary is every bit as good as Michael’s piece. Thank you both.
    We know of course that we are just addressing symptoms or unpleasant results mostly, rather than digging deeper into originating CAUSES. – Too long to go into here, so I’ll use the abbreviated verse format to highlight just another symptom – “In Power”

    Because they don’t have opinions, and haven’t any ideas
    They’re selected, endorsed, and elected. That’s how it has been now for years.
    Manicured and well presented, they play out their role on the stage
    Working hard to preserve the interests of those few who just pay their wage.

    Smooth and polished and handsome, with the face of a movie star
    They rehearse evey word that’s been scripted. That’s what politicians now are.
    Overseeing their wide dominions, they allay the public’s worst fears
    Can’t afford to have any opinions, and dare not have any ideas.

    Reply
  10. So, I came home this after working until about 8:30 to my wife watching the local evening news. The big story was Florence which segued nicely into the mandatory hit piece on Trump, this time aimed at his ridiculously ill-considered, with nothing to gain dispute over the number of deaths that GWU estimates were a result of Hurricane Maria.

    Not that I am a big fan of Trump mind you… While I certainly agree with him (or at least his rhetoric) on certain topics, I wholly disagree on many others. But that’s the same with every President, as well it should be.

    But his impulsiveness and inconsistency is beyond un-statesmanlike and, often, simply insulting to the office of President of the United States of America. I fully understand why there are people who literally HATE the man, never even having met him…

    Personally, based on the carousel at the highest levels of his administration, I imagine him to be a pretentious, egotistical, tyrannical prick whose immaturity and impetuous hubris make the workplace a living hell for anyone with half a brain and a moderately well-adjusted moral compass and perspective on life and service.

    But I could be wrong and would treasure the opportunity to spend some time with the man to get a better appraisal… but he doesn’t seem interested in getting together…maybe due to my NorCal area code?

    Regardless, what in the FUCK do you have to gain from debating a GWU study? (which I read this afternoon and, if anyone cares, I believe the methodology is perfectly sound and I would sign off on a peer review assuming they were willing to publish the data set)

    It’s just politically naive to wade into that kinda nonsense. Stupid, really.

    Still, for as bad a taste that is left in my mouth when I say “Donald Trump, President of the United States”, the one-sided propaganda-machine that our national media and social media has become makes me want to vomit my intestines onto the floor.

    Seriously, this cat Trump could whip the cure for cancer out of his front pocket on Monday and follow it up with a link to free downloads of blueprints for 3-D printing a functional warp drive that runs on cold fusion on Tuesday and Rachel Maddow would talk about an anonymous letter from an undisclosed source high up in the Trump administration that says he knows a guy, who knows another guy that heard Trump say he’s looking forward to grabbing the front-holes of Martian refugees after splitting up their families in a new lunar ICE facility that Mars is going to pay for.

    Anytime I hear the same thing, repeated over and over (hate this guy, hate this guy, look what he did, hate this guy or you’re a nazi bigot that hates women and children, you horrible wealthy white male) I’m repelled and immediately start debunking it in my head… I figure if everyone is saying the same thing, all the time, and won’t shut up about it, it’s gotta be bullshit. If everyone wouldn’t shut up about the sky being blue, I’d start thinking it was red, no shit. Probably a character flaw of mine, but that’s just how I roll… couldn’t help it if I tried… maybe that’s the propaganda that works on me? A disinfo thing?

    So, what is my point? This: when I sat down they cut to the Governor of Puerto Rico bitching about how Trump didn’t come to PR in the immediate aftermath for the obligatory showing of support that consists of glad-handing photo ops with various local politicians and social workers.

    So I said (to the TV and my wife, who gets ALL of her news from Facebook and the networks) “yeah, well maybe he figured he’d just be in the way and that the local leaders probably had more important tasks on their plate than photo-opping for Trump.” My wife remained silent.

    And then the TV-guy insinuated that the GWU was an actual count of death certificates, which it was not, though that was a big part of the study (which, again, I had already read in full) so I said, “that’s not what they did, it was an estimate based on…” and my wife stood up, laughed derisively and made for the exit… I responded with, “are you pissed because I disagreed with the TV-guy?” To which she said “no, I’m pissed because you always defend Trump!”

    I said “Oh my God, That’s TOTAL bullshit!” and she just kept on a-goin’.

    So, again, my point? Even in my own home, my castle, some would say… two people possessing top percentile intellectual horsepower and advanced degrees in empirical fields that they’ve parlayed into a combined income in the high six-figures, in an officially committed relationship where they freely talk about virtually ANY subject, the polarization is so complete that even casual political discourse is rendered impossible.

    Fuck you Facebook.
    Thanks for reading my diatribe, to any who actually do.

    Reply
    • Thank you, Nightnthebox, for your sincere, and yet entertaining and informative comment. I often have the same experience. Whenever I offer a counter argument or attempt to reframe an official media narrative I’m automatically turned into a Trump lover, as their contempt and hatred for the man springs outward like a jack-in-the-box.

      It’s quite startling, as you know. It’s like, “Where the hell did that come from?” And it doesn’t matter what the subject is… North Korea, Syria, Russia, etc. Every opinion on subjects from geopolitics to hurricanes boils down to either loving or hating Trump. It makes me quite sad, really, when I see how easily people are controlled and misled by the media.

      The cause, I suspect, is because they can’t see beyond their emotionally dominated thinking. That, and many of the older generation are unable to change their long-held indoctrination about media news sources being trustworthy.

    • Aaron, I’m afraid the way your question is worded does not allow one to understand the question.

      Do you mean SHOULD have been?

      If so, well, I believe any private company is within its legal rights to provide or deny service to anyone, for any reason, and is under no legal obligation to explain themselves.
      If their behavior is clearly discriminatory, the market should correct it over time via loss of business. If not, then so be it. But, any and all commercial activity should be voluntary.

      However, I can also see merit in the argument that social media and certain other internet services (such as YouTube), as they grow in size and function, at some point could be considered to be the de facto village square, at which point the public might hold a claim to a sort of easement, for lack of a better word, in that private ownership of the public’s chosen and adopted location for public discourse is an affront to the First Amendment and should be subject to regulation to protect the free exchange of speech and opinion. If they do not want to subject themselves to such regulation, they could charge an appropriate fee, thus confirming the private nature of the space, or discontinue service.

      But that is a slippery slope.

      My hope would be that the providers of such services would recognize the power they wield and self-regulate appropriately and responsibly by adopting the protection of ALL SPEECH as their guiding principle.

      But that is probably asking too much.

      They will act in a manner they feel to be right and just, according to their values. Regrettably, they seem to hold the opinion that THEY know what is best for the world and have a responsibility to protect it from uncomfortable stimuli, which is fundamentally at odds with the values enshrined in the First Amendment.

  11. “They will act in a manner they feel to be right and just, according to their values.”

    No they won’t.

    Mammon worshipers don’t care about anything other than accumulating more mammon. They have no values, because they know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. So that is the only driver for their actions, and “right and just” are completely irrelevant other than from a PR perspective. Back to mammon.

    Meister Eckhart’s warning that “The more you have, the less you own.” is a completely foreign concept to them. To them there’s no such thing as enough.

    So that is the leverage that allows the statists to coerce and manipulate them into doing their bidding. Alex Jones is just the Canary in the “Ministry of Truth” coal mine.

    But if you get enough altitude to surveil the entire landscape you’ll see how scared they have become. The statists did not want to float this trial balloon this soon.

    Reply
    • Awww, come now, Genaro. You’re talking about people here. Actual living breathing people with kids and spouses and pets and mistresses and bros and moms and grannies and Teslas (Tesla?) and Priuses (Prii?) and chickenpox scars and first kiss stories and all that shit.

      I know a LOT OF PEOPLE that work at GOOG, FB, and AAPL. Some of whom make policy. They are well-represented in my clientlist. The ones I know are very smart, very interesting, and very creative. Most do not come from money and most are pretty surprised that they have any. A lot are first generation or second generation immigrants and are raising their kids in America with no desire to re-create Pakistan or India or Korea.

      And I can tell you this: the ones I work with are not overly motivated by money. When they come to my office, we’re supposed to discuss money… their money, no less. But you’d be amazed at how hard it is to do so.

      They’ve got money and expect to have it the future. Which has lent a sort of sanctimonious prickishness that can only be found only amongst wealthy liberals. The raining of money like manna from heaven can often be taken as and anointment that whatever they’re doing is God’s work.

      Their motivations are weed, social justice and the environment, not necessarily in that order. They earnestly believe they are making the world a better place by promoting tolerance and greenness and fairness in all things, all the time.

      They are not evil. They are simply naive and hubristic.

  12. NITB, I wasn’t referring to everyone who works at “GOOG, FB, and AAPL”, etc.

    The people I am referring to are like the same high level people at Google (“few hundred members”) that Michael wrote about in August who are willing to help Xi Jinping strengthen his authoritarian Dictatorial Police State in China in their pursuit of more money for themselves through Dragonfly.

    “Google china censorship”

    https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/tag/google-china-censorship/

    As I wrote upthread on the 13th:

    “There are only two kinds of people in the world. Service to self, or service to others. Once that sinks in, they are very easy to spot, one way, or the other.

    “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

    My late father always told me; “Pay no attention to what they say. Just watch what they do”. Which is just another way of saying, “Ye shall know them by their fruits”.

    BTW, it’s not about who is “evil” and who is “good”. That just feeds into the us versus them Dialectic.What is important, is their intentions, and what end result (“fruits”) they are trying to achieve through the application of their intent. All Google’s former mantra “Don’t be evil” really means is “Don’t be evil according to our definition of evil”.

    What this is really about is militant statism. Which is the exact opposite of what the Founders created through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

    Yes, technically Google, FB, Apple, Twitter, etc. are not bound by the right of free speech afforded under the 1st Amendment. But if they are truly concerned with serving the best interests of their fellow human beings then their actions should mirror that concern.

    They do not mirror that concern, at all. So recognize that for what it is, and act accordingly. Otherwise the current global and domestic welfare–warfare state will rule.

    As Michael and others have pointed out many times before, the best way to act, is to act locally, decentralize, and reject the centralized collectivism that feeds into the welfare-warfare state.

    That is already slowly and surely happening. Which is why the self-serving statists are running scared.

    Reply
  13. Ok, I’m in.
    How do we: “act locally, decentralize, and reject the centralized collectivism that feeds into the welfare-warfare state.”
    What can I do to that effect?
    Earnest question.

    Reply
    • First and foremost, spread the word whenever the opportunity presents itself.

      You’re an intelligent person, so you will see your openings/opportunities to do so.

      Second, whenever possible buy local. Obviously, food and drink is the easiest to do in that regard. Plus, it’s healthier. (Unless you overdo the local craft beer, wine or whiskey too often).

      Third, play it all by ear.

    • So, I need to tell people that there are rich powerful people trying rule the world and I need to buy my food from the local farmers market.
      Got it.
      That’ll show em.

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