One reader's rave

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Cassie Jaye, the day before I met her at the _Red Pill_ world premiere

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Free Speech and Capitalism Don't Mix

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/482689-twitter-misleading-trump-video-biden/


It's nothing but capitalist apologetics for this author to claim "creative legal reasoning" is what's allowing Internet platforms to censor their users. The simple truth is that the US Constitution is a capitalist instrument that only prohibits censorship by government acting in its own name. It was never intended to protect us from censorship by private businesses such as those owned by the people who wrote it. This is why capitalist politicians never call for any government action against it.

The only candidates I've seen calling for free speech online are Democrats Mike Gravel and Tulsi Gabbard and Green Howie Hawkins. It's no accident their campaigns aren't funded by Big Business.

Whereas under capitalism Internet freedom needs special legislation making an exception to the general principle of private property, in a socialist democracy it would be an automatic consequence of making the platforms publicly owned facilities. As the father of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill, noted:

“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time." (On Liberty)

Only in a society that has transcended capitalism can this principle be consistently and reliably fulfilled.

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