Readers of the Wall Street Journal opinion page on March 1 may have had to double-check that April didn’t arrive early.  Or at least that the byline for an editorial lambasting Republicans who “have campaigned on free-market principles but governed as corporatists — supporting subsidies, tax breaks and legislative carve-outs,” all “policies that benefit corporate America [but] don’t necessarily serve the interests of America’s people and economy” wasn’t Ralph Nader’s.

A closer look at “Why I Stood Up to Disney” shows that it’s business as usual for governor Ron DeSantis, who may style his Florida “the state where woke goes to die” but whose crusade against the Magic Kingdom remains haunted by the grim, grinning ghosts of what Nader alternately calls “corporate socialism” and “government guaranteed capitalism.”

Three decades before DeSantis’s threats to micromanage Mickey, a different Republican governor was eager to “kick down any hurdles” in the Mouse’s way. George Felix Allen’s red carpet wasn’t enough to bring Disney’s America to Virginia, yet the unrealized project faced uncannily similar criticisms.

Murray Rothbard called it an examplar of “subsidized, state-directed growth: the opposite of free markets” (not unjustifiably, given nine-figure handouts) and the “vulgarized, shlockized” output of a conglomerate more devoted to pandering for profits than safeguarding “the old Disney tradition.” Rothbard also anticipated DeSantis’s charges of “cultural Marxism” by tracing the pedigree of Disney’s historical research to “the notorious Foner family of Marxist scholars and activists.”

DeSantis could have read in the pages of The Wall Street Journal about how, despite Walt Disney’s admission that “my father was a Socialist,” his ideological inheritance amounted to little more than honing draftsmanship skills by copying imagery of “the big, fat capitalist with the money” placing “his foot on the neck of the laboring man.” The Walt Disney’s Uncle $crooge comic book might have been just as cartoonish, but when developing the character of a post-Ebenezer Scrooge McDuck, Carl Barks took pains to distinguish the fanciful treasure hunter from “the millionaires we have around who have made their money by exploiting other people to a certain extent.”

Even the website of Rothbard’s own Ludwig von Mises Institute includes his “Eisnerizing Manassas” alongside Philip S. Foner’s edition of The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine.  And Disney didn’t need help from “the Communist-dominated Fur Workers Union” or “the Communist-dominated Drug and Hospital Workers Union” to get audiences to line up for The Lion King while Rothbard wrote his warning.

DeSantis professes to be merely putting Walt Disney World Resort on a level playing field with the Sunshine State’s other theme parks like Universal Studios and SeaWorld.  Yet his insistence on cutting off “a way for the left to achieve through corporate power what it can’t get at the ballot box” when “it is unthinkable that large companies would side with conservative Americans” reveals a willingness to use his electoral votes as carte blanche to override those voting with their untaxed dollars — or their feet.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Free mice in free markets” by Joel Schlosberg, The Wilson, North Carolina Times, March 6, 2023
2. “Free mice in free markets” by Joel Schlosberg, The Enterprise [Wilson, North Carolina], March 6, 2023
3. “Free mice in free markets” by Joel Schlosberg, The Johnstonian News [Smithfield, North Carolina], March 6, 2023
4. “Free mice in free markets” by Joel Schlosberg, The Butner-Creedmoor News [Creedmoor, North Carolina], March 6, 2023
5. “Free mice in free markets” by Joel Schlosberg, The Wake Weekly [Wake Forest, North Carolina], March 6, 2023
6. “Free mice in free markets” by Thomas L. Knapp [sic], The Madill, Oklahoma Record, March 9, 2023
7. “DeSantis’ Disney stance anti-free market” by Joel Schlosberg, The Daily Advance [Elizabeth City, North Carolina], March 14, 2023
8. “DeSantis’ Disney stance anti-free market” by Joel Schlosberg, Rocky Mount, North Carolina Telegram, March 14, 2023
9. “DeSantis’ Disney stance anti-free market” by Joel Schlosberg, Reflector.com [Greenville, North Carolina], March 14, 2023

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, no stranger to finding himself under political fire, has been hunkering down beneath a new barrage after turning over 40,000 hours of US Capitol security camera footage (from the January 6, 2021 riot) to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

“The speaker is needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) whined. “The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected.”

But NBC News reports that, per a source with direct knowledge of the process, “the Jan. 6 committee worked with a Capitol Police representative to make sure the video would not pose a security risk if it were released to the public.”

The only thing wrong about this is that only Carlson has received the footage. But that’s a temporary problem.  “[H]e’ll have an exclusive,” McCarthy says, “then I’ll give it out to the entire country.”

On March 1, Tracy Walder — a former CIA and FBI employee —  clutched her (taxpayer-provided) pearls on MSNBC’s The ReidOut. “[A]s someone who served in Afghanistan, served my country and was in harm’s way,” she said, “I did not risk my life for something like this to happen.”

And then Walder got really weird: “But also, the way I look at this, strangely, is actually no different than what Edward Snowden did.”

That’s an interesting comparison.

Edward Snowden is probably the 21st century’s greatest American hero, driven into exile under threat of life imprisonment for exposing the crimes of agencies like those Walder worked for.

While McCarthy should find the comparison flattering, he isn’t putting his life or freedom, or even his job, at risk by doing the right thing here.

Nor is what he’s exposing the equivalent of what a cat does in the litter box and then tries to cover up, as were Snowden’s revelations.

He’s just releasing footage of  events that occurred in a public building and are of obvious public interest.

The US House of Representatives likes to refer to itself as “the People’s House.” There’s no particular reason why the Capitol building it works in should be treated as “only the Very Special Important People’s House.”

In fact, all areas of the Capitol building should be covered, 24/7, by cameras/microphones that anyone can access via Internet stream. Except the bathrooms. Let’s keep those audio-only, please.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 27, Reuters reports, the White House gave federal agencies a 30-day deadline to ensure that all government-owned devices are  TikTok-free.

The supposed, but seemingly evidenceless, reason: Because a Chinese company owns TikTok — a smart phone app for creating and sharing short videos — the Chinese government may be using  it to spy on Americans.

Well, OK. Ban TikTok from government devices.

But does that really go far enough?

Is TikTok the only app that gathers personal information and might be used by a government, any government, to spy on its users? Not even close.

If you don’t think the US government has been spying on you, using data generated by your phone, you haven’t been paying attention for at least the last decade.  In May 2013, now-exiled American hero Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the frightful extent of Washington’s domestic espionage operations.

If the goal is to protect the government, and the government alone, it’s appropriate to not just ban TikTok from government devices, but to ban government use of devices that could conceivably run TikTok or similar apps (including apps that install and run without the users’ knowledge).

No smart phones.

No Internet-connected computers.

No flash drives or cloud — data storage must be restricted to tightly-controlled media. Perhaps a version of the old 5 1/4″ floppy disk, with a security device embedded that goes off if someone attempts to leave a secure area with it.

Perhaps government should be limited to pen and paper, with everything encrypted using one-time pads generated by an army of monkeys rolling dice.

Hey, sounds good to me. Government does far too much, and all this modern technology facilitates its reach into areas of our lives where it has no business. So in addition to thwarting espionage, such a ban would benefit the rest of us, too.

But, regarding the rest of us:

US House Resolution 1153, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, would ban TikTok entirely. Not just for the US government, but for all Americans.

If you passed junior high school civics, you almost certainly know that the First Amendment to the US Constitution forbids Congress to make any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

TikTok is indisputably analogous to the printing press: It’s just a tool that lets you publish video. HR 1153 is, therefore, indisputably unconstitutional, not to mention stupid, insane, and evil.

If you fear the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party spying on you via TikTok, and don’t like that idea, remove TikTok from your phone (or don’t install it in the first place). “Problem” solved.

Or, one problem solved anyway. There’s still the problem of a technologically over-equipped US government trying to run all our lives.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY