“I Stand By My Tweet,” Erick Erickson thunders, trying to seize some moral high ground from the bully pulpit of his SubStack presence, “Confessions of a Political Junkie.” “While leftwing progressives accuse Trump, Trump supporters, Tucker Carlson, and anyone they dislike of authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, and a host of other -isms, it is quintessential totalitarianism to silence and disappear the views of those unacceptable to the rulers.”

The anti-Trump-before-he-was-pro-Trump “evangelical conservative” blogger and talking head finds himself suspended from Twitter for violating the platform’s “rules against hateful conduct.” Namely, insisting that transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard “is a man even if Twitter doesn’t like it.”

Unfortunately, for Erickson, the moral high ground he’s trying to hold is too small to stand on, let alone build a sturdy fighting position on. If it exists at all, it’s the size of a postage stamp.

The problem isn’t that his imperious ruling on the matter of Laurel Hubbard’s gender — and, in the Substack post, Caitlyn Jenner’s and Elliot Page’s — is kind of dumb, especially when he resorts to appointing himself God’s spokesperson on the matter. He’s not really in charge of anything or empowered to impose his will on anyone, and he’s entitled to his opinion.

The problem is that he thinks he’s entitled to someone else’s microphone to announce his rulings on such issues (he isn’t), and that denying him that microphone somehow “silences” and “disappears” him (it doesn’t).

In this day and age, in America, there’s simply no way to “silence” or “disappear” speech. If Twitter doesn’t want to host Erickson’s opinions, he’s still got a raft of social media platforms available to him, not to mention his blog, his radio and podcast presences, and “conservative” media aching to breathlessly cover situations like his.

The postage stamp of moral high ground Erickson enjoys is this:

Twitter, and most other social media platforms, are built in such a way that “rules against hateful conduct” are not only unnecessary but constitute exceedingly poor user service.

Anyone who doesn’t want to hear what Erick Erickson has to say on social media has easy access to some form of “block” or “ignore” button.

Social media platforms which emphasized offering users a broad array of engagement choices instead of wrestling their (or the political class’s) opinion straitjackets onto everyone would respond to content complaints with tutorials on how to use those buttons instead of with suspensions and bans.

Ignorance, not regulation, makes a ceasefire in the social media wars possible. Don’t want to read it? Ignore it!

We’ll always have would-be dictators demanding that this or that bad actor be banned. The platforms which ignore such demands will send the more compliant ones the way of MySpace.

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.

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“We can dance if we want to,” sang Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats in 1982. “We can leave your friends behind / ‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance / Well they’re, no friends of mine.”

The song seems to be enjoying renewed popularity on classic hit radio lately, and its lyrics perfectly describe both the mass hysteria of the last 18 months and the polarization among Americans over the meaning and importance of “safety” in the age of COVID-19.

That trend has a tail dragging back into the past. How far? I’m not quite sure. But as early as 2016, students at Emory University broke into protest over being made to “feel unsafe” (one of the protesters’ exact words) by, of all things, sidewalk chalk. Specifically, sidewalk chalk slogans supporting one of that year’s  presidential candidates (I’m sure you can guess who).

Recently a friend told me that, because the COVID-19 vaccine he received (Johnson & Johnson) might not be highly effective against the Delta variant, anyone not wearing a mask represents a threat to his life.

I believe he believes that. Not because it’s true, but because “feeling safe” has become an all-consuming obsession that trumps science, common sense, and often even pre-existing and seemingly strong ties of friendship or family.

I’ve watched long-time  acquaintances break with each other on social media over such issues as mask and vaccination mandates, sometimes even over disagreements as to what this or that particular disease statistic portends (“if they don’t dance / Well they’re, no friends of mine”).

The COVID-19 Safety Dance seems to have less to do with actually “being safe” than with “feeling safe.” In fact, it arguably has less to do with “feeling safe” than with obsessively finding reasons to continue “feeling unsafe” whether the feeling is justified or not.

In that respect, the COVID-19 Safety Dance has a lot in common with St. John’s Dance and St. Vitus’s Dance. For nearly 300 years, between the 14th and 17th centuries, groups of people in Europe would occasionally  break out in mass hysterical dances and just boogied day and night (sometimes in the direction of shrines to the aforementioned saints) until they collapsed from exhaustion or injured themselves too badly to continue. Sound familiar?

Early in the pandemic, both US Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease informed the public that “the science” doesn’t support masking as a way to reduce the spread of viral disease.

Within weeks, though, both turned tail and ran headlong away from “the science,” acquiescing to the political imperative of mandating something, anything, that might make people “feel safe.”

Many, perhaps most, Americans, spent the better part of a year wearing masks as visible symbols of their piety and devotion to the Cult of Feeling Safe, in between ritual baths in hand sanitizer.

After more than six months of widely available and seemingly pretty effective vaccines, many Americans are still looking for excuses to keep dancing.

It’s unhealthy.

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 HISTORY

If you only pay attention to the government and establishment media COVID-19 panic machines, you might not know that the US is experiencing fewer than 1/3 as many new daily cases and hospitalizations as in January and fewer daily deaths than at any time since March of 2020.

No, I’m not saying things are great. They aren’t. But neither is the situation even close to as dire as is being sold. The “Panic! Everyone Panic! Please, dear God, won’t you all PANIC!?!” narrative we’re being fed doesn’t reflect the real numbers. The near-daily flip-flops coming from supposed public health “experts” at the Centers for Disease Control and other centers of “public health expertise”  are a function of politics, not science.

And that politics is angling more and more toward a major escalation of government vaccine mandates which would legally restrict the ability of the un-vaccinated to work, travel, even shop for groceries or dine out.

The whole idea is both immoral and impractical.

Before you peg me as some kind “anti-vaxxer,” let me be clear: I’m vaccinated (in fact, I’m a clinical trial volunteer for one of the vaccines). Most of my close family members are vaccinated. Many (I hope most) of my friends are vaccinated. I’d like to see everyone get vaccinated. But not through force or threat of force.

There’s no moral difference between sticking a needle in someone without consent and sticking a penis in someone without consent. We have a word for the latter, I’m pretty sure.

Yes, those who support vaccine mandates have all kinds of excuses for wanting to hold people down and stick needles in them. Just like rapists who claim they were “entitled” to “marital relations,” or that the victim was asking for it by dressing a particular way, or actually needed it to “correct” her sexual orientation, or whatever. To bowdlerize an old saying into more family-friendly form, excuses are like armpits. Everybody’s got a couple and they all stink.

As for the practical case, there seems to be heavy overlap between the people calling for vaccine mandates and the people who think the January 6th Capitol riot was the worst thing that ever happened in American history.

There’s also heavy overlap between those who refuse to be vaccinated and those who supported (and in many cases continue to support) the January 6th rioters.

Does the former group really believe that announcing a mandate will cause the latter group to shrug its collective shoulders, say “well, fine, then,” and line up for shots?

The actual likely result would be multiple re-enactments of January 6th, across the country and for an extended period, without  the desired result of 100% or near 100% vaccination.

Think it can’t happen? It’s already happening elsewhere. As I write this, I note accounts of clashes between protesters and police in France and Germany over the same issues. Italy, Greece, Australia … the list goes on.

Instead of currying panic and threatening force, American government and media should stick to facts and persuasion.

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.

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