“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.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler might seem one of the least likely people in the world to praise Bitcoin as an example of “how technology can expand access to finance and contribute to economic growth” — while noting its founder Satoshi Nakamoto’s intentions “to create a private form of money with no central intermediary, such as a central bank or commercial banks” (“Remarks Before the Aspen Security Forum,” August 3).

Yet while Gensler praises the technological breakthroughs of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, he evaluates them from the existing framework of money issued by governments, contending that “we already live in an age of digital public monies — the dollar, euro, sterling, yen, yuan” since they circulate in forms less tangible than printed bills.  With exchanges between different forms of cryptocurrencies at present largely relying on “stable value coins … pegged or linked to the value of fiat currencies,” it seems natural to Gensler to bring them under the SEC’s established regulatory structure.

Yet as Benjamin R. Tucker noted in 1887, allowing only forms of banking that “observe the prescribed conditions” of “law-created and law-protected monopolies” prevents them from becoming a true alternative.

One such experiment, Ralph Borsodi’s Constant, was stalled in 1974 by the prospect of the same SEC securities regulation proposed by Gensler for current private currencies. The Constant secured against the inflation which steadily diminishes the purchasing power of state currencies by being based directly on the real supply and demand values for a representative sample of common goods. Borsodi had correctly presumed that even though the Constant had achieved his aim, since it “takes money creation completely out of the government’s hands,” it was “not likely to make governments very happy.”

Gensler warns that cryptocurrencies are “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse in certain applications.” Mutualists like Tucker and Borsodi saw how political influence over the currency, implemented via seemingly neutral rules, inevitably consolidated economic clout by stealthily rigging the whole economy to favor the powerful. A free market in money itself, not just in what can be traded for money, would keep its providers honest and its value fair.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a contributing editor at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “The Money Monopoly Itself Is The Abuse” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, August 8, 2021
2. “The Money Monopoly Itself Is the Abuse” by Joel Schlosberg, OpEdNews, August 11, 2021
3. “The Money Monopoly Itself Is the Abuse” by Joel Schlosberg, Roundup, MT Record Tribune & Winnett Times, August 11, 2021
4. “The money monopoly itself is the abuse” by Joel Schlosberg, Claremont, NH Eagle Times, August 12, 2021
5. “Do the regulators view Bitcoin as a real alternative?” by Joel Schlosberg, The Press [Millbury, Ohio], August 23, 2021
6. “The money monopoly itself is the abuse” by Joel Schlosberg, Elko, Nevada Daily Free Press, August 27, 2021

“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