In January of 2022, Lulu Cheng-Meservey — at the time, Vice President of Communication for Substack, though she’s since moved on to a similar role at Activision Blizzard — wrote on Twitter (now known as “X”):

“At Substack, we don’t make moderation decisions based on public pressure or PR considerations. An important principle for us is defending free expression, even for stuff we personally dislike or disagree with. … We want a thriving ecosystem full of fresh and diverse ideas. That can’t happen without the freedom to experiment, or even to be wrong.”

Not quite a year later, Substack finds itself losing writers, and likely bleeding revenue, in a “can’t win for losing” scenario.

In November, The Atlantic alleged the existence of “scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters” on the Substack platform.

Since then, Substack has gone from defending Ms. Cheng-Meservey’s position to taking action against such content based on the “hate speech” prohibitions in its terms of service, in the process pleasing virtually no one.

Some content creators are leaving because they don’t want to share a platform with content they deem offensive. After all, they might find themselves tarrred with guilt by association.

Others are leaving because they don’t trust a platform that lets public pressure determine its content policies. After all, they might eventually turn up on the list of targets themselves.

Of course, the word “censorship” keeps popping up to describe any and all refusals by platforms (including Substack) to let users publish whatever they damn well please.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: It’s not “censorship.” Censorship involves government force, intimidation, etc.

If I tell you you can’t sing “Auld Lang Syne,” period, I’m trying to censor you.

If I tell you you can’t sing “Auld Lang Syne” at 3am in my living room, I’m just setting terms for use of my living room, and you’re free to go sing it on the nearest streetcorner or at your local tavern’s karaoke night event.

While I’m completely OK with the latter (in fact, I have a side gig moderating comments at a popular web site based on guidelines that forbid, among other things, “hate speech”), I don’t like the idea of platforms setting guidelines, but enforcing or not enforcing them based on public outcry.

Yes, Substack has a financial bottom line to guard. And yes, that may mean making hard decisions. But operating in obedience to a “Heckler’s Veto” is probably a bad business decision in the long term, and it’s damaging to public discourse — in the same way as real, i.e. government, censorship —  in the short term.

Substack needs to decide whether it’s an open platform or an activist-curated walled garden. It can’t be both.

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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“It’s the opening of a Pandora’s Box,” Donald Trump said on January 9, musing on the possibility of a court rejecting his claim that, as a former president, he must enjoy life-long immunity from criminal prosecution for pretty much anything and everything he did while in office.

“[I]f I wasn’t given immunity, then other presidents that we talked about today, President Obama with the drone strikes, which were really bad. They were mistakes, they were terrible mistakes. You really can’t put a president in that position. … A president has to have immunity.”

Personally, I’d like to see that Pandora’s Box opened in precisely the way Trump mentions.

In 2011, then-president Barack Obama ordered the murder of an American citizen — Anwar al-Awlaki — in Yemen. Whatever his alleged crimes might have been, he hadn’t been charged with, arrested for (or taken in resistance of arrest for), tried for, or convicted of those crimes in the United States. The basis for the murder was a Justice Department memo that wasn’t publicly released until 2014.

Later that year al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman — also an American citizen — died in another Obama-authorized drone strike. When questioned on the matter, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blamed the victim for having the wrong father.

In 2017,  US Navy SEALs murdered yet a third al-Awlaki — eight-year-old American citizen Nawar, Anwar’s daughter and Abdulrahman’s half-sister — in a raid approved by … hmm … then president Donald Trump.

What’s so outrageous about suggesting that a president who orders American citizens murdered should be held to answer in the same way, and face the same penalties, as a Mafia don who orders a competitor killed, or a regular American who hires a hit-man to murder a spouse?

Over time, American presidents have come to enjoy nearly unlimited power with little likelihood of being held accountable for how they exercise that power, and minimal penalties when they are.

Trump argues that that small likelihood and those minimal penalties should both be reduced to zero.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe that former presidents accused of crimes are entitled to the due process of law they denied Anwar, Abdulrhman, and Nawar al-Awlaki.

But broad  immunity for real crimes isn’t due process of law.  In fact, it DENIES due process of law, and justice in general, to the victims of presidential crimes.

Presidents should be held to a higher, not lower, standard of conduct than those they presume to rule.

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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It’s customary for op-ed columns to hang themselves on “news hooks” — the things you’re already reading about that just happened, are happening, or may be about to happen. The closest thing I to a “news hook” I could up with for this piece is that my friend Lloyd Sloan supports the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  So now, if you cared, you know.

You’ve probably heard of RFK Jr. You may not have heard of Lloyd Sloan, who calls himself an “Upper-Left Whig,” and who I call an eccentric libertarian (but I repeat myself), but I really think you SHOULD hear about — and think hard about — his two-question political quiz.

Question #1: Is government too big?

Question #2: Is wealth too unequal?

There are four possible combinations of answers to the two questions, which can be plotted on an up-down, left-right grid, and the positions of the two major parties cover three of the four.

Republicans tend to think government is too big but wealth isn’t too unequal (that’s the “upper right” position).

Democrats tend to think wealth is too unequal but government isn’t too big (the “lower left” position).

But some of each “major party” persuasion answer no to both questions (the “lower right”) position.

Most “third” parties likewise fall into one of those three quadrants.

The “upper left” position — which Sloan dubs the “whig” position — is that yes, government is too big, and yes, wealth is too unequal.

I happen to agree.  Whether RFK Jr. agrees is an interesting question, as is what to do about it, but in this column I’d like to propose that the questions answer each other, and that the affirmative answers to both questions explain the big problem in American politics.

Why is government too big? Because wealth is too unequal. Wealth is power, and the powerful get the government they want at the expense of the rest of us.

Why is wealth too unequal? Because government is too big. It wields sufficient power to redistribute wealth and, contrary to what you may have been led to believe,  it generally does so in an upward rather than downward direction.

While Marxists are wrong about many things, one of their old saws cuts right to the heart of the matter: The state is the executive committee of the ruling class.

That ruling class is defined by its wealth, and the whole point of its rule is to preserve and increase that wealth both through, and as, political power.

What can we do about that, short of abandoning political government altogether (my preferred solution)? I don’t know.

Sloan proposes three starting policy initiatives: Taxing only the rich, freezing government spending, and leaving NATO.

While I’m opposed to taxation, government spending, and foreign military adventurism on principle,, I have to admit that any or all of those proposals would be a start.

We won’t get any of those three from Donald Trump or Joe Biden. So if you envision positive change through voting, consider looking elsewhere.

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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