I’ve had a collection of interesting articles building up, so today I’m going to share them with a few comments. First, though, I want to talk a little about the horrible events and riot at the Capitol last week and some of the free speech implications coming out of them.

These riots were horrible and indefensible

I hope all of us, no matter where we stand politically, are able to agree that the riots and violence of last week were unacceptable, illegal, immoral, and wrong. Here, I want to point to and briefly quote a couple of articles from Christians who I think summarized the issues well.

Al Mohler talked about the Capitol riots as an attack on the American experiment itself. In this context, he’s asking what conditions allow liberty to thrive. As we know, complete freedom leads to anarchy, so how can we ensure freedom? He argues are freedom is based on “ordered liberty” – that is, liberty subject to the rule of law:

Americans prize liberty. We call for liberty and justice for all. But one of the hardest questions confronted by humanity are the conditions that make liberty possible. And this is where the American experiment is founded upon a presupposition, a prior commitment to ordered liberty. Ordered liberty means that boundless liberty turns in on itself. It becomes nothing more than an excuse for license and a display of brute power. Whoever has the greatest power can take someone else’s liberty. Ordered liberty means some form of established order. That means policies, it means a covenant, it means a constitution, such as the constitution of the United States. As of right now the US constitution is the longest surviving written constitution in human history. It’s a remarkable document.

…But what we saw yesterday was the American experiment itself, that commitment to ordered liberty, set on fire.

Now the good news is that at the end of the day… our constitutional order had proved itself, once again, resilient. But that doesn’t take away any of the tragedy and the horror of what did take place in Washington yesterday. Our experiment in ordered liberty means that liberty is ordered by principle and by polity. It is limited by our constitutional order. It requires honoring that constitutional order. And here’s where we have to understand that the only alternative to a constitutional form of self-government is some form of liberty that ends up turning on itself. Christians turn to the Bible to see all the evidence we need, that liberty becomes anarchy, and anarchy becomes disaster. And that disaster almost always takes the form of some kind of dictatorship or autocracy. There is no such thing as disordered liberty that survives.

I think this summarizes the issues well. We must resist and put down attacks on the rule of law in our country, because if we lose the rule of law, we will ultimately lose our freedom itself.

Mohler connects our American idea of separation of powers to the Biblical ideas of sin and total depravity. As Christians, we believe that any individual is capable of great wrong (hence the danger of a personality cult, demonstrated by those who were flying “Trump” flags in the Capitol), so we believe we need checks and balances, and to avoid consolidating too much power in the hands of any one individual.

Mohler highlights a fundamental problem with Trump’s views in this respect: He doesn’t believe in this idea of ordered liberty:

Speaking to supporters at that rally that took place earlier in Washington yesterday, the president vowed that he would never concede… If you are going to participate in ordered liberty, if you’re going to run as a candidate in an electoral system, then you have to concede the possibility that you could lose the election and thus must concede the election. If you enter the electoral process saying that it is impossible that you can lose the election, then you are actually not running as an electoral candidate at all. You’re just claiming and grasping for power. If you do run for office, you accept the constitutional order and the rules of the electoral system. Donald Trump has indicated that he was not willing to accept those rules.

Mohler says this, which I also fully agree with:

And again, we believe in the constitutional right for a redress of grievances, but what we do not believe in as the American people is the right of citizens to invade the Congress and stop its constitutional process. That’s far beyond the pale.

We must stand behind our “ordered liberty”, Mohler argues, because anything else will simply turn into a battle of one power against another, giving the most powerful the ability to dominate, resulting in the collapse of the system. In this context he views it as essential that we conserve the principles of our society:

A principled conservatism understands that ordered liberty is the only liberty worth having, and it is the only liberty that can survive… And this is where conservative Christians have to recognize there really is no alternative. If we’re going to declare this constitutional system as lacking legitimacy, we better understand that there will be something far, far worse to take its place.

Russell Moore also addressed these issues, and his article is worth reading in full. Here are some key ideas:

This week we watched an insurrection of domestic terrorists, incited and fomented by the president of the United States. We saw the attack on our Capitol, the desecrating of the seat of our democracy, the harming of innocent human lives, and the murdering of a Capitol Police officer. We saw a mob threatening to lynch the Vice President of the United States and Members of Congress—all in an attempt to stop a constitutional process and to overturn an election by the American people.

Further along, he adds:

This is not about politics. This is about our country, about the rule of law, and about the sanctity of human life. The President invited mobs to Washington—promising a “wild” time—and told them to march to the Capitol. Despite the fact that there was not one thing that Vice President Pence could have lawfully done, the President called him a coward, and whipped up crowds against him who, many of them, then chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” while constructing gallows on the Capitol grounds. An American flag was thrown down and replaced with a Trump flag, while another insurrectionist paraded a Confederate flag through the Capitol. Police officers were attacked. Congressional leaders hid while the doors buckled from mobs seeking to attack them. People are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. Administration officials are resigning in protest.

Moore connects his concerns to scripture, arguing that we cannot bring about truth by lying – specifically, about whether the election was stolen:

It is not true—and it never was true—that this election was stolen. That’s why such a charge was never even made in any court of law, where perjury penalties would hold, but only in social media streams and demagogic rallies.

This echoes what conservative senator Ben Sasse wrote on the same issue:

… the single-most telling fact is that there a giant gulf between what President Trump and his allies say in public – for example, on social media, or at press conferences … – and what President Trump’s lawyers actually say in courts of law. And that’s not a surprise. Because there are no penalties for misleading the public. But there are serious penalties for misleading a judge, and the president’s lawyers know that – and thus they have repeated almost none of the claims of grand voter fraud that the campaign spokespeople are screaming at their most zealous supporters.

Moore points out that, regardless of whether we believe Trump ought to be president or not, we cannot accomplish good by doing wrong:

Murder is wrong. Insurrection is wrong. Rioting is wrong. Terrorism is wrong. If someone says in response to the brutal attacks on innocent people on September 11, 2001, “Yes, but try to understand the desperation of the people of Afghanistan,” they are wrong to do so. If someone says, “Yes, abortion takes a human life, but poverty is worse,” they are wrong. And if someone says—when confronted with a violent insurrection on the nation’s Capitol, “Yes, but what about….” they are wrong.

You cannot stand for “law and order” while waving away lawlessness. You cannot champion the pro-life cause while waving away murder. You cannot support police by the murder of police officers. You cannot support religious liberty by trashing the United States Constitution.

He further argues that justice requires that we hold those involved in this rioting accountable (though, I would note, not all those calling for this accountability seem to have been equally concerned about accountability for the BLM riots; all riots are wrong and consistency is important).

Moore also expresses his concern that if the church fails to speak out against these actions and the personality cult around Trump which motivated these riots, we’ll be losing our witness. Having people leave the church because they reject Christian doctrine is one thing, but this is different, he says.

… if people are walking away not because we believe too much for them, but because they don’t think we believe what we say we believe, what then?

The article wraps up by highlighting that there is hope, not in elections, but in Christ – in recognizing how big our problems are and trusting in him.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything in Moore’s article, I think it’s worth reading carefully and considering.

Does this mark the death of the current Republican party?

This recent article asks whether the riots marked a turning point in history, and one which might mark the death of the Republican party as we know it now. The author is more libertarian or independent than liberal, but notes:

I watched most of the Senate debate yesterday and last night, and the sight of the Republican Senators, one after another—McConnell, Toomey, Lee, Loeffler, Daines, Romney, Paul, Portman, Sasse, Graham, …—publicly repudiating the President, refusing to do the one thing everyone knew he wanted them to do, was absolutely breath-taking. … The President, intentionally or not, finally found the line—with two weeks to go in his presidency—that only the True Believers would cross.

The author concludes that this riot may have done a great service to the country by, eventually, helping to produce a different Republican party:

What the Republican Party will look like in the aftermath of this debacle is anybody’s guess. But I do think the rioters may actually have—inadvertently, to be sure—performed a great service for the country. I am among those who believe that the country needs something it has not had for some time: A functioning, principled, conservative Republican Party. The events of January 6 have exposed for all to see the anti-democratic and dictatorial heart of Trumpism, and helped to push it off to the fringe of the political landscape where it belongs. For that, we should all be grateful.

Should we be concerned about free speech?

A screenshot suggesting Facebook wants to dissolve the government

The Twitter and Facebook bans of Trump aren’t a free speech violation, but are still concerning

Likely, most will have heard how Trump was banned from Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms in the wake of last week’s chaos; many have raised free speech concerns. These platforms, though, are private corporations and thus not subject to First Amendment restrictions; they can enforce the speech codes they choose to enforce, as libertarian lawyer Eugene Volokh discusses in the New York Times. However, these bans still raise concerns, he notes:

It’s only human nature for people to think the worst of their adversaries’ views — including by labeling them hate speech or fake news or incitement — while giving their allies the benefit of the doubt.

… Yet both liberals and conservatives should appreciate the perils of power, especially the power of enormous companies that have few competitors and huge influence over political life.

The issue is not only that these companies get to regulate speech, but also that a small number of companies have near monopolies, with decisions being made behind closed doors without anyone to ensure that a consistent set of rules are applied. Volokh notes that governmental speech restrictions are dealt with in the courts, where both sides make their argument and the rules are created by the public. Here, with everything subject to the whims of these giant corporations, there’s great reason to be concerned about where this might take us.

Parler provides an even more concerning example

Folks involved in coordinating the DC mob/riot had used the alternative social media platform Parler – which bills itself as a free-speech oriented alternative to Twitter – to coordinate their plans. This resulted in Parler being removed from Apple and Google’s app stores for not doing enough to police content; Apple and Google argued it was a violation of their terms of use. At first, users could still get the app via alternate means, but then Amazon Web Services (AWS) kicked Parler off of their servers, bringing the entire service down.

Now, I certainly don’t support anyone working to coordinate violence, but taking Parler down because people used it to coordinate plans seems to me rather like destroying a printing press because someone used it to print something hateful. We ought to punish those who illegally incite violence, not the mediums they do so with.

I’m not unique in expressing these concerns; left-leaning site Slate ran an article “Why everyone should be concerned about Parler being booted from the internet’ which is worth a read. Here’s a key excerpt:

Parler’s suspension should concern us all. I despise white supremacist content and its proliferation online, and the tweeted examples of comments posted on Parler are alarming and deeply unsettling to read. But as Kate Ruane, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement, it “should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions—especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”

The article also highlights inconsistencies in how moderation has been handled. Apple and Google removed Parler because it was used to incite violence, but what about Facebook?

Who demanded from Facebook a road map to moderation improvements after the company itself admitted that its own app was used to incite violence, and a genocide, in Myanmar? Last I checked, Google and Apple never chucked Facebook app downloads from their stores even though violence has most certainly been incited on Facebook time and time again.

The author also worries we’re headed towards a future in which big tech gets to decide who gets to say what:

What’s most frightening about the demands from Google and Apple is that we simply don’t know what’s next. They have said that Parler must have content moderation plans in place. Next time, what if Google and Apple respond to a platform that has content policies and a content moderation scheme in place—just not ones that they like? Can they push for more changes to be made, or even go so far as to require that other platforms’ policies mimic Google’s, Facebook’s, and Twitter’s rules?

The article goes on to propose that content moderation online be handled Wikipedia-style. While I’m not sure this is a great solution, because Wikipedia has its own problems, but it’s certainly preferable to having the key decisions made behind closed doors by the powerful.

Al Mohler looked at these same issues in Part III of his update yesterday, and notes this critical issue:

…who gets to decide what is misinformation? Who gets to decide what is sowing division? You can easily see how this could be applied to just about anyone who might find him or herself on the wrong side of the powers that be.

While Facebook, Google, etc., are entitled to enforce the policies they want, people who are excluded from these platforms are effectively excluded from public discourse. This poses risks to minority views; if such views are branded as too dangerous or offensive, they can be de-platformed and removed from public discourse. (Relatedly, libertarian Ron Paul was locked out of Facebook without notice after posting something critical of Twitter’s decision to remove Trump.) Such removal of topics and people from discussion should concern us all. As Mohler concludes:

Christians must be first in line to say that there is never an excuse for inciting violence through social media or any other form of media. But, we also have to understand that something far short of inciting violence could incite this kind of policy.

A few other items on truth, race, and discrimination

Thomas Sowell asks, “Is truth irrelevant?”. Here’s his lede: “It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong — when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.” He notes that this is part of a broader picture (one, I’ll note, addressed at length by Ben Sasse in his excellent book “Them”, which I’ll blog on soon) where media on both sides has shifted towards trying to please its customers and away from trying to bring the objective truth to light, and points out how this carries over to areas like reporting on discrimination and success of under-represented groups. Well worth a read. This great article, How to be a Racist, raises some of the same issues as Sowell’s in the context of analyzing Kendi’s wildly popular book “How to be an Antiracist”. Samuel Sey points out a number of ways in which Kendi’s work is explicitly racist, and contrasts it to Martin Luther King Jr.’s goals of a color-blind society. Kendi is explicit about this; as quoted by Sey, he writes: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy for present discrimination is future discrimination.” The Wall Street Journal looks at the $30B in corporate contributions to racial equity. Probably to some extent these contributions essentially amount to virtue signaling; the WSJ quotes an expert who told them, roughly, “In most cases, no one is looking to determine the success of companies’ big philanthropic announcements”