Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 351 | The Fall of Free Speech & the Rise of Tyranny

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Today we’re going to address the cartel-like behavior of big tech companies (while we still can). The president himself and countless other conservatives are finding themselves banned from more and more online platforms. What kind of world does this lead to, and is it one we really want to live in? Also, how is it that the Left, who are supposedly against big corporations, are cheering on this censorship of free speech perpetrated by giant tech companies? --- Today's Sponsors: Fundrise provides access to diversified portfolios of private real estate to ALL investors with their industry-leading, easy-to-use platform. Go to https://fundrise.com/relatable - it takes just a few minutes to get started! Kitty Poo Club is an all-in-one litter box solution designed to be convenient for you! Visit https://kittypooclub.com/ & use promo code 'ALLIE' to get 20% off your first order when you set up auto-ship. --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a great week so far. Today we are finally going to get to the subject that I have said that we were going to talk about since Monday. And that is big tech censorship. You guys have probably been hearing that oh, censorship is not that big of a deal. It's not a First Amendment issue. It's just private companies doing what they want to do. I thought you conservatives, you know, you allowed freedom when it comes to companies making their own choices. I thought you all were fun. with the free market and all of that good stuff. Well, we're going to break down some of the misunderstandings with a claim like that.

We're going to talk about what happened as far as censorship goes and why actually a culture of free speech is really important. I do want to ask you guys a favor if you love this podcast, if you could leave me a five-star review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen, you don't even have to say, you know, why you like the podcast if you don't have time to do that but that would really mean a lot to me it really does help especially with what we're talking about today and with everything that's going on um it helps out the show a lot also if you can subscribe to blaze tv so they do have this really good deal going on because they understand people are worried about censorship and their favorite shows and content

getting kicked off so they're offering a 30 dollar discount on annual subscriptions for a limited time so you can go to blazedtiv.com slash ali or blaztv.com. You can subscribe year-long subscription, $30 discount, which is a really big deal. I think you can probably use promo code Alley, but I don't even know if that's necessary. They do have this discount going on for a limited time, blazTV.com. So if you're worried, a lot of you have asked me, okay, are you going to be able to stay on Instagram? Are you going to be able to, you know, am I going to still be able to listen to your podcast?

well, there would have been one time when I would have said, oh, you don't need to worry about that. And hopefully we don't have to worry about that. But you just never know. The idea or the things that have gone on for the past week have kind of made us realize that things can happen very quickly. So make sure you subscribe to Blaze TV, $30 off. It's a really good time to do that.

If you love this podcast, leaving a five-star review would mean a lot to me. Okay, let's go ahead and get started. If you don't know what's been going on over the past week, hopefully you've listened to the other episodes this week where we've talked about, you know, the storm into the Capitol and all the craziness and all of the illegality, the criminality that went on last week and kind of how we've been wrestling through that. There has been a backlash, not just in the reaction of people, not just a political backlash, but there's also been a big tech backlash.

So after all of this happened, Trump's personal Twitter. account got suspended, Twitter deleted tweets written by Trump from the POTUS account. So the POTUS account is used by every president. So they didn't take down the POTUS account, but he can't access it anymore in all of the tweets that he did send from that official POTUS account, president of the United States, if you didn't know, were taken down Facebook, permanently banned Trump. So Reddit, Twitch, Shopify, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. I don't know. it would be hilarious if Snapchat didn't ban Donald Trump. And that was how he was communicating with the American people and used all the filters and all that great stuff. That would have been

really 2021. But that's not what happened. He was also banned from TikTok. That would have also been a hilarious way for the president to continue to communicate with the American people. If he was like doing the dances and and popping up and trying to send his messages through TikTok dances, again, unfortunately, we do not. we don't get to enjoy that. Ban from Apple, banned from discord, Pinterest, Stripe, Amazon, cloud hosting. Now, you would think that everyone on the left is applauding this.

And a lot of people on the left are applauding this. Even the so-called champions of free speech in the media class are applauding this saying that this is a great and wonderful thing. Even some people on the right are saying this is a good thing. Now, the ACLU actually came out against banning Trump from Twitter, which is surprising because the ACLU. has been on the liberal side of most issues for the past at least 30 years. Now, not every single issue.

I'm not saying they have been wrong, in my opinion, on everything. But they are a liberal organization who stands for liberal values and who promote liberal causes, even at the expense of civil liberties, in my opinion. But in this case, here's what they said. The civil rights organization, which often fights against conservative, this is actually the blaze reporting this, the civil rights organization, which often fights against conservative causes, released a statement Friday expressing concerning that the movement to the platform Trump could be a slippery slope with eventual unintended consequences, especially

for minority groups. ACLU Senior Legislative Council, Kate Ruein, said in a statement, for months, President Trump has been using social media platforms to see doubt about the results of the election and to undermine the will of the voters. We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should be a sure. 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. President Trump can turn to his press team or Fox News

to communicate with the public, but others, like the many black, brown and LGBTQ activists who have been censored by social media companies, will not have that luxury. It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone. And that's really all conservatives have been asking for. It's not that we don't think that Twitter should be able to have enforceable rules or Facebook or YouTube, but that they apply the rules evenly and that they don't use political bias to make those rules, as we've talked about or to enforce those rules. And as we've talked about for the past week or so, there have been Democratic politicians, people on the left who have said things equivalent to what Donald Trump has.

has said that you could argue have incited violence. And that's where the slippery slope comes in. That's what you worry about. That if we say that any political rhetoric that we don't like, even the kind that may or may not rile people up is inciting violence and therefore can be censored, you're looking at at least a culture of repression, even if the First Amendment is still intact. If you have these what are truly corporate oligarchies making the rules for people, and silencing their voices based on political bias and politically tense situations, you could see how that power could be wielded towards the other side too. And that's what I want people on the left to realize. Do you not see how this also could possibly, depending on where the power

lies in a few years, could negatively affect the voices that you think are important? Now, I have been a steady critic against Donald Trump's rhetoric in some cases, especially his rhetoric on Twitter. And a lot of people disagree with me on this. I think that if he would have showed more restraint, especially in his social media behavior, that he could have won in a landslide. I think people wanted stability, people wanted normalcy. People did want decency and decorum, especially with the craziness of the past year, a lot of good policies by Donald Trump. But I think that his lack of decorum, his lack of restraint, his bombastic and dogmatic nature, especially on social media, really hurt him. So I have been a big critic of Donald Trump's tweets. And I agree that some of his

rhetoric has been very irresponsible. I think some of the rhetoric at the Capitol was very irresponsible. But I think that we just have to be fair in applying that standard to everyone and to not take the leap of saying, yes, this speech definitely incited violence if it didn't explicitly do that. Because then you're looking at the justified censorship of all kinds of different voices on the right or the left. And then we don't have a society of free speech anymore. Again, even if the First Amendment is technically intact. Even Germany's Angela Merkel has spoken out against Twitter's ban on Trump. And she is not a fan of Trump.

I would say that she might not even be a fan of the United States. But she is actually coming out and saying free speech is important. And this is a place where I wouldn't say, free speech really thrive. So Anglo Merkel says, this is what, this is the statement that her spokesperson said. The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic. He said at a news conference in Berlin, rights like the freedom of speech can be interfered with, but by law and within a framework defined by the legislature, not according to a corporate decision. So I disagree.

with that obviously. And that's what I'm talking about is that Germany is not some, is not some bulwark of free speech that we should be looking to. Like he thinks that free speech should be limited and it should be limited by law. His real contention with it is that a corporation did it. And I don't think that's right. But they are speaking out against it. They do think that it's problematic because they at least can see and the ACL at least can see how this could negatively affect them as well. And that's all I'm asking for. Just see what this president sets for other people. And, you know, I hear people say, well, I'm never going to spread fascist propaganda. I'm never going to incite violence. I'm always going to follow the rules. So it's

not going to affect me. That's very naive. As extremely naive. Like, don't you see how the standards are so subjective? And it depends on the people who are in charge. And if someone who disagrees with you and might even find your leftist or progressive ideology dangerous as propaganda that they could censor you, would you think that's fair? No, I don't think that you would. So that's not all. They also, these big tech companies, Google, Apple, Amazon, banned together to take down parlor, which was a Twitter-like company. And I'll get into that story and how scary and problematic that is in just one second. All right. Let's talk about parlor. So Google took parlor off of its app store. Apple took parlor off of its app store. Amazon cut parlor off of its web posting service,

forcing it to find a new host or to shut down. And right now, it's not available. And so what we hear so often is, oh, you don't like Twitter, just go to a different platform or you don't like this social media site and how they run their site. Well, you should just build your own. Okay, well, that's exactly what that's exactly what Parlard did. But now, like a cartel, these huge big tech companies, they come together and they basically say, sorry, like, you can't play on our court. You're going to have to build yourself another court. And oh, by the way, that's going to be very difficult and expensive to do when we understand that. And so what they're saying, the reason why these companies say that they're taking them down is because, of course, they're spreading disinformation, they're

spreading misinformation, they're spreading dangerous rhetoric that is leading to violence and things like and things like that. Parlor is a small company. And so even though they have rules, against illegal conduct or illegal content being spread on their platform, even though they have rules against incitement of violence, they do not have the manpower yet to moderate all of this content. And so Apple is saying, look, you got to moderate all this content. You got to take this content down on a regular basis or else we're not going to host you on our app store. Google said the same thing. Amazon basically said the same thing. thing. And parlor even said, look, we've got a team of volunteers. We'll do it. We'll figure it out.

We can't afford to pay these people right now, but we'll get volunteers to moderate. And they said, oh, no, sorry, we just don't think that's going to be enough. So, yeah, we're basically going to shut you down. See, the hypocrisy in this, you might be listening and say, well, you know, that's whatever Google and Amazon and Apple want to do, they're just a, they're just a private company working in their best interest in the interest of the people and public safety. No, no, no. that's hypocrisy because if they really cared about public safety like if they really cared about abiding by those rules and having regular and consistent moderation of uh you know what's illegal content or dangerous content then they would also be threatening facebook and twitter in the

same way but they're not there's loads of misinformation and disinformation on facebook you think there aren't violent threats on facebook you think people haven't been doxed on facebook you think people aren't sharing criminal activity and pornography on Facebook? Of course they are. Same goes with Twitter. All of that content can be found on Twitter. All of that content can be found on YouTube and Instagram as well. And a lot of that content is never moderated. It's reported, but it's never blocked. It's never taken down. And so the real reason why these companies are coming after parlor is because they don't want the competition. They don't want the competition. And that is when they start, they seem to be acting like some kind of cartel or acting like some kind of monopoly against

the little guy. So you can't simultaneously say that, oh, this is fine. This is just the free market. Why don't you create some competition? Oh, by the way, these big giants that you can't possibly win against because they have so much of the market share. Google has 90% of the market share. They're going to come and they're going to take down the competition. That's not the free market. The market is no longer free. And look, I used to be. I used to be. I used to. I used to. I to be very recently a conservative who said, you know what, I might not like the censorship that happens in these companies. I might not like a lot of things that they do, but they are private companies. They can de-platform the people that they want to de-platform, not realizing

the very basic principle that a culture of free speech is also important, not just the First Amendment, because you can have the First Amendment, which I do think is so important. It's so important for the government not to stifle speech. It's so important for us to have that protection. But if you don't have a culture of free speech, and if you have these corporations that have so much unprecedented, that is such an overused buzzword right now, but it truly is in history, unprecedented power. We have this corporate oligarchy who makes a lot of decisions for our lives, who really influences how freely we can move. Like if you're talking about what airlines allow you to do, how freely we can speak and share information, the things.

that we can know and say, they're basically an oligarchy. And when they are making the rules that are actually against the First Amendment and do not promote a culture of free speech, when they are trying to drown out competition in a way that is not fairly applied to other companies like Twitter and Facebook, then you're no longer really living in a free society, a culture of free speech. is just as important as having legal free speech, is having the First Amendment, because laws actually follow culture. So if our culture starts to believe that all political opposition and all unpopular opinions is inciting violence, even if it's not explicitly inciting violence,

if you see all forms of dissent or disagreement as dangerous misinformation as harmful rhetoric that could lead to bad things, then you're only going to allow for a very small minority of voices. And then you do have a culture of tyranny. You do. So people are saying that this is not a free speech issue. Don't understand that it's a lot more complex than just saying, well, the First Amendment still exists. And so you don't even need to make a constitutional argument. First of all, I am not taking constitutional lessons from people who think. that the First Amendment doesn't matter when it comes to a Christian cake baker. Like, these are the same people who think that a Christian cake baker in Colorado should be forced

to bake a cake for a gay wedding or a florist should be forced to provide her services for a gay wedding. These are the same people who believe that nuns should be forced to provide insurance for birth control no matter what the First Amendment says. So I'm not going to be taking lessons on the Constitution for people who think that the Second Amendment only includes muskets. So spare me. Now, for those of you who are conservatives who actually care about the First Amendment and not just conservatives, there are people on the other side who care about the First Amendment, but if you're someone who truly does care about free speech, if you truly do care about our First Amendment rights, and you're on the side that I was, that genuinely just believe this is not a First Amendment issue,

this is not a free speech issue, this might be, you know, a corporate policy issue, this might be an unfairness issue, but this has nothing to do with free speech. If you're on the side, that I was. Let me explain why I think this is a little, it's just more complicated. I already explained the whole culture of free speech thing, but there's also a legal part of this. This is not just private companies. These are not just cultural issues. There's also a political, illegal part of this, and it has to do with Section 230. So Rachel Bovard, she's a policy expert out of D.C. I've had her on the podcast before. Go back and listen to the episode. I do. with her a few weeks ago. She talks a lot about big tech and she talks a lot about big corporations

and how much power they have and how this does have political freedom issue or implications on our lives. So she wrote in USA Today about Section 230, which kind of outlines the rules for these internet platforms. Let me read you some quotes from her article. Quote, internet platforms would receive a liability shield so they could voluntarily screen out harmful content accessible to children, and in return, they would provide a forum for true diversity of political discourse and myriad avenues for intellectual activity. So that is why Section 230 was originally set up. So they could kind of function as both a platform and a publisher. So that means that they could be a platform in the sense that people could share their opinions and that these platforms were not

liable for the content that was shared. So I would be able to post on some internet forum. I'd be able to post on Yelp. I'd be able to post on Twitter. And Twitter would not be liable for something that I said. They couldn't be sued for something that I said. But it also gave them the ability to be a publisher in that they could have rules and take down the content that they wanted to take down. But the exchange was supposed to be, okay, we're going to give you these protections in Section 230, but these companies are supposed to provide a forum for, quote, true diversity of political discourse and myriad avenues for intellectual activity. And that's where we are now.

It is very questionable and arguable whether or not these companies are holding up their end of the bargain. She goes on to say, but what was originally understood to be a privilege granted for reasonable content moderation has become judicially contorted, stretched into a bulletproof immunity that protects these companies from all manner of misdeeds. Critically, and protecting these companies from costly damages and lawsuits, Section 230 has also fueled the growth of the big tech platforms, which now engage in viewpoint discrimination at an unprecedented scale and scope. International mega corporations determining what news information and perspectives Americans are allowed to read here in access. A handful of big tech companies are now controlling the flow of most information in a free society. and they are doing so aided and abetted by government policy. See, so it's not as simple as just these companies, private companies, doing what they want to do.

That these are merely private companies exercising their First Amendment rights is a reductive framing, which ignores that they do so in a manner that is privileged. They are immune to the liabilities to which other First Amendment actors like newspapers are subject. And also that these content moderation decisions occur at an extraordinary and unparalleled scale. When Google decides to suppress or amplify content, it does so for 90% of the global marketplace, Rachel Bovard says. Twitter's choices to cut off circulation of certain content, as they did when they banned circulation of a story critical to the Biden family, a month before the November election.

Do you remember that? Very much shapes the national news narrative. Facebook, by its own admission, has the power to swing elections, which is troubling as some of the platform's fact checkers are partially banked rolled by a charge. Chinese company. I think it is bite dance. The downstream impact these companies have on shaping independent thought market access, consumer behavior, election integrity and speech are undeniable in a very real way. These platforms are transforming the nature of what it means to be free in a free society. That policy makers have a role here is obvious. While private companies have the right

to set the rules for their own platforms and online communities, they do not have a right to do it with the privilege of Section 230 protections. And the more these companies engage in behavior that ranges away from the original goal of ensuring a true diversity of political discourse and toward gatekeeping independent thought in America, the more they prove themselves undeserving of special government treatment. And so she makes a really good point about that is that there is a legal aspect to it. there is a part of this that also that also has to do with the law that really does have to do do with the First Amendment. Now, I'm going to talk to you also about the other side of this,

about the benefits to Section 230. A lot of conservatives, Trump himself, Josh Hawley has talked about repealing Section 230 and how important that is. Now, why there was really no meaningful legislation when Republicans were in control is the perpetual question that conservatives and Republicans have been asking our lawmakers for years and years and years. They use these big issues like defunding Planned Parenthood and, you know, border security and all of this stuff to win elections and they get in power and then it doesn't happen. And then the cycle just goes over and over again. But conservatives talk about repealing Section 230.

I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. And David French makes a pretty good argument for keeping Section 230 that I'll read to you in just one second. All right. So people say we should just repeal section 230, but I really don't think it's that simple. I have really tried to look at both sides of the argument here. And there are people on the left and the right, by the way, who want to repeal section 230 for different reasons. I think that the right wants it to be to where these companies basically can't discriminate at all against content. That's, I would say, a crude way to describe what a lot of people on the right would say that they want the left. wants them to be more like a publisher so that they have more regulation. So the government can impose more of what they want these big tech companies to do. And Section 230 could theoretically accomplish either one of those things. But David French, he argues that Section 230 actually prevents censorship, like political censorship, by giving social media companies the benefits of being both a platform and a publisher. So again, they're a platform in the sense that they're not liable

for what you say, but they're a publisher in the sense that they can remove bad content like porn or threats or doxing. He argues in Time Magazine that if you take this away, then the websites, these sites become publishers, then they're liable for everything that you put on their site, which means that they are going to go wild on censorship, because they're certainly not going to allow anything on their site that they cannot personally verify or vouch for, which will actually give even more power to these big, tech companies because they're the only ones with their resources to moderate and filter out a lot of that content that they don't want to be liable for. So a company like Parlor couldn't exist if it had to become a publisher, if it didn't have 230 protection. Now, of course, the irony here is that

the 230 protection is supposed to also protect them from the rules that are being slapped on them by these companies like Amazon and Google and Apple. I'll say, if you don't follow our rules. If you don't moderate all this content, we're going to take you off. Well, Section 230 is actually supposed to protect companies like Parlor by saying, you know, you're not liable for all of the content that is on your site. So that, again, is where we have these companies acting with more power than the government is kind of subverting the rules of Section 230 by saying we're a private company and we can do what we want to do and applying those rules arbitrarily. So my question is, does someone out there who knows more about this than I do, who has done more

research who is an expert in all of this? Like, what is the answer? Because I don't think it can keep going how it's going. Like, we can't have Twitter and Facebook who control so much of our information and who really can sway elections, who do a terrible job of moderating the content on their site to make sure that there's no doxing and no abuse and no threats and no illicit content and also are, for example, stopping the circulation of a New York Post article about the Biden family that is just as legitimate as any story that the New York Times has written about Donald Trump. Like, we can't keep going like that. There has to be some kind of harness. At the same time, I see the importance of Section 230 that they have to be able to have

enforceable rules without being liable for everything that is on its website or else. else these competitors like parlor, even though it doesn't exist right now, it wouldn't be able to exist because it wouldn't have the protection that's needed to be able to not be, again, liable for the content that is on its site. And so I think it's a complicated issue. But that's, that's really my point. My point isn't that I have all of the answers. My point is that it's much more complex than saying, well, this has nothing to do with the First Amendment. This has nothing to do with free speech. This has nothing to do with anything like that. It's just private companies doing what they want to do. No, this does have, it has legal implications, but more importantly,

mainly right now at least, it also has cultural implications. And the law does follow culture. And if you do not have a culture of free speech, then it doesn't really matter that much if you have the First Amendment. This is the analogy that I came up with the other day. If you are, and I hate when people pick apart analogies and metaphors to say so, like, are you calling me a child? Who are you calling a child in this situation? It's a metaphor. So please take it as that. So if you are a little kid, if you've got a little kid who wants a cookie, asks his mom,

who is the government in our metaphor, that asks his mom if he can have a cookie. The mom says, yes, you can have a cookie. But big brother, pun intended, comes along and says, and takes away the cookie jar and make sure that he doesn't have access to cookies. Make sure that he doesn't have access to the oven so he can't make his own cookies. Make sure that he doesn't have access to the ingredients or is able to go to the store for his own cookies. If Big Brother, who in our metaphor is, are these big corporations, takes away the little brother's ability to get his own cookies. It really doesn't matter if Mom says yes. Technically, he is free to have a cookie, but is he really free to

have a cookie? No, he still lives in this repressive environment where, Big Brother comes along and make sure that he can't have the cookie that he wants. So you can't just stand there as a bystander to this family situation and say, well, yeah, that little kid is totally free to have a cookie? Well, not really. Is he really free to have a cookie if Big Brother is making sure that he can't have a cookie? And cookie in this case is free speech saying the things that you want to say. So it's a lot more complicated than what people are saying that this is not a First Amendment issue.

And once again, do not take constitutional lessons from people who do. don't actually believe in free speech and religious liberty, who want to limit it at every turn, and who do not value the Second Amendment either. And he really see the Constitution as a hindrance to their progressive values. They have no leg to stand on when it comes to schooling us on what the Constitution means and its importance. Now, here's something that I think is interesting in all of this. So as these companies are cracking down on the president, they're cracking down on, it seems like, conservative voices in general, or at least we see that is on the horizon, if not right in front of us.

We've got Biden filling his White House staff with people who have worked in Facebook. So this is according to the New York Post or worked in Facebook and Twitter and all of these places. And by the way, it's so funny because the left and Democrats always say, oh, we're against big corporate power. We're for the little guy. They're very for big corporate power. And by the way, Republicans have also given tax breaks to these companies at the expense of the working class. And so neither party is really innocent in all of this. But Democrats have always said that they're not for a big business, that they're not for these big corporations.

But at every turn, they also give them breaks. And they also contribute to the elitism and oligarchy that exists in corporate America. It's at the expense of the little guy. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you need to realize that most of the people in Washington are not for you. They're not. And Democrats, I think especially get one over by this, you know, social justice rhetoric that Democrats use to win them over and to win elections, not realizing these Democrats are not fighting for you. They're not. They're feeding into these big corporate power structures that then turn around and control your life. And this is especially true for conservatives because Republicans, by giving tax breaks to these big corporations,

by giving immunity in some cases to these corporations, along with a lot of the Democrats in Washington, are giving more power to these corporations who not only control our lives, but also hate our values as conservatives. And so, you know, I'm not a populist. I wouldn't consider myself a populist, but there's an argument to be made for, there's an argument to be made for not giving so much power and so many cuts. so many shortcuts and so many breaks to these big corporations and using that political capital and using that, in using whatever power and funding you have to help the people who actually, who help the people who actually need it. Now, speaking of all of that, that I went on a tangent

because I was talking about how Democrats always say that they're for the little guy. they really are for Big Tech. They really are for these major corporations. And the people that Biden is putting in positions of power in the White House reveal that. So we've got from the New York Post, Jessica Hertz, she'll serve as Biden's White House staff secretary, vetting correspondence. She was a former Facebook lawyer. We've got Emily Horn. She worked at Twitter from 2017 and 2018. She will broker the White House National Security Council's Communications with the media. Mark Schwartz, formerly worked at Amazon Web Services, now helping vet appointments to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Deon Scott, Google Global Program Manager is reviewing applicants to the Department

of Homeland Security. Zade, Zade, is that really this person's name? Facebook Strategic Response Aid is on the Biden vetting team for State Department jobs. Christopher Upperman. Facebook Associate General Counsel is working on the small business. administration. Rachel Lieber, Facebook, director of strategic responses, vetting spy agency staff, Tom Sullivan, Amazon International Tax Director is vetting State Department appointment, Cynthia Hogan, led Apple's lobbying as vice president for public policy and government affairs previously helped with Biden's VP selection vending. So Biden loves big tech, big tech and bed in so many ways with the Chinese Communist Party. If D.C. is the swan.

then Silicon Valley is the swamp number two. And these swamps colliding on the coast of our country are going to envelop the rest of the country in their swampiness. That is what we will get from a Biden presidency. We will see more corporate power. We will see more big tech power. And they will be aided and abetted by now, the Democratic-controlled company.

And it's going to be at the expense of all of us, Republican or Democrats. Okay? It's not going to be, oh, this is going to help the, little guy. This is going to help the least of these. It's going to definitely wreck the working class, but this is what it is. I mean, this is how it is now. We are run by a lot of elites who know how to win elections and do not care about our lives. And for conservatives, completely run counter to the things that we believe in and the things that we hold dear. Also, according to CNBC, there's Austin Lynn,

a former program manager at Facebook. He's on an agency review team for the executive office of the president, Erskine Bowles. A former Facebook board member is advising the transition team, Jeff Zience. Former Facebook board member picked to become Biden's COVID-19 czar. What a weird word to talk to like associate with COVID-19. You know, it's just funny that Biden on his transition team and his White House staff have all these people from Facebook, from Google, from Amazon. these happen to be the companies that are silencing voices the most, certainly deplatforming the president. So don't tell me this has nothing to do.

The Big Tech has nothing to do with the government. Yes, they're in bed with the government. They're also in some ways catering to foreign regimes that hate us. Don't you understand that so many in Washington, D.C., especially, I would say Republicans and Democrats, but especially on the Democratic side, truly hate you. They hate you. and they hate your way of life and they don't care about you. And the government can't save you, left or right.

That's what I want you to know is the title of John MacArthur's book a long time ago. And even though I don't agree with everything in the book, like the revolutionary war was a sin and all of that, I still agree with the premise. The government can't save you. It's not going to save you. It doesn't love you. It doesn't know your name. It doesn't know your kid's name. It doesn't know your kids' favorite food.

People who allow the government to educate their children to take care of. care of their children, people who are convinced that the government actually cares about poor people, that actually cares about the disenfranchised? They don't. They don't. They don't. Okay? That's why it's up to you, church. It's up to you, Christian. It's up to you individual. It's up to you. Mom, dad, employee. If you want to make change, if you want to take care of people, do it yourself. Do it yourself. Do not trust a bureaucrat to take care of the things that cannot be taken care of. There is a function of the government. I'm not a libertarian. Okay. I am not some, I'm certainly not an anarchist. I think there is a role of the government. I think the military is important. I think that we are to pay taxes. That's a,

biblical idea. I'm not, I'm also not a theocrat. There is no biblical precedent for imposing a theocracy on people who don't hold to that belief, certainly not in the New Testament. There is no biblical precedent for a theocracy. Of course, I do believe that the government should be a moral institution looking to the Judeo-Christian ethic of right and wrong and good and bad and lawmaking. And I know some people don't like that, but there is a depiction of Moses at our state's capital for that reason. He's the first human lawgiver that those are the values that America was founded upon. But I'm not for theocracy. I'm not a libertarian. I'm not an anarchist. I do think there's an important role of the government to protect us and to protect our

freedoms, but don't put your hope there. My goodness. And especially anyone who claims that they are going to do things for you to advance your life and to make your life better. The best thing that the government can do for you is leave you the heck alone. Leave you alone. Protect your freedoms. Protect your safety from enemies foreign and domestic and allow you to pursue your happiness and your life and your that's what the government is good at. And that is why its power is so important to be reined in, but we're going to see the government grow. Its power grow exponentially over the next few years right alongside the growth of the power of big corporations and big tack. I also think that there is probably not a coincidence that Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are being attacked so viciously,

not just for saying, hey, we're going to, we're going to push back against the electoral outcome of the election, but also because these have been the two guys that have actually tried to push back against Big Tech. I don't think it's a coincidence that, for example, people are talking about putting them on the no-fly list. Like you can disagree with what they were going to do, like I do, by the way. I didn't think that what they were going to do was right on January 6th. However, them being on the no-fly list and being told to resign because they were going to peacefully and rhetorically lay out their case of election front, that's crazy. Again, you're setting up such a slippery slope that I think it's so important for you to see how it could affect the other site as well. Also, there is this whole, I mean, there's this whole virtue signaling aspect to all of this, the Apple, Google, and Amazon, pretending that they're virtuous for taking down Trump, pretending that they're virtuous for shutting down parties.

when they are catering to the CCP, the most racist, xenophobic, oppressive, repressive regime that exists, colonizing Africa, this regime, the CCP, colonizing Africa, colonizing South America, praying upon the poor and the press and the oppressed. And so these companies cater to them at every corner. They're pretending like they're virtuous for shutting down speech here. Remember, Twitter still allows the dictators of Iran and Saudi Arabia and the propagandists in China to have Twitter accounts and to spread their propaganda freely. But they think they're virtuous for taking the account down of the president of the United States. I mean, it's just crazy.

It's the same thing that they do as they, you know, support social justice here. They support Black Lives Matter here. And yet, just like the NF or the NBA, they turn around and they also support the most racist and repressive. and suppressive and oppressive regime that exists the CCP. It's all a big virtue signal. These are not virtuous companies. The motto of Google used to be, don't be evil. Apparently, they've dropped the first word of that motto.

Frederick Douglass says something that I think applies here. He says, liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thought and opinions has ceased to exist. That of all rights is the dread of tyrants. Let me read you that again from Frederick Douglass. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thought and opinions has ceased to exist. That of all rights is the dread of tyrants. Frederick Douglass is a must read American. Last year, you probably remember Fourth of July.

There were leftists like Kaepernick who were putting out videos with Frederick Douglass's, what to the slave is the Fourth of July, which, by the way, is a really good. work that everyone should read. But the fact of the matter is is that most of the left doesn't align politically at all with Frederick Douglass, who said that the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. That's a quote. He was very much in favor of the Republic. He understood that the Constitution planted a seed of liberty that was meant to grow. It wasn't meant to be perfect from the start. And so the fact that the founders didn't live up to their ideals by saying that all men were created equal and doubted with certain inalienable rights because they still owned and allowed slaves and slavery. That doesn't mean that the Constitution is a moot document, that it's not a good document. Frederick Douglass understood that. Leftists today don't understand that. So they quote, what to a slave is the Fourth of July. They forget his defense of free speech, his defense of the Constitution. Thomas Sol, another great American says, in a sense, the political left's attempts to silence ideas they cannot or will not debate.

are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. That's absolutely true. You see a lot of people on social media say, you know, they're going after people's sponsors. Any conservative commentator, they can say, oh, it's just the ones that spread conspiracy theories or it's just the, it's just the ones who support violence. No, no, no. You honestly think they're going to be discerning and distinguished between just a regular conservative like me and the people who spread conspiracy theories.

No, of course they're not. So they're going after people's sponsors. They're doxing people online. and they're saying, this is not cancel culture. This is just holding people accountable. That really sounds like something a fascist would say. It really, really does. And speaking of fascism, I just want to play you this clip from Portland.

So Antifa, which stands apparently for anti-fascist in the irony of all ironies, is outside of a bookstore trying to get the bookstore named Powell's to stop distributing Andy Knows book called Unmasked. So Andy No is a reporter. He reports on Antifa uprising and riots. Black Lives Matter riots throughout the country. He posts footage from those things and he writes about them and talks about them. And he wrote a book called Unmasked.

And they're really mad that this bookstore in Portland is distributing it. And so here's Antifa telling them to stop distributing Andy No's book. Stop selling Andy No's book. You're on the top. How can you want to be? How can you want to be? Stop dog, Andy knows fuck.

I don't care. Stop. Don't get any of this book. So, if you're on the side, if you're on the side of silencing your opponents, if you're on the side of basically burning books, taking books out, and by the way, this, this bookstore said, okay, we'll take it off our shelves. We're still going to keep it online, but we'll take it off our shelves. Cowards.

Like what I want corporations, corporations, businesses to just stop doing is, you cowtowing to people who have no real power. They have no real power. Corporations, churches, organizations start saying no, no, no. Stop giving in to these toddler temper tantrums. You know what happens if you always give in to your toddler, if you do everything that your toddler wants you to do and you cowtow to every single temper tantrum? They grow up to be brats. And they grow up to be really powerful brats. And then they rule over you. Is that really what you want? with these grown toddlers, start to say no, this is ridiculous. You do not have to agree with the book to distribute it.

You don't have to like its content. You don't have to like the author. You don't have to agree with everything the author has said. But in a society that actually values diversity of thought, which leftists, true leftists do not, by the way. It's what James and I talked about yesterday, this idea of repressive tolerance in trying to hold back what they see as intolerant in the name of tolerance. it's just this very, it's this form of cognitive dissidents that they have justified in themselves.

If you are on the side of banning books, if you are on the side of silencing voices that you don't like, if you are on the side of calling everything that you disagree with harmful or inciting violence or something that should be taken down, you are the fascist. You are the fascist. And a lot of leftists, Again, they say that they're for the little guy. They're against these big corporations. They're against Amazon. That's not true because they're really for all of these companies, these big companies, when they virtue signal, when they say their social justice lines, and when they

silence the voices that these leftists don't like. Benito Mussolini, the famous fascist, said this. Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of of state and corporate power. It's so funny that leftists think that it's actually conservatives who want this. When if you look at Biden's cat, I'm not even calling Biden a fascist, but if you look at the people that Biden are putting in place

and you look at which side these corporations are on and who they're coming down upon, and you realize as a leftist you are also on the side of these corporations and you're on the side of banning books and censoring voices that you don't like, maybe you should look in the mirror. and realize that you are the fascist. Not everything that you don't like is hate speech. And by the way, the First Amendment does cover what you consider hate speech, what I would

consider hate speech too. Guess what? I as a conservative Christian, I think you as some far left progressive, I think that your ideology is dangerous. Like, I think it's really harmful. I think some things that you say could be labeled as hate speech. I think a lot of what you say is misinformation and is complete. propaganda is totally untrue. I think most things that critical race theories say are conspiracy theories,

basically. They're not reality when it comes to history. And I do think that that kind of stuff can gin up violence. And guess what? I don't want to silence you. I don't want you to be deplatformed. I don't want you to be taken off Twitter. I don't want you to be cracked down upon. I don't want you to not feel like you can't protest peacefully or that you can't speak out about what you believe in. I don't want to silence you. I don't want you to go. I don't want you to off into obscurity. I want you to feel like you are totally free to write the books you want to write, to believe the things that you want to believe, to worship or not worship, how you want to worship or not worship, to say the things that you want to say. But I understand the feeling is not

mutual. You don't feel that way about me because you think, well, you're really harmful. And so it's so funny how you become this moral absolutist and you become this person who believes in absolute and dogmatic and autocratic truth, even though you believe that you're on the side of tolerance. Again, you might be the fascist. Now, I want to end with some encouragement as I like to do because I know that you listen to this and you get worked up because there's a lot going on and it worries you. And there's reason for concern. Like, I'm not going to pretend like there's not.

I'm not going to pretend like there's nothing scary going on. And we don't have a reason to be worried. I am worried about conservative and Christian voices being drowned out. I am very worried about that. Even though I know God doesn't need the First Amendment to advance his kingdom and advance his gospel, that he doesn't need American freedom for those things. These are also gifts of grace that I think that we should steward well and that we should fight for.

And we should realize that people of all faiths and all backgrounds, all socio-economic classes, have found refuge in these unique, exceptional American freedoms that are recognized in the Constitution and given to us, we believe, by God. And so I do want to leave you with just a bit of encouragement. So I talked about yesterday in my interview with James Lindsay, definitely go listen to that if you have not. It's relevant no matter, you know, it's not strictly news. We're analyzing the things that are going on. So even if, you know, you already know what happened in the news yesterday, it's still a relevant interview to listen to.

And I talked about it. I paraphrase something that I read in C.S. Louis's abolition of man. And that's really what I want to end on. And I want to end with this question is, are we creating? an environment for the society that we want to exist? Are we creating a society for the virtues that we want to exist? And so there's a lot of people who say that we want tolerance, that we want love, that we want unity, that we want healing, that we want within the church racial reconciliation. There's a lot of evangelicals that use that terminology. We want progress.

We want things to get better. We want people to be enlightened and love each other. and all of these things, are we actually, are we providing young people, are we providing each other with the tools to make those things happen? Are we really doing that? Or are we just repressing the voices that we don't like? Are we actually creating a very intolerant society? And that's, that's what I argue is that racial reconciliation will never be accomplished through critical race theory because critical race theory, as in ideology admittedly divides. It splits people up. We are never going to become a tolerant, more loving, and accepting society through repressive, what is called repressive tolerance, what we talked about yesterday. We're never going to become a more forgiving

and gracious society through doxing and cancellation, what you're using in very dystopian terms, accountability. Like, that is not going to, you're not going to punish people into being more loving. You're not going to chastise people and wag your finger in the face of people and make them your version of accepting or tolerant. It's just not going to happen. The only way those things are going to happen is if we create an environment where people are free to debate and to discuss ideas, where people are not afraid to be honest, where people are not afraid to say what they believe and for us to go into the public

square and for us to figure out which idea is actually better. And we have to be able to detach disagreement from hate in order to do that. That is the only way that we can make a society. that actually achieves these virtues that we all say that we want, love, intolerance, in some kind of togetherness. And we're going to have to have those debates so that we can have a foundation that we actually agree upon. We're never going to agree on everything as Americans, but can we have some foundational

things that we agree on? I'm afraid that we don't. And I honestly don't know how or when we're going to get there. Because I don't, it's hard to see a way forward with people. who don't believe in the same definition of truth that I do, who don't believe that America is a good country at all, who don't believe that the Constitution is a worthy document, who don't actually believe in free speech or freedom of religion,

who don't actually believe that I should be able to have the freedom to say what I want to say, who don't believe that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, that the family actually matters at all, or that parental rights are even a legitimate thing, who don't believe in the freedom to homeschool or private school, your children. I mean, there are people on the left who are, again, everything I believe in, foundationally, not just these policy issues.

Like we can disagree on immigration policy and welfare policy. But unless we have these basic truths that we can all come together on, then it's hard for me to see how we can achieve the virtues that we say that we want to virtue or the virtues that we want to preserve and have. And so I think that the only path to that is through debate, is through discourse. But if we have one side who actually thinks the discourse and debate is dangerous and that you should just depress opposing voices, we're never going to get there. And you're not going to create an environment, a society of love and tolerance by being hateful and intolerant. Like, you're just not going to.

It's not going to be accomplished. And so let me read you. I mean, C.S. Lewis felt that he had this same problem in his era, in his country, in a different way. And here's what, here's how he describes this issue. we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more drive or dynamism or self-sacrifice or creativity. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traders in our midst. We castrate and bid the gents. yieldings be fruitful. And it seems like that's what we're doing today. We are supplying tools to our kids of hatefulness and inability to disagree intellectually, inability to tolerate opposing views, an ability to actually have some kind of thoughtful discussion, inability to be able to critically think about things. And then we are saying, oh, be independent thinkers that love people that can reconcile and unite and heal.

It's just, it's not going to happen. And so what does this look like in our own lives? What does this look like as Christians to create the society that upholds the virtues that we actually want? Well, one, it is living out those virtues for ourselves. And of course, I don't believe that tolerance means compromising on the truth. I think that you can tolerate people who have other views while still standing up for what you believe in. And I do think that that is the responsibility that we have right now, that in our private and public life, that we, once again, as I've said so many times, that we live not by lies.

It means refusing to tell lies. It means refusing to accept lies and to believe lies ourselves. It means refusing as far as we can to not allow lies to flourish. And so that means if you've got a child that is in school and they are being shoved critical race theory nonsense about how America is this awful. and oppressive place without condition that you know isn't true. They're learning virtues. They're learning about biology that in a way that is not true. It's time for you to stand up to the school board or to the teacher in a kind way. If you know that your pastor is preaching something that is not in accordance with scripture, whether it comes to justice or any other issue, then it is your responsibility,

along with your spouse if you're married, to set up a meeting and have that conversation that is based on scripture. if you see some kind of training going on in your work that you know is actually going to just create more implicit bias and division and hate, it is your responsibility to be equipped to have the conversation of why this particular kind of training is actually going to be counterproductive rather than productive. If you are sitting in your class and your professor is teaching something about history that you know isn't true or morality or virtue that you know isn't true or politics, that you know isn't true, that it is your responsibility to raise your hand or to set up a meeting

and to say something. These things are vital at this point. I don't think we have time to be quiet anymore. We have to fight for the virtues that we actually want society to exist. That is not going to happen unless you speak up and you are willing to represent your views in a way that is thoughtful and intelligent. And I have a list of resources on my website,

ali bethsducky.com slash bog, blog slash recommended dash resources. It's a highlight bubble on my Instagram too. I think reading all those books that I have on that list will on that list will be very helpful to you. Okay. I hope that was helpful. We will be back here tomorrow. Happy Wednesday.