Buck’s First Thoughts - 1/12/21

judicious in the application of this. They're not going to say, okay, only the really bad people on the right, and there are certainly some only those people are going to be punished. No, there's going to be mass purges not only of individuals, but also of ideas, in some cases, ideas that are really central policy debates. We should have seen this coming because it wasn't the election. You have to remember, it wasn't the election that was the original reason for online censorship.

It was COVID nineteen lockdowns and mask effectiveness, right, And that's a different thing, isn't it than just saying anything outright about masks if you even question the effectiveness of them, something that in the beginning of twenty twenty, as you've no doubt heard me talk about many times, doctor Fauci suggested there was essentially no effectiveness. That was what Fauci said.

They can pretend he didn't. But now if you even question it, you are d platformed, you're attacked, you are banned, you're censored. And we have been led to believe through four years that the real threat of authoritarianism, and the heart of authoritarianism, is the concept of you must obey. It is not about your consent. You must obey, and

there are there are threats. There is eventually the threat of force attached to this, But even in the earlier stages, it's obey or you can't speak out without fear of being censored by platforms. Obey or maybe you can't even conduct your business anymore. You'll be boycotted. Obey or you won't be able to use banking services, You'll be kicked out of essential parts of day to day life until

you submit. You must submit or else. We've been told for four years that the big threat of this came from Donald Trump and the right when all along, and there's really no serious disagreement about this. All along, there has been a complete opposition to this president from the media, from Silicon Valley and from much of corporate America. Look

at what happened during the BLM riots and protests. There were lawful BLM protests, to be sure, but there were also a lot of riots, a lot of destruction of property, a lot of assaults on police. Corporate America was almost uniformly supportive of those protests. Corporate America was sending them money, and there was no condemnation of political violence or riots.

Social media allows you to say things like racist cops murdered this person, and then when we find out more facts and we know that it's not actually not a murder and it was not motivated by racism based on anything that we know, there's no fact check run on that. There's no additional context that's put out there. So we know that there is a capricious application of the terms of service, whether it's about COVID lockdowns or BLM and

political violence. They're playing games, folks. They're not applying these standards honestly. In fact, they're weaponizing the standards against one side. Where does the greatest concern of authoritarianism come from? Look show me a regime around the world, either today or in history that was truly an authoritarian state. And ask yourself this question. Was the press such as it was in complete opposition to the ruling party or totally doing the bidding of the ruling party, And you'll come to

a very straightforward conclusion. Now, there may be some opposition papers here and there, a little bit there may be. But do you ever have the entirety of the corporate establishment and the information establishment and the intellectual class, so to speak, completely united against a truly authoritarian regime. No, because you couldn't have. You couldn't have such a governing a governing system. You couldn't have somebody in total control

with so many powerful forces arrayed against them. I bring this up between because my concern now is that we're heading toward what is supposed to be a benevolent authoritarianism of the left and the Democrat Party, but will end up just being the authoritarianism. That's what we're actually going to get. They think it's for our own good. We have to censor bad ideas. Got to keep you safe, so you can't question lockdowns or masks. Got to get rid of political violence. But we're only going to do

it from the right. And by the way, I support the elimination of political violence, but I do think it should be supported in all kinds of politics and from all sides of the aisle, and from American political conversation and discourse. So notice how there's there's just a complete lack of understanding of what will really happen, what we're facing when you have a government that's coming into power here that is almost messianic. I mean, it has a

zeal to do things in your life. Save what you all about Trump, much of his governing philosophy, whatever however you want to describe it, involved letting people do what they were going to do, and he wasn't trying to get all up and everything that your life is about day in and day out. That's about to change your choices. Your freedoms are going to be under assault in unprecedented ways from people who believe that even if they're not

helping you, they're helping society. You see, they're assisting, they're advancing the collective. And so whatever whatever downfall this this creates, whatever downside this creates for you, is irrelevant, and they're going to be echoed by everything. Everything you're seeing in the mainstream media, everything you're going to be seeing from

Silicon Valley. I mean, if you wanted to create an authoritarian America having Silicon Valley and nine five percent of the journalistic establishment and a truly angry and emboldened Democrat Party, it's it is a concern. It's a worry because they're not saying this would be a perfect opportunity for Joe Biden and the Democrats to say, everybody, we are reconciling as a nation. The election is over. Joe Biden one, he will be president, Kamala Harris will be vice president,

and we're gonna be a good administration for all Americans. No, we're not purging, we're not settling scores, We're not doing any of that stuff. And I tell you this, it would be if a lot of people would be very receptive of that message, including I think a lot a lot of people who are Republicans. They would say, okay, and if they took those actions in good faith, Wow,

wouldn't it be nice. I would rather actually live in America where we can debate policy issues, but by and large, politics as much less an obsession of individuals where and it has to be for some folks because you've seen I mean, they've the lockdown mentality has destroyed countless lives this year, and so politics, even if you didn't care about it before, it cares about you. So it's been unavoidable. I would prefer us to go to a place where

it's more of a of an intellectual and curiosity hobby. Right, oh, what's going on in politics today? Right before you check out the sports section or look at what soap operas you're gonna watch. I don't know how many of you watch soap operas, but you get the idea. I think that would be a healthier place for us to be as a country, where you know, yes, we have our politics, but we have these other areas of public life where we don't have to always be an R or a

D or whatever else people are. But here's my warning to all of us. I don't think that's where we're heading at all. I think everything is going to be even more political because the people that think that Donald Trump was a fascist and that they believe that his supporters have to also pay a price, and that price is not just losing the election, which is very very disconcerting. And yeah, he lost. It's done, it's over, Okay, it's finished, and that hurts to say for a lot of people's

that makes them pretty depressed. But that's not sufficient in the eyes of the left. There has to be a whole other level here. They want a repudiation not only of Trump ideas, but of one's former support for this president. That's where this is all going. They want total and complete submission and the acceptance of our tech overlords and

their view of what is acceptable speech. This is the biggest threat to day to day individual freedom i've in America, certainly since the darkest days of nine to eleven and the the lockdown and crackdown afterwards on a whole host of activities and ideas. But with this one, it's not that out. There's not that there's al Qaeda, there's some

external enemy. The enemy that the Democrat sy is is internal, and they're they're pushing this with an increase in domestic terror investigations and prosecutions, referring to not just people that broke the law and storm the Capitol and the rioters, but referring to anyone running around DC as a terrorists or terrorists in waiting. They're going to be very broad with how they apply these definitions and They're going to be very ruthless with the way they try to exact revenge.

So I want us all to be prepared for this. This is going to be a challenging time for those of us who do not agree with whatever the Biden Harris agenda is going to be, and who fight against the lockdowns, who fight against the digital tyranny that is upon us. Now we are on We are on defense big time, and a lot of us got used to being on political offense for a few years, but the pendulum has swung far to the other side. Now. This

is not a cause for despair. It's just a cause for looking at the reality and preparing for it, understanding who you trust, who you're alongside, and how we move forward together. And a big part of this is the battle over tech and over social media and the Internet, which is the biggest advancement in human communication certainly since electricity, and before that, you'd have to say the printing press, right. I mean, this is enormous and we cannot allow this

to become dominated by one set of beliefs. And I believe that it'll really tear the country apart if that's allowed to continue, or if that's allowed to continue on its current trend, and with that, I'm glad to see that there's the beginnings at least of a resistance and a pushback to the crackdown from Facebook and others. Let's dive into that. Thanks for listening to The Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get the latest news and information from book by heading to buck Sexton dot com. Well, we know

this was organized online. We know that we again took down qan on Croud Boys, stop this deal, anything that was talking about possible violence last week. Our enforcements never perfect, so I'm sure there were still things on Facebook. I think these events were large organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, and don't have our

standards and don't have our transparency. But certainly to this day, we're working to find any single mention that might be meaning to and making sure we get it down as quickly as possible. This is just not true. That's the Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg when she says that this can't be done on Facebook, or that this wasn't done on Facebook, or that there have not been violent riots planned and executed using platforms like Twitter and Facebook. That's just not accurate.

I mean, you look back at news stories stretching back for years. There's been all kinds of horrible stuff, horrible stuff that has transited the the servers and platforms and put on your screen, from Facebook, from Twitter, from these because their platforms, and they have this Section two thirty protection that allows them to be platforms, but they are now acting as publishers because they're taking editorial lines and

they're not they're not applying standards without politicization. So they want to have it both ways, and that's the fundamental issue here, and they're getting away with it. They're getting away with it. When she says that the Capitol Hill riots we're not organized on Facebook, that's a very you know that, that's a very interesting position for it to to take. How would they how would they even know? And how

quickly are they taking things off? You're really going to tell me that Facebook, with its billions of users and all the people that gathered together and went to DC and anybody who was talking about criminal activity, they didn't they didn't use Facebook. It was all on parlor. That's the allegation. They better prove that one. I want to see the proof, because I know that Facebook has been used to plan geehottest terror attacks. I mean, you look

at these other platforms. There's all kinds of horrible stuff going on. But we don't hold the phone companies responsible for what any lunatic, you know, if a if a mafia boss calls in an assassination, you know, a hit on somebody using a phone, we don't blame the cell phone company. Oh I didn't you want to stop this? It's impossible to have perfect moderation, and that seems to be the standard that they're holding Parlor to where they

pulled down violent content or incendiary content. Maybe they're not as efficient as Facebook, but they haven't said, well, let's just increase your efficiency. You know, when you're talking about Amazon Web Services AWS pulling Parlor off the Internet, it isn't Oh, we'll work with you so that you guys we can all agree. I want the rules of the road here, and you're going to enforce them. It's no, sorry, you're done. We think there's too much violent stuff on

your site. Twitter is full of horrible stuff. Horrible stuff they've got, uh, you know, Iranian politicians and and and you know Russian dictator and they've got all kinds of wacko awful propaganda on there calling for genocide against human beings. I the Chinese commun his party can spee whatever nonsense they want on Twitter, and they don't get any you know, push back from these authorities. So we know that the standard is a let's crush conservative standard. And it reminds

me right now. It reminds me a little bit of how conservatives were completely you know, put on their back feet and scared after the shooting, the shooting of I'm sorry, the incident with George Floyd. It wasn't a shooting where where the knee was on his neck, in his back, and then blm, riots happened and all of a sudden everybody was WHOA, you know, I maybe maybe cops are racist and maybe we should do some big legislative effort here to address this and new training everything, and said,

hold on a second, this is one incident. Let's look at all We didn't have all the facts, as you know, we only saw half that video. The other half of the video was important, important to see. But people were scared. And the left is they're very adeptit this. They're very good. They go after people intentionally in bad faith on the right, if they just wanted to purge the crazies. A lot of people that sit around and say, all right, I mean,

you know, Q is a bunch of wackos. I you know, I don't even I don't even know what Q believes, and Q is insane, So don't you know that's not my problem. A lot of people sit around and say, well, what's the but no, for them to really gain political power, for the left, for the Democrats to fully leverage what's going on, they gotta go after some people that they know are opposed to any kind of political violence, that they know denounced immediately and would always going forward denounce

a riot in the Capitol building. They got to get some of those people, because that sends a message to everybody, To the vast majority of conservatives, to the ninety nine point nine percent of conservatives who would never raise their hand in anger against a police officer over a political issue, the left sends a message to all of them, and

get you too. You think, just because you're ethical and honorable and don't support political violence and don't support breaking laws because of election discontent, that you're safe or that you'll be allowed to speak. No, No, friends, authoritarians always have to make an example of the compliant as well as well as those who disobey. Thanks for listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get the latest news and information from Buck by heading to buck Sexton dot com.

Do you have any concerns that Congress will be distracted if this trial goes forward instead of focusing on the cabinet and coronavirus? Yes, I do have concerns, but so does Speaker Pelosi. Misforcome is a pretty good legislator, and he is doing what he thinks he needs to do to be disruptive of President Biden. But I will send

him McConnell uh nex Belos is smarter than that. We'll take the vote that we should take in the House, and she will make the determination as win as the best time to get that vote, to get the managers upon it and move that legislation over to the Senate. It's just so happens that if it didn't go over there for one hundred days, it could. Let's give President and LEC Biden the hundred days he needs to get us the gender off and run in and maybe we'll

send the articles sometimes after that. It's not even gonna be done when Trump leaves. They're already the Democrats already signaling this to you, not not going to let this go. And I've I've read that the Attorney General Bill Barr had advised the President not to pardon himself, and I understand the legal rationale for that. And I'll say I became worried about the President's about how the president was doing when when he started to turn on Bill Barr, which as you know, I would I would not do,

and I did not. I did not agree with that, and I became even more worried. We returning on Mike Pence, who I think is has been an amazing case study and somebody who has maintained his composure and his dignity and his decency through just a maelstrom. I don't mean just recently, I mean for all four years, all the attacks on the left and everything to put against Mike Pence. Let's not forget Mike Pence. Everything he's shown us so far is that he's a good man who's trying his

best in a very difficult job. I believe the same thing is true of attorney Attorney General Barr, and I said all along, maybe he didn't appoint a special counsel on Hunter Biden because he had already looked at what was going on there and he didn't see he didn't see any federal crimes to investigate. It's possible. Friends, I know this stuff does not get This doesn't get a lot of a lot of clicks, a lot of love

and conservative media. But I'm telling you the truth. I'm telling you the truth because I am your friend, i am your ally. I'm here with you shield's eye, and you know, the continuation of the persecution of Trump, you can bet on that that's going to happen. I mean here there you had when we started this out at Congressman Clyburn saying that they want to do this after the hundred days of Biden's agenda. I'm also going to tell you right now be prepared for this. There was

a lack because of some of the personnel decisions. There was a lack of focus and efficacy when Trump came into office to pursue I'm talking about the very beginning in twenty seventeen after the inauguration, to pursue agenda items that needed to get done. You know, we did not have a repeal and replace of a bomacare we did not get. We got fifteen miles of new fence or wall at the border, hundreds of miles of upgraded fence

or wall, but we needed more new wall. There were things that were left undone because there was a lack of focus. All we really got where tax cuts and deregulation, which is great, and I praised them, and I don't walk back from that at all. I still think those were very good moves. But understand that the Biden administration is going to undo all of that now and then

some So what do I see happening here? They're going to pursue as the Democrats do, remember with Obamacare twenty starting two thousand and nine, going all the way through. They're going to pursue with ruthless efficiency, a transformational agenda that the left approves of. It won't be as radical, I think as some of this stuff we're concerned about right now, not yet at least, because they're going to use this moment in time to run up the scoreboard.

For sure, that's what's going to happen. And they're they're also going to continue to go after Trump and they will not be satisfied. Until he and I I believe his family as well are in legal jeopardy, and also that his supporters. But I mean supporters, I don't just mean his voters. I mean there's seventy five million Trump voters. I think it's gonna be hard to you know, to go after all of them, but I mean the top

people in his White House. There there are there's going to be ramifications for them from the left professionally once they once they leave this White House. I think that's

also very much going to be the case. So with all of that, I would say that there was one thing that Jim Kleibern mentioned when he was going into his whole Donald Trump, how We're going to get Donald Trump and wait one hundred days, and that is there needs to be a renewed national focus on just what exactly is going on here with coronavirus and what a complete debacle the vaccine rollout has been so far, and people who are trying to blame the federal government are delusional.

It is not. The federal government has delivered the vaccine at a five to one rate of the actual distribution the vaccine, and the distribution has been left up to the states. That was the decision that was made. And I remember this, Governor Newsom in California, Governor Cuomo in New York was saying that he wouldn't even distribute the vaccine until his own state health authorities had approved it.

So he was taking not even just the right to determine who gets this and how quickly, he was going a step beyond that to taking this end and saying that he might delay it. That's the kind of power that he said he had. So it's up to the state. And some states West Virginia comes to mind, there are others have been really efficient at this, Others have been

a disaster. It's going to be very difficult for us to talk about freedom as a general political issue when we do not have individual day to day freedom in our lives because of their response to COVID nineteen. We all need to understand that we've got to get this country reopened. And a huge part of that. I've been telling this all along. You know, they all you're anti science,

and this is what they always say with people question lockdowns. No, I think I'm a big advocate for people who are at risk, who who are at high risk getting the COVID nineteen vaccine as soon as possible. I want family members of mine who are at the age where they're in a risk category. You know, everybody in my family who's at a high risk, I want them getting the vaccine. I'm trying to figure out how they can get it

as soon as possible. But like a lot of other people across the country, always is more bureaucratic bullcrap and red tape and slowdowns. Why aren't we getting this into the arms of people that it will save with just incredible speed. That's what it should be. You know, it was warp speed to get this thing approved. It is not warp speed to get it distributed. And there are some pretty clear reasons as to why. There are government officials who think that the most important thing is the

equity of the distribution of this. They've taken a social justice approach to the distribution of a vaccine, and there's all these other considerations. Here's how this should be done. Every state should set up the resources to put out information about where to go if you're sixty five or over to get this vaccine quickly and safely. The end, I mean that that should be the focus and the CDC has just updated its guides. I mean, the CDC has been a doominable with so much of its guidance

along the way. Here should schools stay open? Eh? You know, they didn't really know, and then a lot of schools shut down. Tell me why not? Why why a single school in America should be closed at this point for COVID nineteen What what sense does that make when we know that it's a very minimal threat to children, It is a smaller threat. This is a fact I want. I can't even be falsely fact checked by Facebook or

any of these others on this one. It is less dangerous to children under the age of twelve than the flu on a per capita infectious basis. That's that's just true. That's a that's a fact. So why aren't Why are our kindergartens and you know, grammar schools across the country in a lot of schools are open, but in some places they're still closed or they're only doing you know, partial openings, whatever it may be. Well, it's because everyone in the bureaucracy just wants to take the position of

maximum safety and minimum risk in what they're saying. And that same approach to the vaccines. Distribution has meant that there are a lot of people who are waiting for this. This is costing lives. You know, they keep saying, oh, if only we masked up better, and you know, we have people on Capitol Hill I've seen are saying, oh, Republicans refuse to wear a mask indoors with them and so and then there are a couple of members of Congress have tested positive and one of them there's photos

of her in Congress indoors without a mask on. And this is always my point. If you wear a mask ninety percent or ninety nine percent of the time and taking photos and look at how much I mask up. You know that one minute period where you don't have your mask on you might get infected, and so the rest of it doesn't. The rest of the time, but the mask doesn't matter. This is people don't seem to

really understand we're talking about this as a policy. The second you take that thing off, you have no protection now, so the fact that you were wearing it, that's why I get so angry about, Oh, you got to wear a mask in a plane, Oh you gott to wear a mask in a restaurant. You have no protection, so it doesn't matter if you get infected. And they'll say, well, but maybe it's less likely you'd get infected. I mean, if you're being exposed to COVID, how much less likely?

They can't answer that question. But the point here being that we have to demand accountability from government authorities, and we're gonna be also pushing increasingly for red states to be taking a more active, a more active role in the protection of our rights, and also to show more of our fellow Americans that places like Texas and Florida, which are governed by Republicans are outperforming in every important metric,

places like New York and California. Yeah, you're going to see a big focus and it's true on COVID for sure. I think it's going to be true on everything though. You're going to see a big focus on this in the months ahead, and also a continued outflow of anyone who doesn't want to live in a crazy blue state. Unfortunate. There'll be some Democrats also then go and vote Democrat in Texas or Florida, but that's going to be happening.

And in the vaccine changes, something the vaccine distribution change is something that we have to be looking at and advocating for very very closely. You're in the Freedom Hut. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get more from Buck by following him on social media at buck Sexton on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We must plan our economic resurgence. We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left

to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely. We will have nothing left to open. Who does that sound like? Who those of you listening to the show, you say, wait a second, if we stay locked down through the whole winter, there'll be nothing left to open, at least for independently owned and small businesses. You know. Walmart will be fine, Starbucks will be fine. But for the millions and millions of people who don't own a Walmart or shares in it

for that matter, what happens to them? Oh? You mean their livelihoods are ruined, and they're bankrupted, and their communities are devastated. I thought, if you brought this up, you were putting a price on human life, because that's what Cuomo used to say about this. But now as we see, here's what's really happening. They have a very hard time showing people who are approaching this with an open mind.

How is it that we have benefited exactly in large in large urban centers, right, so Los Angeles and New York City? And how have we benefited from the most draconian lockdown stuff? It has been really effective. And that's a very hard case to make. I mean, what do we really think our cases reduced twenty percent month the month, forty percent month? Maybe is that the claim? Because Florida doesn't lockdown, and Florida is not ten times the cases,

five times the cases, double the cases. No, No, their businesses are open. There are some restrictions in place, but their businesses are open. So why are all restaurants in New York City and Los Angeles shut down? What's the upside of this? Oh? Okay, they're not locked down in Miami, they're not locked down in Tampa. And this is why they're trying to say, well, you know, maybe we should start to think about reopening even though we're not through the pandemic yet. Oh wow, you don't say this is

the Cuomo chorus, This is the Fauciites. Finally coming to the conclusion that I came to a long time ago, which is that you can't just have a zero some approach to this whole thing, where you either go extreme lockdown or you want everyone to die in your terrible person which is which is the way they framed this issue when Trump was making the initial decisions back in April and May. That's what they're in March April and May.

That's what they were saying. You either were in favor of these severe lockdowns or you were a bad person. There was there was no middle ground. And I trust me, I know because people were saying horrible things to me. As if I wasn't a New York City resident with my entire family here, all of us in the epicenter of the initial COVID outbreak in New York still the highest number of deaths per capita New York and New Jersey of any state in the country, as if I

wasn't as concerned as anybody else about this. But I also was trying to think about what the policy trade offs would be and looking at how much do we really gain from remember lockdown? Is they act like what they're telling you is everyone stay home and everyone mask up one hundred percent, and that's the benefit we're going to get from this, But that's not how it happens.

You still have essential workers, you still have people going to medical appointments, you still have people go to the grocery store, if people going to big box stores to go get a new TV. And so the virus continues to spread and you lock down things like restaurants. In New York, they thought one percent of cases were happening in restaurants. One percent, So you're going to destroy the entire restaurant industries to not even eradicate, but to slow

one percent of cases. When you start to think this through, it just doesn't make sense. It always made sense to say, if we have too many cases at once, we cannot treat people in the hospitals. They're more people will die as a result of that, so we have to slow them for hospital capacity. That was a fair point to make. That was an honest point to and that's why so many people went along with it. We have to this day not had a major hospital system in a US

city unable to give treatment to anyone with COVID. But that's still the framework that we're all using. It's either agree with me, or people die in the emergency room without any without anyone able to even look at them, without anyone with the able to provide the medical attention. That's not the reality of what we're seeing to this day.

And that's why there's finally, it seems the beginnings of an opening to have a real conversation about this, the beginnings of an opening that I hope we will continue to push on. Even Governor Cuomo sang it. You're in the Freedom Hut. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast from More Bucked. Head to Bucksexton dot com and remember to subscribe to the podcast. Harsany time, everybody. Our friend back from a your stint of book writing. So we haven't had him on in the new year yet. Our

friend David Harsani back in the mix here. He is a senior writer at National Review, and he's going to have a great book to talk about at some point soon, but for right now it's still getting written. David. Great to have you, always a pleasure to be here. Thank you. All right, man, we haven't had you weigh in on just the state of things right now. What is what is top of mind for you in the political scene as we as we talked today, Um well, I am

very concerned about its generally a free speech issues. So for me, I am, you know, concerned about how Twitter and Google and Amazon are acting just in general. So that's a big topic for me. Obviously, I am concerned for the country in general when you look at the anger and the violence that was generated last week over the election, which I you know, which I think was pretty horrible and perpetuated by a mythology that the entire election was stolen. And so I guess those are the

two big things. And then you know, we haven't even really been able to really sort of get our minds around at least I haven't you know, what a Biden administration means for us on a number of issues. But I think obviously we'll have enough time for that. Let's let's take some of these one by one. Let's let's

start with the free speech issue. I've been talking a lot on the show about what it means for big tech censorship, and I do think that that, particularly among conservatives on on the right, there there is a you know, people say, oh, does it really matter know Twitter does this or Facebook does that? Doesn't really matter now, and that that had been the attitude. You know, people that work in Media Week care a lot about it because it affects our ability to speak to our readers and listeners.

But I think the general public is getting an understanding now. No, this is this is the entire Internet architecture that is

being used to silence. This is if your business is selling products of any kind that you know, who knows you mean, you might be selling Maga hats, and all of a sudden Amazon decides you're shut down, and not just we won't sell your stuff, we'll take your website off the internet, right or credit card companies say we're not going to sell you know, and you can't use us to buy you know, guns or whatever it is.

So it's very problematic. I struggle with it because I'm a big believer in the free market and a big believer in people being able to make choices in that market on their own. I do find it funny that the same people who are pro individual mandate and Obamacare and want to force you to buy health insurance, who want to sue nuns to buy condoms, who want to you know, involve themselves and essentially everything that's done by the by the free market. Sorry, that's my dog barking.

That's okay, it's the world we're in now. We gotta do hits from home. You get a dog, I love you know, I love dogs, So I got no problem go ahead. So in any event, so I find it funny that they pretend to care about, you know, these choices, which I think they're just happy to be able to shut people up who they disagree with. So in my contention on this, in my argument is, listen, there's a value behind the First Amendment and free expression. It's not

just about the right. If even if the right wasn't codified of it, it wasn't written down, we would still believe in the ideals of it. So when you're just so happy to shut down millions of people because they're saying something that you don't like and I don't even like most of the time, I think that that's an illiberal attitude. And when that becomes normalized as it is now, this is even beyond like sort of the practical parts

of it. When you chip away at that and people feel like it's fine to shut down millions of voices that they don't agree with, I think that boats very poorly for the First Amendment moving forward as well. And I'll just use this as an example the term and because I've been speaking at this really for all of

Trump's presidency, the term white supremacy. I mean, I remember there was that Norton movie American History Acts, which I never actually really I saw pieces of it here and there on HBO and such, but you know they're there, are movies, or you know, when people talked about white supremacists in the nineties the other two thousands, immediately, you know, you had this image of a very bad person who was of course a racist but also an anti Semite.

And you know, neo Nazi, white supremacist, shaved head, swastika tattoo guys. You know, this was what you would see in your mind with white supremacy, and everyone in agree these are bad guys. The term white supremacy now is used routinely by the left for you know, I mean, if you oppose if you support the Asian American guy who sued Harvard for discriminating it, people say, well, this

is this is perpetuating white supremacy. It's like the term white So I bring this up just because I feel like everyone needs to understand, well, even if they are saying their own gonna go after bad people for saying for wrong think online or for for evil thing that is apps, they're gonna they're gonna expand this so that they'll go after people who just oppose an idea and is and it's a completely legitimate opposition. Yeah. I mean

you make a very good point. People who want to shut down a bad voice, and we say if we give in and say, hey, yeah, you know, if we if we treat free speech is not a neutral value but just simply something that protects a good speech that never ends. As you mentioned, everyone's a white supremacist, right, I mean, anyone who's you know, behind a tax cut is a white supremacist because it's unfair or whatever it is.

It's funny that you mentioned American history acts. I'm probably getting this somewhat wrong, but this that movie is a perfect example of how they do this. There's a scene where he's at the table being all Nazi like, right, He's saying, you know, I hate black people, I hate choose and then all of a sudden he's like an affirmative action is terrible, you know, Like, so they fold in things that are reasonable to disagree with into the larger you know, context of hatred and stuff like that.

You know, oh, you want to close the border. Um, you know, the Naziki wants to close the border. So they're essentially saying anyone who wants to close the border is also a Nazi. Where they you know, they intimate that. So that's why you know, I told you I hadn't I hadn't seen the movie. I just I don't want to cut you off on what do you continue your point?

But I just say I mean so, so it's even even it's even apparent that tendency to take what is objectively and objectively clearly wrong, immoral evil, but then use that sort of universal moral revulsion to then start going after things that clearly aren't that right, like like if

you oppose tax guys, but go ahead. Yeah, it's like saying I really you know, making a creating a fictional characters and Nazi and then saying I'm really for you know, uh, medicare for all, because you know, you know, Germans had that kind of system long, you know, long before anyone and and and Richard Spencer or is it Richard Spencer or I forgot whatever the naziga's name is, um you know is for it as well, so then you must be for it. So, I mean, it's just an expansive

view of these things and it never ends. And that's why you have to worry about speech. Like, let me just say saying the people who were getting banned or saying that the election was stolen, right, I disagree with them, But that's a complete that's just a viewpoint. It's not an inciting you know, you're not inciting violence by having that viewpoint, just because some people acted by Nancy Pelosi still has Nancy Pelosi still has a tweet up David

from twenty seventeen saying our election was hijacked. That's the same thing as saying stolen, and it's still up there. There are there were people on CNN who essentially and on MSNBC who are no better than Lynnwood or anyone else who had conspiracy theories that were just as bad. Now, do I want elected officials to act better than the than the talk show person. Yeah, I do, but that but still as far as speech goes, they were saying

the same thing. I would ask any of these people, do you believe that the twenty sixteen election was or is not stolen, or if the Russians were involved, and this they'll still tell you the Russians were, So I don't understand why they get to I mean, I do understand why they get to speak, but obviously the standards not the same. It's being a David Harsani, senior writer at National Review, and you can read his latest at nastionalview dot com. David, where do you think conservatism goes now?

It feels very we were uncertain. A lot of people are really worried, and there doesn't seem to be any anything offering much in the way of answers about you know what the movement is, What do you think happens? I don't know what the movement is. I mean, obviously I have serious disagreements with many people on the right over you know, trade policy or policy with big tech,

and obviously there's going to be some big disagreements. But frankly, you know, people who think the Republican Party's finished or this or that, I think they misjudge the situation. I think what's going to happen is you will have the Biden administration doing all kinds of things that conservatives hate as a collective, and then that will unite them, as it did unite the you know, the left when Trump became president. So that's typically what happens because you have

big consensuses on the right and left. Not a multi party state, you know, meaning more than two that are always fighting. So I don't know that it's going to be all you know, Rosie and there'll be a friendship among all those folks. Um. I mean, I'm not a big fan of like Howeley or where others you know, who are more a populist, But I think that in the end, you have if you have a common and I use the word not you know, a common enemy, but I don't mean it in the in the warlike sense.

But if you have a common political opponent, you you sort of rally around the try to stop them. And on the big tech issue, that's one area where people keep saying, Okay, well what do we do? And I don't have a great answer other than everyone's got to understand what this really means. And you know, the answer that I had been thinking of was, well, we'll build our own stuff. But you got to go a whole lot deeper. Now we've seen to build your own stuff

and actually have it withstand a left wing purge. Yeah, I used to say, you know, I get mocked for saying build your own, you know, build your own institutions, build your own platform. I still think you can. I mean, Parlour probably would have been somewhat successful on its own, even though I think I don't like the echo chamber aspect of it. But whatever, you know, it is what it is. But now you have, you know, sites purging

the ability of people to even have a site. And I don't know if you remember a few months ago Google Ads threatened to shut down The Federalist because people are saying things in their comment section. You essentially are given this power to arbitrarily have rules and then pick and choose who you want to shut down. I mean, I've worked at a number of websites in my life,

and policing a comment section is possible. Right, There's always gonna be someone saying something, so you could just pick any of them and decide you want to shut them down, and for any reason. I don't know how to deal with that. I think giving government more power and trying to you know, empower government to decide what speech should look like or fair speech should look like. I think that's a dangerous turn as well. You see, the people

are in government. I wouldn't I don't trust them with much certainly wouldn't want to trust them with deciding who gets free speech and who doesn't or more speech. So I'm with you. I don't have a solution for it. Also explains to be section section two thirty of the nineteen ninety six Communications Decency Act, whatever it is. Section two thirty gives people who run these kinds of you know, Facebook and you know all these big internet companies that

have a platform effect where you can write comments. As you said, it means that they're not liable for that. But Parlor, according to Amazon, is being taken has been taken off their servers because of what third part we're writing on parlor, you know. So it's that does seem

highly arbitrary, doesn't it. I mean, if you if the whole point is that they're supposed to be this legal protection, but then Amazon says, oh, well, even though you got this legal protection, you're not doing a good enough job of moderating comments that you're not legally You see what I mean, yeah, they're acting like a like a shadow government on most of the Internet, right, and they have these rules, like I think it was Twitter, but I'm not exactly sure. I might be wrong that said that.

You know, we're shutting this down for safety reasons. Now, obviously, guarding people from speech as a matter of safety is the oldest excuse for censorship. It's as oldest censorship itself. But the idea that they have some kind of we've created this, We've normalized the idea that they have some sort of responsibility to keep us safe from words, right, I mean, that's a dangerous that's a dangerous road to

go down, I think. And you know, people get mad at me, they say, like, at least on Twitter, you know, you care more about the speech issue than the Capital riot, you know, the insurrection, the armed insurrection and coup in etc. Yeah, And in some sense, I do, I think that that was a terrible and embarrassing moment in American history. But I don't think it has any long term effect on how we live our life, unless, of course Biden passes some kind of domestic terrorism Act or some kind of

you know, intrusive thing like that. But the speech issue that is with us now. We've created new norms that are with us now moving forward. It's you know, the day after Trump gave them an excuse, they've literally shut down half of conservative you know, interactions on social media just like that. I mean, I've lost a lot of followers. I don't know what that's about, but it's clearly some

kind of coordinated and conservative effort. And also I think that the the way that the dragnet that they're going to be using here so to speak, is going to

take it. There's so many people who you know, I remember even for a while it was like people were worried if they were looking at you know, al Qaeda's statements to be terrorism researchers, and they turn out, yeah, some of them were getting all of a sudden, they were popping up on some radars for people that are you know, understanding the you know, the Arabic videos that would be released by inspiring some of these groups that

were meant to bring people to geatism. I mean, so at this point, if you use hashtag stop the Steal and you're mocking it. Let's say, even are people to believe that your Twitter account or whatever it's going to be safe from I don't think so. I mean, I think that they're just they're just nailing people all over the place and they don't care. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand why someone can have the opinion that the election was stolen. It's not, it's not it's not even

hate speech or anything. They think the election was stolen, just as most sixty seven percent of Democrats believed about to twenty sixteen. So, like, I don't even understand. I do understand. I mean, it's just the pretext to try to shut people up and anyone, any journalists, especially, which is what they do now most of the time, who works to shut down the voices of people who is excited about shutting down people who they don't like are a liberal old people. They are not believers in the

First Amendment. And just because they through a technicality, can say, you know, you don't have the right to say whatever you want. You can't scream fire in a theater and that kind of nonsense in a crowded theater, they are illiberal. It doesn't matter that if it's legal or not. In my opinion, I don't know if that makes sense. I just know, man absolutely matter. There's a culture of the first rama too. It's not just about the constitutional protection

from government interference and the law. So I completely agree with you, But I've been saying this and a lot of journalists got you know, journalists got mad at me. The biggest, the biggest advocates these days publicly of suppression or free speech are people who make a living based on the principle of free speech, which is journalists. And I think that should be noted. I mean, there are a lot of the biggest censors are people who work at CNN and work at the New York Times. But

we gotta leave it there for today. David Harsani, everybody check out as latest at nationalview dot com. David, thanks so much anytime. Thanks for having me