CPAC 2020 was a cornucopia of awfulness. And few moments rivaled the assault on free market ideas that constituted the “slamming” of big tech by Senator Hawley and Don Jr.
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For those who have not seen the hilarious failure that is 2020’s CPAC, it’s amazingly awful. Of course, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre compared the Democratic Party to communist China, because that’s the only thing he knows how to do (this is the same man who, in 1995, warned against “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms [who] attack law-abiding citizens.”).
Charlie Kirk also called for a two-minutes of hate against Senator Romney for not supporting Donald Trump. This despite the fact Kirk actually supported Senators Rubio and Cruz over Trump until he got the nomination. Let’s also not forget Diamond and Silk doing the classic “Democrats end in rats,” line that nobody ever found funny.
I have no doubt this won’t be the last time I write about CPAC 2020. So much happened that fitting it into one post would be impossible. As such, I’ve decided to just focus on one moment from the Conference that I found the most telling.
During a panel with Senator Hawley and Donald Trump Jr., the topic of big tech was brought up. After all, that’s literally the only thing Josh Hawley knows about (I also guess Rep. Kevin McCarthy was there, but the headline didn’t mention him and the article I found out about this from only mentioned him once). Breitbart said that they “Slammed ‘free market’ defenders of big tech.”
Here is what Trump Jr. had to say on this topic:
“Well, it’s not free market, because they’re getting so many benefits and protections from liability from the federal government that they cannot discriminate the way they have so flagrantly against conservatives and anyone on our side.”
It seems Twitter has done a bad job discriminating against Trump Jr. He has 4.5 million followers, making him the 1,195th most followed account on the entire website. His father has 73 million followers making him the 9th most followed account on all of Twitter.
Luckily, Senator Hawley gave a great solution:
”If Facebook and Twitter and Google, if they are not going to give conservatives the same treatment as liberals, if they’re going to discriminate on the basis of political speech then they shouldn’t be getting special deals from government.”
Believe it or not, I agree with Hawley on this subject. However, that is not what he has proposed over his time in the Senate. Instead, all he’s tried to do is repeal Section 230 (which he has laughably called immunity). This would basically force any company on the verge of competing with “big tech” to pay for an audit every other year, and only apply this pressure to companies who are succeeding.
If Facebook was not getting subsidies, it would not be making profits. However, instead of just introducing legislation to remove subsidies, Hawley always wants to introduce a bureaucratic structure that will always expand his own power.
Hawley is simply making excuses. Of course, as long as these companies are under federal review, we will then have to regulate them as they are too close to the federal government. This is the game people like Hawley play. They make the government closer and closer with private companies. Then, they use that as a reason for government to get closer and closer with private companies.
I’ll end this article with another thing Hawley said at this panel:
“If we get discriminated against, if you get suppressed on Twitter or Facebook, if Don gets suppressed on Twitter or Facebook or any of us, we ought to be able to sue them . . . Those are rights we should expect to have.”
So tell me, should people have the right to sue people who block them? How about op-ed writers who get rejected by newspapers? Should government force a company to hire everyone who can fill out an application? At what point does this stop?
Remember, there was a time in most of our lives where these same Republicans were against making it illegal to hire gay people for there sexual orientation. Welcome to 2020, where it is more controversial to fire someone for being homophobic then it is to fire someone for being gay.
This is not to argue anti-discrimination laws are good or bad. The point is many of these Republicans seem to only want them when it helps them. In fact, Hawley’s biggest economic cheerleader, Josh Hammer (as well as one of the first conservative writers to talk about him), said the Equality Act “would browbeat religious dissenters into submission without any remotely resembling proper dispensations.” One must wonder why Hawley’s legislation would not do the same to social media companies.
To put it simply, my friend Scott Howard was correct when he was sounding the alarms against Hawley back in November. I have established myself as quite possibly his most vocal critic and you can see why. Hawley and his buddies are not the future of liberty. They are the future of well-defined boxes and water-filled with drugs to keep you from realizing how awful everything is.
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