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Promoted from the diaries by streiff.  Promotion does not imply endorsement. 

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To be fair, I could probably write a novel about how often contributors for The National Review build strawmen to fight in lieu of addressing a problem that takes more than one brain cell to solve, but for today I’ll just address the recent incident.  In an article, National Review writer Sam Sweeny doesn’t suggest a method of fighting censorship of Conservatives, instead, he says we should all delete our social media accounts (that’ll show ’em!),  which doesn’t sound too crazy, right?  This is another time that NR has fought the battle it wanted to fight, instead of the one that is actually happening. 

It is frustrating that liberal tech giants can completely silence someone for the crime of having different politics, and we can all agree that we don’t want that to become a societal norm, correct?  This is, in part, the battle we are fighting, the normalization of people being unwilling to accept alternate viewpoints.  During the run-up to the 2016 election there were hundreds of articles ridiculing safe spaces, trigger warnings, and college students literally claiming that hearing anything opposing the far-left was tantamount to violence, NR has decided that is fine, Conservatives just shouldn’t go to college. 

I know everyone is going to want to scream at me that publically funded universities are not the same as a social media platform yadda yadda, and you’re correct, but does that change the persecution of Conservatives, does that distinction somehow make the problem go away?  This is an actual problem, there is a growing ambivalence in society to censorship of Conservatism, and it is all our fault.  When big tech started taking down Conservatives and coordinating with Democrats directly, the only thing Conservatives said was “just build your own” (anyone paying attention would know that Microsoft, Mastercard, PayPal, and others took any chance of that away from gab, an alternate social media platform). 

I’m a free market guy, I don’t want the fairness doctrine on the internet, I don’t want a Democrat Congress writing regulation for my internet habits, but if you aren’t going to address the problem, then that is what you will get.  If you truly believe in the free market, then you need to weaponize that market.  Quit hiding and start encouraging people to vote with their money, we need to boycott these Leftist companies, we need to make it financially painful to cross us, we need to reward the good people who stand up for open dialogue! 

If you’re not willing to support a boycott against these companies then you’re not a free market person, you’re a hack who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty.  There are ways that you can fight back, you can listen to our Sunday show for some of those ways.