Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Well, in terms of a letter that landed Monday, I think we can understand pretty quickly why it made big news. The letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary in Washington. The letter was by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and now of course the CEO of the conglomerate known as Meta. Why did this letter make news? It is because in this letter, the founder of Facebook, the CEO of Meta made the charge that the Biden administration had sought, he asserts here wrongly, to interfere in the business of Meta to effectively violate the First Amendment in some sense, most importantly, as he charges directly, to influence Meta when it came to postings related to COVID-19 during the pandemic. But as we shall see, Mark Zuckerberg made even more incendiary charges against the Biden administration.

Now, there are stories and there are stories within stories. No doubt one day we’ll know more about what brought about this letter, but you know the political context is that the House Committee on the Judiciary, among other legislative bodies, is looking into the conduct of the big social media platforms during COVID and asking big questions not only about the COVID-19 pandemic and interference by the Biden administration on that issue and in that context, but also about other issues, even right down to today’s headlines related to, for example, the war in Gaza undertaken as Israel is fighting Hamas and other issues that just continue to reverberate, one of them about President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. There’s a lot going on here. And one of the things this just affirms is the fact that First Amendment rights are really under attack in the United States.

Now, we have to be careful how we frame this because this isn’t to say the First Amendment is dead. It’s not to say that free speech has simply disappeared. It is to say that what we note over the course of the last several years is an increasing ambition by government, and in particular in the last several years the Biden Administration, to restrict conservative speech or speech it doesn’t like on social media platforms.

Now, this letter by Mark Zuckerberg makes the truth of that assertion absolutely clear. He is openly accusing the Biden administration of seeking to limit speech on his own social media platforms and using the pressure that can come from the American presidency, pressure from the White House to try to, at least as Mark Zuckerberg says here, violate what it would otherwise do, and well, there’s no other way to put it, basically constrict or restrict conservative postings or postings with messages the administration didn’t like, first of all, in COVID-19. That’s the central assertion here.

Here’s what he says in the letter. Third paragraph, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.” Zuckerberg then takes responsibility. He says, “Ultimately, it’s our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19 related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of the pressure.” He then says this, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken against it.”

Now, Zuckerberg goes on to say that Meta is adopting policies to push back harder if an administration were to seek a similar kind of pressure against those social media platforms in the future. But right now, we’re looking at a couple of things that are just huge. And in worldview analysis, they’re just really very big. And one of the biggest here is the fact that when you take, say a media platform, and that’s perhaps kind of new human language, let’s just say that’s in the age of the internet. When you talk about the national conversation, if you can control that conversation, guess what? You control the national mind. That is one of the reasons why the American experiment is based upon the absolute necessity of free speech.

That’s why going all the way back to the American Revolution, free speech was at the very center of the understanding of what is necessary in order to have a free people. Now, of course, free speech comes with risks, and that was even apparent during the time of the American Revolution. As a matter of fact, if you look at the newspapers that existed in Revolutionary America, they were not more professional than news media are now, they were less professional, they were sensational, but nonetheless, there was a free exchange of ideas. And the United States of America is premised upon the idea that the freedom of speech is absolutely fundamental, so fundamental that if you cannot exercise freedom of speech, you are not free regardless of what you think yourself, regardless of what the regime calls you.

Now, language, as I say, in a letter is formal language, and if you’re Mark Zuckerberg sending a letter to the chairman of a committee in the United States House of Representatives, let me just give you a little background, you know this already, lots of lawyers have looked at this, lots of lawyers, lots of PR people have looked at this. Meta’s technologists have had the opportunity to look at this. Everyone’s had input. There’s no way that the CEO of Meta, literally with billions upon billions of dollars at stake would send a formal letter to Congress unless just about everyone who needed to see it had seen it and signed off on it.

That tells you not only that Mark Zuckerberg’s putting his personal reputation on the line with this letter, Meta is putting its incredibly valuable corporate reputation on the line with this letter. So this letter is vetted language, and when you have Mark Zuckerberg write that, “In 2021, senior officials in the Biden administration,” and then he writes, “including the White House repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” end quote. When he puts that in a letter, he’s going to stand behind it. And at this point, since it has now been submitted to a committee of the United States House of Representatives, he better stand on it.

As I say, Zuckerberg goes on to make the declaration, quote, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken against it.” He went on to say, “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction, and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” end quote.

Well, something like this is going to happen again and it’s going to happen again in the United States. At least, I think it’s absolutely certain that some administration will try to bring wrongful pressure on social media platforms, and who knows what media platforms exist at that point, in order to restrict speech. Now, let’s be clear about why this letter has dropped as it did. It’s because you have the House Committee on the Judiciary asking hard questions of these companies about their compliance with their own policies as well as their alignment with First Amendment rights, their protection of First Amendment rights.

Here’s where Christians need to understand that freedom of speech has to be extended to the public square. If freedom of speech is not extended to the public square, it’s not freedom of speech. Now, in our day, well, even our language has radically changed on this because we talk about posting online, we talk about tweets and post to X, we talk about Facebook and Meta, we talk about all kinds of social media platforms, the public square right now is first and most quickly a digital public square. Social media is at the center of that public square.

Now, just in the last several weeks, something interesting has happened. For example, there was a plane crash in Brazil and you had the national and international media, the 24/7 media, the live broadcast media, the cable news media trying their best to cover the story. Of course, it’s a big story. Passenger airline goes down in a crash, it’s a big story. But what was interesting is that those establishment media, those legacy television networks now streaming in terms of the digital media, they started reporting on posts to social media.

They even began drawing on video posted to social media. It’s a way of saying, “We are not right there, but someone with a smartphone is, and they are posting on social media. They are not paid reporters for CNN.” So when you have Mark Zuckerberg writing this kind of letter officially as the CEO and founder of Meta, sending this to an official committee, the United States House of Representatives in the context of an impending investigation, this is big news. This is really big news. And I’ll tell you, I think it’s going to be shocking to the American people to have this kind of news break and this kind of letter where Mark Zuckerberg openly accuses officials in the Biden administration, including the White House of improper pressure in the context of COVID-19.

Now, it’s going to be interesting to see how the Biden administration responds, but we’ll talk more about that in a moment. My guess is the main response is no response at all. But just when you thought it wouldn’t get more interesting, I assure you it does. Listen to this. Quote, “In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply.” Zuckerberg continued, quote, “It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

He then says, “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again. For instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the US while waiting for fact-checkers,” end quote.

Oh, there’s a lot more there than may meet the ear. The context here was the 2020 presidential election. Let’s just state the obvious. It was hot. You had the now president of the United States, Joe Biden running against the then president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and this story was a big factor in the election. Accusations were made against Hunter Biden, indirectly against President Biden, and the accusations were dismissed by the Biden campaign and others as Russian disinformation. Because of that accusation, even as the Trump team of course was pointing to this news coverage, the story on social media platforms, and in particular Zuckerberg says on Meta, it was demoted. Isn’t that an interesting term? If you’re demoted at your job, you are a vice president, now you’re a director. If you were a director, you are now an assistant director. Of course, you can be demoted all the way out the door, but demoted in social media terms means your story is algorithmically, it’s technologically discounted and suppressed for a period of time, and that’s exactly what happened to the story.

Now, I’ll say the words kind of morally evasive. Demote doesn’t sound like, well, for example, the more honest suppress, but that’s basically what we’re talking about here. This is explosive. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta is accusing the Biden administration not only of interfering with free speech when it comes to COVID-19, but also leading to the demotion of a story on Meta platforms about the president’s son when it comes to the accusation that it was Russian disinformation, which it was not. Now, Zuckerberg mentions a couple of other issues in terms of his letter including philanthropic issues, but these are the two big issues. It has to do with the suppression of stories, the suppression of posts, the suppression of speech and arguments on Meta’s platforms, and in particular related to COVID-19 and to Hunter Biden.

And the accusation in the first case is made directly against the White House, directly against the Biden administration. It was seeking to bring pressure. Indeed, what we’re told here is that the administration successfully brought pressure on the social media company to suppress speech the administration didn’t like. Now, of course, it was using arguments about public health. Of course, it was using arguments about disinformation, but here’s the point. If you have an American government able to make charges of disinformation about speech it doesn’t like, free speech disappears. This is as current to the United States as the debate between the government of King George III in Great Britain and the colonists in the United States. Free speech is absolutely essential. If someone can say, “You can’t say that on my social media platform,” then free speech disappears.

Now, I know there’s some people who are saying, “Some things are inappropriate.” Well, we’re talking here about speech that is in particular political speech, so we’re not talking about something that is suppressed because it’s a child pornography. That would be righteous because free speech does not extend to that kind of speech or that kind of production or that kind of messaging. But when it comes to political speech, and that’s where the free speech arguments really began in terms of the political context, and we understand it’s directly relatable to other fundamental rights including the freedom to worship, that is the freedom of religion, religious freedom, religious liberty, but we understand that in this context, this is a direct accusation against the Biden administration for interfering, and it is an admission by Meta that they were themselves complicit in suppressing that information, demoting those postings on social media, and now they’re saying, “We’re sorry, we won’t do it again. We have changed our policies.”

I think perhaps even more explosive in the great scheme of things is going to be the response concerning what was supposedly Russian disinformation that turned out to be not Russian disinformation, but quite credible information as published in the New York Post. James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal points rightly to the issue and to the fact that the current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic candidate for the White House in the fall, she hasn’t submitted herself to any formal interview, and thus no journalist has been able to ask her some questions.

And thus Freeman writes, quote, “If the vice president deigns to sit down for an extended discussion with a member of the news media, the lucky reporter should demand to know why the Biden-Harris administration still won’t repudiate its abuse of First Amendment rights.” He went on to say, “The government’s refusal to admit fault for pressuring social media companies to silence dissenting voices virtually guarantees that such abuses will happen again if she’s elected president,” end quote. Yes, emphatically, that’s the point.

But do not stay up late thinking you’re going to get her answer to that question in any satisfactory sense, probably because she won’t sit for the interview. But I will tell you that increasingly the political left in the United States sees as its cause suppressing arguments, suppressing speech it doesn’t like, and guess what? It doesn’t like a lot of speech. But all right, let’s look at this and understand we’re going to have to continue to follow this story, and it is at this point that I think many Christians would say, “Well, this sounds like kind of old news. This isn’t front-page news these days in terms of what took place during the pandemic or even during the 2020 presidential election.” I want to tell you that’s a wrong evaluation. This is huge news. Honestly, that also raises another point. Why have major news media not covered this story?

Now, some have, to their credit, the Wall Street Journal’s covered it. You have other major media who’ve covered it, but where are some of the biggest names in the news media here hours after this letter was submitted? That’s a huge question. I’m going to be tracking that over the next several days. Maybe there’s been a technological glitch. I don’t actually mean that, but in any sense, maybe there’s some explanation for it. But it’s amazing that some of the biggest names in the news media seem to be uninterested at this point in a story concerning a letter to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee written by the founder of Facebook, the CEO of Meta, making an accusation of this magnitude. The absence of those stories is itself very, very telling.

But next, I want to point to something else that is just a fact of history and it’s easy to miss. Once you see it, you’re not going to unsee it. Why the story, for instance on Hunter Biden, why the aspect of that particular issue with Meta? Why does it show up here now? Well, you can say, “For one thing, the House Judiciary Committee is pressing for answers to these questions.” Well, fair enough, that’s exactly what’s happening. But we’re talking about unusual candor from Mark Zuckerberg about how they were played on this issue on behalf of the Biden campaign.

Why are they saying this now? Well, it’s just a fact of life. Here’s what we know now that we didn’t know, say six weeks ago. We know that on January the 21st, 2025, Joe Biden is not going to be president of the United States. You know what that means? That means that right now, all of a sudden, the media, big titans, cultural influences, I’ll just put a name to it, Mark Zuckerberg, not too concerned about reprisals from the Biden administration, not too concerned about relations with the Biden administration, which is not going to be in office the day after Inauguration Day in January.

The fact is they are now free to say what they want to say about the Biden administration, about the Biden administration’s interference in social media, its violation or suppression of free speech. And this is just a sign of things to come. When an administration is known to be going out, it is fascinating how the truth comes out. Go figure.

And indeed, you might even say dubious that anyone can explain exactly if you do A, that leads to B, which produces C, which might lead to D. The fact is there are theories, but there is no established way of tracking all this. Now, why are we talking about this today? Well, it is because of a major research report that has just landed in recent days telling us… Well, here’s the headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Most climate policies are ineffective at cutting emissions,” study says. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal, “Follow the science, Biden climate policy is a fraud.” That’s an editorial statement to be sure. You also have the New York Times, on the other hand, with the headline, “As climate policy strain to cut emissions, mix of carrots and sticks may work best.”

Now, that’s a little sly because the actual report comes out saying that… Well, let’s quote the article by Eric Milner at the Wall Street Journal, quote, “An evaluation of more than 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries found that only 63 actually worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” end quote. So there were 1,500 climate policies that were studied in 41 different countries, and only 63 of 1,500 had what you can argue is a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions tied to, it is argued, climate change, rising temperatures and all the rest.

Now, I want to be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that climate change isn’t happening. I’m not saying that greenhouse gases have nothing to do with it. I’m not saying that human beings have no responsibility when it comes to questions related to climate change. I think that given a rational worldview, and of course I would put the Christian worldview at the forefront of this, you would have people making trade-off decisions in a rational, reasonable, and frankly, rather humble way.

We’d be saying that cutting this is good. More of that would be good. How we get there without, for instance, threatening human flourishing, how we get there without massive trade-offs that are unacceptable to human beings, how we get there, honestly, that’s going to be a very difficult process and it’s one in which you’re going to have a lot of failures and you’re going to have to do a lot of adjustments because reality is a lot more complex than many people want to admit. Here’s where we also need to say that if you are an advocate for more government expansion into the economy, more government control of public life, more government intrusion into private decisions, climate change is your perfect tool. So this is absolutely explosive. 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries, only 63 of them actually worked.

As Milner writes, quote, “The fraction of policies that worked combined financial incentives, regulations, and taxes according to the study.” The study is really just overwhelming. Quote, “Subsidies and regulations, policy types often favored by governments rarely work to reduce emissions unless they were combined with price-based strategies aimed at changing consumer and corporate behavior,” end quote.

Now, that’s really crucial because it means without violating human freedom. So here’s an interesting thing. Human beings, rational human beings, human beings who care about human flourishing, who have jobs, who need to get to jobs, who need to get the kids to soccer practice, who want to air-condition their homes and reasonably so, want to have the modern conveniences that come only by energy. And by the way, these are not just quality of life, sometimes these are condition of life technologies. They’re willing to make trade-offs. They might be willing to pay more, for example, for an efficient hybrid vehicle rather than for a gas-only vehicle, traditional gas engine, but they’re going to trade that off with other goals for their own family.

They’re going to trade that off with other goals, for that matter, for the environment, other goals that have to do with economic realities. And so what we have are many politicians on the left who are pushing this because frankly, it’s the way to expand government, to expand government power. It’s also the way to favor certain industries over others.

Here I’ll just say the classic line is the one we always need to remember, and this is non-ideological, this is just deeply rooted in the Christian worldview. This is deeply rooted in a Christian understanding of sin. Here’s the line, “Follow the money.”

In his opinion piece about this at the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. also points to the fact that recent headlines were made by Ford, that is the Ford Motor Company, indicating that it is taking a $1.9 billion tax write-off. It is eliminating a plan for a completely electric SUV project because there is no indication whatsoever that the public has the slightest interest in it.

Now, there’s a trade-off on this. There’s also the good news that Americans are more interested in hybrid vehicles, and here’s a surprise, it turns out that a hybrid vehicle just might be the choice that many American consumers are willing to pay just a little bit more for, but they’re not willing to pay a lot more for an EV, an electric vehicle that frankly they don’t trust.

And here’s the other thing. Here’s the Ford Motor Company saying, “We’ve already lost enough money on this. We’re writing down $1.9 billion. Here’s a clue, Biden administration, here’s a clue, Washington, your policies aren’t working. Congress, are you listening? Do you intend to get votes from anyone?” Because you are looking at an absolute crash in the transportation system. You are looking at denying Americans, and for that matter, it’s not just Americans, others around the world, what they require just for a basic standard of life and it’s not working.