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Where’s Your Hill?
When Roy Moore was in the process of being brought down in the Alabama Senate race last December, the standard response from the establishment side of the GOP was, “Look, Moore is a nutcase. This is not a court of law. There is no due process or presumption of innocence. He’s not the hill you want to die on.”
When Alex Jones was purged off of social media the response was, “This is not a government action, but the actions of private individuals. Besides, he’s a nutcase and this is not the hill you want to die on.”
Enter Brett Kavanaugh. As his reputation is destroyed by the minority party suddenly the establishment is appalled. Why? Well, primarily because even though he was nominated to SCOTUS by Donald Trump, Kavanaugh is seen as “one of us,” one of the good chaps whose pedigree of private high schools, Yale and all the right government clerkships and appointments was beyond question.
Is this the hill now? When you surrendered all of that territory before, when you tucked your collective tails between your legs and ran like scalded dogs, now you want to turn and fight? Look what you gave up before. Like the Alabama race, proceedings in the Senate Judiciary Committee are not the equivalent of a court of law. The ideas of due process and presumed innocence you gave away in December are a little hard to reclaim now. When you look at all of the private, non-government entities behind this smear job, how can you rebuke them?
Principles are funny things. If you don’t apply them to the people you dislike then they are unlikely to be of any use when you really need them.
Published in Politics
And the Dems know how to fight a war better than we do. Time after time, they stick together to defend their side and obliterate our side. They learned long ago that the best defense is a good offense. If we roll over now, the GOP has a bleak future.
Retreat to “only matters if the government does it” is approval of the mob. It a mob can drive people from jobs or shopping at will, that is a problem.
We’ll never know the truth because the Repubs tucked their skirts and ran like ninnies. Once Moore was toast, no more [highly likely to be false] info needed to be put out by the MSM . . .
Moore was not an enemy. He was [unproven] a flawed individual who would have supported much of what we want.
If I can’t vote for Jesus (a perfect candidate), then I want someone who will work for what I believe, even if he falls short morally . . .
Moore’s accusations, still not proven.
Moore lsot because by today’s standards we was weird and that helped the accusations stick.
The reality is, if there was proof Kavenagh was a lout at 17, he would be done. The GOPe would drop him like a hot potato. Democrats can commit manslaughter and be fine. As long as the right caves it will go on. The GOPe should be thundering, all the time, about every last Dem who is imperfect.
All too true. But I’d like to separate myself from the Democrats and still have standards that aren’t double standards. I don’t know how much I want to sacrifice politically to maintain my standards but I’d still like to have some of them. The Democrats don’t give a damn about sexual impropriety as long as it hurts Republicans. I think that sexual impropriety should be bad regardless of politics. This does make politics harder but it makes us better.
It will never be that way, unless we take it away as a weapon or play the same tactics.
Moore and Jones are perhaps outliers, and easily dismissed for their weirdness. But they weren’t the only ones to face the left’s pogrom against non-leftists. Ask all the conservatives who’ve mysteriously found themselves locked out of their social media accounts, or deplatformed, demonetized, or refused service by banks or credit card services for lack of fealty to leftist causes. Forget Moore and Jones. How about Dave Rubin?
It’s clear that if you aren’t part of the leftist hive-mind, the gatekeepers will keep the gates closed.
Let’s take Kavanaugh out of the equation, because it’s obvious he’s being railroaded. Now ask yourself where’s your hill? Where do you draw the line? Does someone have to be a moral paragon in order for you to defend him? Or would you also defend less savory elements of the right on principle?
When the opportunity arises again, what calculus will you use to decide if it’s time to stand on principle?
I usually respect your opinion, but I’m sick to death of our side’s pretentious pontificating about our holy principles that make us “better.” The Dems don’t think we’re better; they think we’re the bad guys who don’t care about the poor, womens’ rights or minorities or whatever and will go to just about any length, along with their left-wing buddies in the press, to portray us in the most negative light as possible. Who’s to say who is better other than the voter; I just want to win.
You make a perfectly valid point that we should be principled fighting unfair tactics regardless of who they are used against. I honestly haven’t followed Moor enough to know how credible the accusations were but you are right that the banning of Alex Jones lead to more a more controlling approach by the social media conglomerates. While I detest the anti-liberal totalitarian SJW ethos of the social media conglomerates I would need to talk to a lawyer before I would be comfortable using government force to compel people to host opinions they despise. (Though lately I have been more comfortable with it because the incredible dishonesty and bad faith that google has shown.)
But the accusations against Kavanaugh (and the manner in which they have been used) has definitely been unambiguously unfair. The fact that Kavanaugh is much more likeable is incidental from a principled philosophical stand.
Denis Prager has problems with Prager U. Steven Crowder talks about all the conservative media being de -monetized by YouTube.
Alex Jones was not a great hill to die on, in ignoring that fight, we ignored several worthy fights to get to Kavanough.
The way these fights are going, the landscape is full of hills.
Moore lost because our commentariat found him repulsive and were afraid to dismiss claims outright. Once no one came to Moore’s defense, lest they be called a defender of child molestors, then our “Best and brightest” came out with stupid statements about the ages of people in the Bible, which made it worse.
Probably didn’t help that Moore was an idiot. But there were so many hard feelings about Trump vs. GOPe at that point….
Do you have those things in my house? Please, again, point me to the government involvement that implicates our constitution. Seems the only place where the constitution would be implicated is if Facebook were somehow not free to define its own terms of use, but surely you weren’t advocating for that?
Alex Jones is on whose side, exactly? That’s the problem with war analogies, isn’t it? I certainly don’t want him on my side.
Exactly. We don’t need to limit our “hills” to these three people. When the deplatforming of Alex Jones happened, many of us tried pointing out that it was a much broader issue than just Alex Jones. That there were many other good people being targeted. But too many here refused to listen, preferring to make it only about Alex Jones. I guess because they were comfortable siding with the left against him.
And here we are.
Forgive me for I am a comic book fan. The heroes always conduct themselves better than their opponents. It is is always harder for them to live up to the virtues they venerate and it is always comes at a sacrifice. The world is innately bad and being good in it is painful and often unappreciated. The press often lies about them and fails to serve either Truth or the public interest. But regardless, they maintain their virtue.
Even as a part of me roots for Batman to through the Joker off a tall Gotham building and just be done with it, Batman isn’t Batman if he does so. It’s undeniably a tragic view of virtue but I think it hits a deeper Truth beyond all the colorful juvenile violence.
Perhaps, but we should at least understand terms. On the one hand, we praise the free market, condemn regulation, etc… etc…
on the other hand, you going to argue that Facebook and YouTube can’t do what they want? You want to confuse that with government censorship and talk about the constitution?
the problem with too many hills is that they contradict one another, and you’re not really defending much of anything at all. What exactly do we support? What are we defending?
We cant defend the constitution and ignore it at the same time…
I hardly need repeat that Alex Jones is not on the right. You going to defend Harvey Weinstein, too, because the left attacks him?
He’s “right” just because his enemies are “left?”
Dont think those are definitions will serve any of us very well…
Great paragraph from Holman Jenkins column in the Wall Street Journaql:
That’s the rub, isn’t it? We tend to compartmentalize all of this. Fight the legal over there, the political over there, and as far as the culture we don’t fight at all. The left doesn’t do that. They see everything as one giant combined struggle. And they’re very good at throwing everything they have at it. That’s why if you’re a Keith Ellison or a Beto O’Rourke the crap doesn’t seem to stick.
Which is why I used the term “non-leftist.”
I don’t understand the argument you are making.
Are you saying that if every non-progressive protested the deplatforming of Alex Jones the social media companies would have reversed their decisions and Democrats would have been persuaded not to attack Kavanaugh as they have? And the issues in the Jones case have nothing to do with what is at stake with Kavanaugh.
Are you saying that if the people of Alabama had elected Moore the Democrats would have been persuaded not to attack Kavanaugh as they have (though at least I can see the similarity in the issue)?
In military terms some hills are strategic for both sides, some for one side, and some are not for either. Moore and Jones are hills Democrats would have loved to see us die defending. I want to make them defend the hills that are smart for us and stupid for them – like Kavanaugh, and I hope the GOP hangs tough on this. I’d like to see us take the offensive on other matters, like Keith Ellison. Being able to distinguish which hills are worth fighting for determine who wins. I’m with Trump – I like winners.
I’ve known a lot of politicians over the years socially as my husband and I were very active in politics at one point in our lives. None of them, even our best friend, was perfect morally. Who among us is qualified to judge moral superiority, even those who outwardly seem most holy? Our priest used to say “Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
True enough!
But… get one person in the mud, he’s dirty… put a hundred people in the mud, suddenly they’re all clean? Problem is, we’d still like to retain the ability to point out when democrats are dirty. That’s undermined when we deny the existence of mud on behalf of Trump.
This is the tragedy, of sorts I guess. I wanted Amy Comey Barrett. Why? Because I knew this fight was coming and I wanted this fight. I wanted the minority party to tell us all that “The dogma runs strong with this one” and hear us tell them “No kidding, so what!”. So this is the fight that we have now: white guy, privileged school, career public servant, executive branch alumni. Okay. Let’s have at it. Forget the nuance of Moore (if there is any). We either believe in deceny and the rights of man or we don’t. This is the hill. So be it.
Free speech is about much more than just legalities. Remember, the government doesn’t grant freedom of speech. It’s already yours by natural right. The government only promises to make no laws infringing on this natural right.
Facebook shutting you down does infringe on your freedom of speech. It’s just a situation that the government has no jurisdiction over. Nor do we want it to. But you are being censored nevertheless.
I don’t know anything about Alex Jones other than he was some radio guy I never listened to. It seemed to be a First Amendment issue?
These social media platforms have declared themselves “neutral” platforms. They do this to take advantage of certain legal protections. In exchange for this neutral status, we expect them to be actually neutral. I don’t see how that it ignoring the constitution.
To answer a prior question on this thread, I don’t know whose side Alex Jones is actually on, he has never been my cup of Tea. I do know whose side Candice Owens and Denis Prager are on. While this Jones stuff was going on, it over shadowed normal conservatives that were having the same problems with these platforms.
Maybe government regulation is a bad idea. I personally have mixed feelings. Perhaps we should just take away their protections as neutral platforms. Let them be sued for what ever anyone Right or Left posts.
Only if Facebook was owned by the government. He was a conspiracy theorist who said that sandy hook was faked. Not a conservative at all. If Facebook wants to delete his account, more power to them. If the government wants to deny him the right to speak, only then is the first amendment implicated.
SLPC claims to be neutral. As do FOX, NPR, etc…
nobody is neutral, and in the private sector, that’s ok, even if it’s a lie. We don’t ask the government to intervene, because we actually do respect the first amendment.
Facebook can do whatever it wants, and it doesn’t help us to pretend Jones is a conservative simply because we don’t like that Facebook is liberal. Better to simply stop giving them your business and ignore people like Jones.