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O’Reilly has already been “Weinstein’ed” He lost his high-profile gig. Or, since Weinstein was fired later, isn’t it more accurate to say he was “O’Reilly’ed”?
During David French’s non-stop hatefest against Donald Trump, he linked to a story by conspiracy-theory space cookie Louise Mensch. If we’re talking about standards, shouldn’t French have been fired by National Review for giving her stories credence?
A lot to unpack in this show. Bill O. blaming God? Well, isn’t that special? Conservatives saying Youtube is big enough to be treated like a government? No. Go found an alternative that believes in free speech, like Gab.ai did in comparison to Twitter and farcebook.
You posited the question of why YouTube could / should be required to treat all comers alike. They are a private company and can do what they like. Within reason you are correct, though more and more private companies / individuals are being compelled by government not to “discriminate”.
The argument regarding YouTube is that it needs to be thought of as a utility. (It is rapidly becoming a “necessary” fixture for widely disseminated speech; viewership / usage so heavily weighted in their direction as to be a monopolistic.) If it is both a need and a monopoly (or with its fellow players of Twitter and Facebook – which owns YouTube an oligopoly) then it can be seen as a utility.
Imagine an electric utility denying someone electricity, or limiting the amount of electricity they can receive because the company doesn’t like what the person or entity believes. That is more or less what is occurring with YouTube.
Another analogy is an internet provider. YouTube can certainly charge for uploading content. They can promote paying (or better paying) clients’ videos over others or provide better service to those whose payments to them are the biggest. Companies provide faster / better internet to those willing to pay more. Save for perhaps pornography laws or other prohibitions, an internet provider cannot decide because someone is using the internet to disseminate or access content that their management find objectionable that they will deny them service.
The question to address is would it be best to treat these companies as utilities. Ideally we would have a plethora of competitors to the Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes and Twitters of the world, then there would be no need. Of course as they are not yet money-making propositions, they really don’t have a lot of competition, and frankly the competition is not as good as they are.
Additionally, you have to ask yourself if it would be best for society for there to be such segmentation. Do we want the LibYouTube, the ConYouTube, the DemYouTube, the RepYouTube, the MaleYouTube, the FemaleYouTube, the BiYouTube, the NameYourTribeYouTube? Granted all up on the same internet, but the chances of encountering an alien thought or idea would diminish.
AT&T was required to open up the phone lines (back in the day) to other providers. I’m way out of my league here, but it may be that the video platform on the internet should be viewed as utility lines or there may be an analogy to the big movie studios distribution system (they owned theaters), which was deemed in violation to anti-trust laws.
Insuring opportunities to all isn’t against conservative values. Insuring outcomes is.
Joann Pantages
Excellent to hear Mollie Hemingway say the truth about Trump being an awful human being that we can use and also great to hear David French so eloquently explain the dangers of being just like the other side and supporting a tool like Trump. And Michael? After hearing Trump’s own words and seeing his behavior over the years, I do believe he is very capable of some really awful and vulgar behavior. I do agree that he didn’t mean to insult the widow, but I also believe that Trump is incapable of acting in the sympathetic and empathetic manner so needed in a war time President. But then neither was Obama. Don’t expect a rallying cry or inspiring words … he saves them for going after his enemies – the GOP and the media.
First: UFC is not, “No holds barred.” It is a sport with rules just like boxing and traditional martial arts competitions.
Second: While I agree in principle that Trump sometimes takes the whole punching back thing a little too far, what has being “above the fray” gotten us? George W. Bush will be remembered as a terrible President because he was above fighting back. Mitt Romney lost the Presidency because he was so concerned about staying out of the gutter that he allowed the Democrats to lie about him with impunity.
I didn’t like Trump during the election, and I still don’t, and I also bristle at the total war approach to politics, but at some point something had to change. Being “above the fray” increasingly looks like unilateral surrender to a lot of people, and I can’t really say they’re wrong.
A few things, Michael…
As usual, JuliaBlaschke made a lot of sense.
I disagree with equating YouTube to a utility. We need electricity to survive. Somebody might come along to say that our forebears survived without it. They also survived without antibiotics. Would we think of taking them away today? We need electricity; we do need YouTube. It is fun. Maybe even enlightening. But we do not need it. Prager has a website that plays the videos, which is how I watch them.
The lawsuit is wrong for several reasons. Incidentally, I did know about it. Thanks for alerting us to. It just goes to show how Prager is not a conservative, because he doesn’t understand conservatism. His total embrace of Trump, with hardly any criticism, proves that. When he is the mood to be honest, he admits he’s a liberal. His embrace of conservative policies proves he smart, because they work, not that he is one of us.
I also appreciated your words about Dennis. I was a fan too. What a disappointment he has become!
I look forward to your Post, Michael.
I think what Trump is doing is unilateral surrender. When we choose someone as our champion who behaves like the opposition and everybody loses.
This is absurd. When you make a unilateral statement like this, which makes no sense, you cheapen everything you have to say.
What does “above fighting back” mean anyway? Did Reagan fight back? He just ignored his critics, and did what he knew was right. Reagan and the Bushes were gentlemen. Reagan perhaps did more for the cause, but George W. Bush was a gentleman and a good President. Shame on those who lash out at him!
And no one will know this because he remained passive while the Left destroyed his reputation.
George W. Bush signed into law the largest expansion of entitlements since Johnson’s Great Society;
George W. Bush signed into law Ted Kennedy’s disastrous No Child Left Behind Act;
George W. Bush kept it a secret that weapons of mass destruction were indeed found in Iraq.
But there’s no disputing the fact that George W. Bush was (and is) a gentleman.
The first two are judgement calls, which I may or may need agree with you. If you refer on the first one to Medicare, Part D, you ignore the fact that the Democrats were set to put into law something much worse. And they would have overriden a veto. Also: Medicare, Part D has market oriented parts to it that the Democrats would have never put in.
This better-sign-this-or-it-could-be-worse tactic has been in place for years, predating Bush. It may have been wrong. But it was well intentioned. It is always easy to carp when you not in that situation.
I frankly admit that don’t I know what the point is about the weapons of mass destruction. I think we did find gas, which was well known.
I think some of Bush’s tactic were wrongly advised, particularly not defending himself. But the man was self-effacing and humble. I’ll put humility ahead of what we have now any day of the week. Humility is a much under-valued virtue.
I. It is just wrong to ignore the first Amendment. Google is abhorrent, but the principle should decide in their favor.
2. I always seem to lose with many on Ricochet when I try to point out that good governance is not just about policy. To believe so is to ignore the traditions that have made Western Civilization superior.
3. I am with you, partially. But the last part ignores decency in favor of the law. This is what the Left does.
4. This actually makes perfect sense. And it was in private. But a public figure needs to be careful not to make “jokes” about such things.
5. I agree with this basically, but shy away from the word “embrace”. FDR did what was needed to be done in World War II, for example, but I don’t think he “embraced” Stalin. Though, in foreign affairs, Truman was a much better President.
You got a shout out in today’s podcast!
FWIW I couldn’t pull the lever for Trump, but I didn’t and don’t think doing so was morally wrong. I feared he could do great damage not in terms of language and personal conduct but in terms of state action (eg, war, recession, violating press freedom, abuse of police power). I’ve been pleasantly surprised because during the campaign I set my expectations so low. Do you listen to Klavan? My view is much like his. Trump is a buffoon with low character and he’s incompetent – but at least he’s attempting to do things that don’t bother me much or that I like.
The Democrats couldn’t have overriden a veto by the gentlemanly George W. Bush. They would have needed 16 Republican Senators in addition to “Jumping” Jim Jeffords to vote against the Republican President George W. Bush. I’ve never heard that the Medicare Part D expansion would have been overridden. Do you have any contemporaneous reports of such a possibility?
Are you defending Ted Kennedy’s disastrous No Child Left Behind Act? Talk to any public school employee, she will more likely than not be a creature of the political left, and she will undoubtedly tell you what is unanimous in public education: the No Child Left Behind Act is a disaster, and it’s all George W. Bush’s fault.
George, are you being honest? The unopposed criticism of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was that there were no weapons of mass destruction found. It only after he left office that the Department of Defense admitted that they found all sorts of weapons of mass destruction, and they were forced to report that fact because so many soldiers were being treated for exposure to chemical weapons of mass destruction that were found in Iraq. Do you have any contemporaneous reporting of your thought that “we did find gas, which was well known?”
A good President would have better defended his justified war in Iraq, don’t you think?
There’s no disputing that George W. Bush was and is a gentleman.
Yes, especially since it was the same war that started in 1990/1991. We had a conditional ceasefire. Saddam broke the conditions. End of ceasefire. That is all they needed to know. Same war after a pause. Just like the Korean War. There is no peace, merely a ceasefire. The Norks have broken the ceasefire many times. Any time we want, we can cancel the ceasefire.