Censorship for Thee but not for Me

These are the opinions of the left, as I've surmised them. Not all of the left believes all of them, but I have heard or deduced each of these arguments from them.

1. The social media moderators try to reduce racist, hateful, and misinformation on their platforms.
2. The social media moderators, while mostly left-leaning, apply their standards blindly and without regard to politics.
3a. The right is more likely to generate content that fits into #1, and so gets suppressed more.
3b. There is no disparity between moderation of the left and right.
4. There is no moderation of the right. (Because right-leaning users have high engagement)
5. The word "suppress" is too polemical.

#3 is split into two, because both can't be true, but I've heard both arguments. #4 is a remarkably terrible argument. There are many reasons why the right can have high engagement despite an effort to reduce it. Making this argument is like saying masks have no effect on Covid spread because countries with mask mandates are seeing Covid spread. There is no way to infer the effect of a deterrent by observing the final amount of anactivity. The only thing that high engagement tells you is that any moderation isn't 100%, which no one is arguing.

This is what the right believes, as I understand it:

1. The social media moderators try to suppress racist, hateful, and misinformation, and that's ok.
2. The social media moderators, mostly left-leaning, apply their standards inconsistently and overzealously because of their own views.

Recent events are substantial evidence that #2 is true. 

The NY Post story. First, Twitter banned the links altogether because the story was based on hacked e-mails or it contained private information, so they said. First, there was no evidence that the e-mails were hacked. Recovered under dubious circumstances, to be sure, but no indication they were obtained illegally. On the other hand, the NYTimes story about Trump's taxes was very likely based on tax returns obtained illegally. There's clearly a double-standard. Twitter has also never acted to suppress a political story that contained private information. Again the NYT story about Trump's taxes would seem to fit into this definition. 

On the overzealous application of their "standards," the recent post from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan is illustrative. Twitter suspended him for a post about the border wall. The text of the post: "[Customs Border Protection and US Army Corp of Engineers Headquarters] continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It's a fact, walls work."

The explanation from Twitter: "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."

If we first remove everything that Twitter can't possibly be referring to: "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin....". Since there's no threat here, there's no promotion of violence, so it must be that Twitter believes this harasses other people. But still this doesn't seem to relate in anyway to the offending post.

In truth, Twitter blocked this because a moderator, representative of the left, inferred that Morgan is saying 100% of the people (who are overwhelmingly Latino) are "gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drug [transporters]." Firstly, this is not what Morgan said, this is what Twitter inferred. Second, even if he had said exactly this, it still wouldn't fit the reason they cited, since it's not harassment. It would be an extremely egregious and racist form of stereotyping, but Twitter should have a policy for that explicitly.

The problem for the right with this episode, is Twitter is acting, call it suppressing or moderating or censoring, based on how they are interpreting a statement, not based on the literal words being used and that there's no clear policy. Taken as it is, I don't think it's disputable that there are some gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs that cross the border, and if a wall is effective it'll stop them.

The left has a real problem separating text as written from their own inferences. Because their inferences are highly correlated with their political biases, it leads them to over-moderate the right. Morgan should not have been suspended for making a factual statement that didn't obviously violate Twitter's policy. Instead, Twitter should have, at most, slapped on a "Potentially racist implication" tag, and allowed Morgan to modify his language if he wanted it removed.

The Definitive Case for the Filibuster

Democrats are salivating. At the moment, Democrats are set to win the presidency, a Senate majority, and retain a majority of the House. For the first time since 2010 they’ll have full control of the two branches of government needed to pass their agenda. Knowing, however, that their agenda is too left-leaning to garner 60 votes in the Senate, it’s of course time to change the rules so they can pass as much as they want with a simple majority.

The Democrats’ designated ideological pinch-hitter, Ezra Klein, right on cue, has assembled the “definitive case for ending the filibuster.” Mr. Klein is a master of weaving together de-contextualized talking points magnified through a partisan lens into a grand, indisputable argument. Take, for example his argument that Donald Trump definitely colluded with Russia or that Republicans govern poorly because they hate government. In both cases, Mr. Klein took isolated examples that supported his argument while ignoring all counter-evidence to reach the inexorable truth, that just happens to always fit within Democratic politics.

The United States, Mr. Klein argues, cannot get anything done, and it’s the fault of the filibuster, despite the filibuster being technically possible since 1806. United States Congresses have in fact passed several laws in the years between 1806 and 2020. The filibuster has expanded in use rapidly in the past 30 years. Democrats weaponized filibusters to stop Republican Supreme Court nominees—William Rehnquist twice and Samuel Alito. They also relied on the filibuster to prevent Miguel Estrada’s elevation to the DC Court of Appeals in 2003 as well as many other Bush nominees. Senate Republicans followed suit with Obama’s nominees, and then the Democrats went nuclear and forbade filibusters on lower court nominees. (Republicans have never attempted a filibuster of a Democrat’s Supreme Court nominee, it should be noted).

Democrats have already weakened the filibuster twice, in its history, when it suited them. Now that it can’t possibly get any weaker, and the Democrats have their eye on control of the Executive and Legislative branches, it’s time to eliminate it altogether.

Klein begins his case by pointing out that the US system of governance has four veto-points, more than any other western democracy. By veto-points, he means that for legislation to pass, it must pass the House, the Senate, the President, and also the states. Since no one’s really talking about amending the Constitution, the states are not a veto point for every day legislation, which seems to be the primary concern. Other countries, he claims typically have two, maybe three.

Perhaps this analysis is correct, at least on the number of veto points. But bear in mind, his treatment of the United States’ system isn’t even accurate. In general, legislative systems are more complex than Civics 101 suggests. Beyond curiously counting the states as a veto point, consider that he has ignored Congressional committees. Shouldn’t that count as a veto point? Is Klein in favor of eliminating this veto point as well? Do other countries have similar institutions? I believe that most agree that the Committee system is beneficial. It cleans up legislation and filters out bad legislation as well.

The answer to how many veto points are appropriate, for one, depends on the country but also on balancing doing too much with too little. Democrats, like Mr. Klein, are extremely activist, wanting to pass multitudinous laws and regulations. They default to the position of “There’s something wrong; we need more laws.” In reality, though, the market fixes many of the perceived problems. Many other “problems” they see aren’t problems at all. Sometimes it is better to see how thing evolve before legislation because legislation exacerbates the problem. For example, increasing cost of housing is largely caused by over-active Democrats restricting the usage of land for high density housing, mandating larger and larger apartments, and regulating construction practices. All of which decrease supply and increase rents. These also lead developers to prioritize luxury apartments. Then, they enact more regulations—rent controls—lowering the quality of what housing remains. Is it not odd that no matter how much legislation we have, how many regulations on the books, they claim we still have the same problems and need more regulations?

In addition to slowing bad legislation down, veto points have another advantage, unique to the U.S. system. In his podcast, Klein decries the nationalized media as a reason things have broken, but yet he wants to make it easier to pass legislation at the national level. He doesn’t recognize that these two are related. Preventing legislation at the national level compels states to solve problems on their own. Beyond the “laboratories of Democracy” benefit, this also means that problems that California perceives but Ohio disagrees with leads to solutions that don’t hurt Ohioans. If California wants to legalize marijuana, provide universal healthcare coverage, and micromanage the water pressure of your showerhead they should do so. Why is it necessary that they bring Ohio, kicking and screaming along with them? If California makes that work and starts attracting Ohioans to California because of their great healthcare at affordable prices, I’m 100% certain that Ohio will adopt it as well.

The other big argument that Klein makes is that the filibuster is anti-democratic because it prevents a simple majority from enacting its policies. In particular, it’s being used to stop voting rights expansions, the admission of Puerto Rico as a state, and giving DC representation in Congress.

The suggestion that Klein and the Democrats are really concerned about democracy is laughable. Over and over, the Democrats pass legislation that cannot garner 50% public approval. Notably, the ACA, despite years of Democrats saying the healthcare system was broken, and that the uninsured needed to be insured, and then two years of Democrat-wrangling legislation to do so, that they had difficulty convincing even Democrats to go along with, then a year of media cheerleading for how amazing the bill was, still, its popularity bounced between favorable and unfavorable. Its unpopularity caused Democrats to lose the supermajority in the Senate, and then the Senate itself. Is that what Klein means by the U.S. needing more democracy? 

Giving DC Congressional voting rights would require a Constitutional amendment, which already exceeds the filibuster minimum. On Puerto Rico, state entry should surely not be subject to political calculations and excluding this use of a filibuster should be considered.

The reason things have broken down is not the filibuster. It is the diminishment of politicians and the media. Politicians on both sides have abandoned seeking compromise in favor of signaling ideological purity. The media have abetted this evolution, including Mr. Klein. Perhaps polarization has reached a point where the filibuster does make legislating untenable. That is a debate worth having, but that’s not Klein’s argument. Since the left never bemoans Democrats’ use of the filibuster by, for example, preventing a Republican majority from passing a Covid relief bill for political reasons, we are left to assume that their current stance is not for the good of the country, but for the good of their cause.