Thread by @DamonLinker

I get that there are good and important libertarian arguments against the tech companies’ Trumper ban. But here’s a thread in its defense … 1/14

It’s a thread on why conservatives and liberals (as opposed to insurrectionists who would topple American democracy if they could) should favor banning speech that encouraged or cheered on Wednesday’s obscene events. 2/14

They should favor the ban because the lunatic agitator ranting on the street corner has no *right* to be given a megaphone that enables him to be heard by every potential lunatic follower of his cause in the country. 3/14

This isn’t a goddamn game. It’s not a reality show. And neither is it an Oxford debating society event. 4/14

This week the virtual world of combat many of us marinade in online burst into the real world. 5/14

If that drawbridge between virtual and actual insurrection isn’t withdrawn, we will find ourselves in a country quite literally tearing itself apart in the streets and in the halls of government around the nation. 6/14

(THE under-covered story of the week is that the insurrection on Capitol Hill was mirrored in state houses and legislatures across the country.) 7/14

Is our baseline for freedom now that every radical, anti-liberal right- and left-wing asshole must be given free access to the most powerful facilitator of political organization ever devised? 8/14

I submit that this is an insane thing to think — and that many of us think it only because we have slowly evolved into this being a new normal, … 9/14

… like the frog who thinks the nearly boiling water that’s about to kill him is just a bracing few minutes in a jacuzzi. 10/14

This is a new normal that could well bring the end of democratic self-government in the United States-- or, more likely, plunge us into civil war. 11/14

Which means that the tech company moves aren't an overreaction at all. Wednesday’s events could have been far, far worse —

msnbc.com/all-in/watch/c… 12/14

… and they are likely to be far, far worse in the future if we don’t inject a little moral content into these until-now mostly neutral platforms that are being used by fascists and anarchists to tear down the institutions that keep us free — 13/14

… with freedom defined in its original, political sense: the freedom to be citizens who share in rule through institutions of self-government. 14/14