So What is Censorship, Really?

I saw an interesting discussion on a Facebook thread recently. The question asked: “Is it censorship if I delete comments from my Facebook timeline?” The context for the question was clearly political, i.e., are you violating another’s individual rights by keeping their ideas off your social media platform?

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of responses I saw that read, “No.” Although the reasoning was not always clear or on target, the basic answer was right.

Why is the answer right? Because what you do on your own private property is your own business. Your social media page is your personal space. It’s the mental and electronic equivalent of your private property. Granted, Facebook is a private company, too. It has the moral and political right only to permit those it wants to use its services. Yet Facebook, like most other corporations today, is a hard-core leftist, Democratic and progressive company. This means it would never support or tolerate the government permitting others to exercise the same right they enjoy with their own companies.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and other companies have a set of speech codes called “Terms of Service”. They’re nonobjective speech codes giving company operators the right to determine whom they may or may not include in their company’s dealings. In a free country, this is any entity’s right. But that’s the problem. The very progressive P.C. socialism endorsed by these companies does not permit the freedom they take for granted with themselves.

Facebook, Google and Twitter, as Democrats, want a society where government may punish people for politically incorrect “hate speech” or any form of discrimination, because those things trump property rights, in their view. But their own property rights are fully in place when it comes time to enforce their “Terms of Service” and hiring decisions.

A polite term for this inconsistency? Hypocrisy. The more honest and accurate term? Tyranny. That’s the real reason America is falling apart. Not Donald Trump or some tiny minority of white supremacist radicals. Self-determination and free expression are the equal and individual right of all persons — no matter what their views.