E-Pluribus | March 22, 2024
Immoral means for moral ends; an alternate take on free journalism school; and how about *not* banning TikTok?
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Brandon McMurtrie: Pious Fraud, or the Moral Licence to Lie
The apostle Paul was once accused by his enemies of saying, “Let us do evil, that good may come.” Paul flatly rejects the premise, but many find the concept perfectly acceptable. At Quillette, Brandon McMurtrie examines (primarily) the tendency of the left to use whatever means necessary to achieve its ostensible moral ends.
The willingness to engage in pious fraud arises through a mechanism known as moral licensing. Moral licensing occurs when a person believes that their moral goals or good behaviour grant them permission to do immoral things. Moral licensing is also tied to victimhood status; those who perceive themselves as victims are more likely to use that status to exempt themselves from normal codes of moral conduct. This brings us to the new improvers of mankind: the modern Left. The moral license of progressive activists rests on the belief that they are working for cosmic justice and universal good on behalf of society’s righteous victims.
There are those, Nietzsche observed in On the Genealogy of Morals, who “constantly bear the word ‘justice’ in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their own way in good spirits. … The will of the weak to represent some form of superiority, their instinct for devious paths to tyranny over the healthy—where can it not be discovered, this will to power of the weakest!” Many on the social-justice Left are pious true believers with a victimhood complex. They therefore presume that they have the moral license (or what Thomas Sowell called a “blank check”) to behave as badly as they like.
[. . .]
There are many examples of these pious lies told by the social-justice Left, including claims of a discriminatory pay disparity between men and women, denial of the sex binary, and claims of an impending “genocide” against trans people. Look closely at almost any major social issue adopted by the social-justice Left and you will find distortion, lies, or misleading half-truths. Truth is sacrificed in service of a holy war against “injustice” or “inequity.”
[. . .]
Not that the Right has any special claim to universal honesty (humans in general are prone to lying). But the nature of the social-justice worldview—a moral crusade against cosmic injustice—lends itself more to this kind of deceptive piety. [. . .]
[P]ious lies are almost always counterproductive. They erode trust in fellow citizens, academia, and the media. And even if they are believed, they create social panics based on a web of fabrications and exaggerations. If they are not corrected, entire worldviews and political movements can be built on falsehoods. This destroys common sense-making, impedes effective policy design, and—given the social-justice Left’s focus on race and gender, specifically—erodes social trust and cohesion.
Read the whole thing.
Robby Soave: Don't Make Journalism School Free
Tuesday’s round-up included an appeal from the dean at City University of New York’s journalism school to help save journalism by providing free journalism degrees. Robby Soave at Reason thinks that even a free classroom education is no substitute for experience and urges that more emphasis be put on internships and apprenticeships to right the ship.
The New York Times recently published an opinion piece by Graciela Mochkofsky, dean of the City University of New York's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She argued that churning out more journalism degree holders could help revitalize a dying industry, and that making such educational programs free is one way to do that.
"Journalists are essential just as nurses and firefighters and doctors are essential," she wrote. "And to continue to have journalists, we need to make their journalism education free."
[. . .]
Mochkofsky likened journalists to doctors and firefighters, but the profession has far more in common with the latter than the former. Journalism is akin to a craft or a trade; it is distinctly unlike science. Aside from some minimal abilities that should be acquired during primary education—i.e., competent writing—the technical skills required to do it are best learned on the job from seasoned professionals during the course of an internship. These skills are not so complicated that they must be studied in a classroom with textbooks and formal instructors.
I've always found that writing itself is much like exercising: If you do it regularly, you get stronger and better at it, and if you stop doing it, you get weaker and worse at it. News stories aren't meant to be observed under a microscope; the best way to learn how to write them is to just start doing it.
Read it all here.
Paul Matzko and Jennifer Huddleston: To Protect Free Speech, Congress Should Consider Alternatives to Banning TikTok
With the future of the very popular app TikTok hanging in the balance, the ball is in the Senate’s court after the House passed a bill that threatens to shut the app down without a clear break from the Communist Chinese Party. Despite the CCP connection, there are plenty who think a ban hits too close to the First Amendment for comfort. Paul Matzko and Jennifer Huddleston writing at The Dispatch agree.
The federal government does have a legitimate interest in protecting the American people from surveillance by foreign governments. But the powers being sought by Congress represent the most radical options on the table, when other alternatives could better balance security and the protection of users’ free speech rights. Congress has a range of regulatory options that fall in between doing nothing and either forcing divestment or threatening a ban.
For example, national security concerns could justify closer government monitoring of TikTok, such as mandated, routine, unannounced audits by an executive agency of TikTok’s data or its communications with parent company ByteDance. TikTok has already spent $1.5 billion on Project Texas, its plan for storing American data in America (although critics point to evidence that the firewall isn’t as solid as TikTok avers). But Congress could take an extra step and mandate data localization for all companies owned by foreign adversary nations and then police any such breaches. Congress could require that apps disclose the national origin of their parent companies to users. While these alternatives all involve trade-offs, they would have a much less significant impact on speech than the proposed forced sale or ban.
Supporters of the bill have dismissed free speech concerns by arguing that it is not a “ban.” After all, if ByteDance sells then TikTok users’ speech would be unaffected since the app would only be banned if ByteDance refused to comply. But if ByteDance were unable to find an appropriate buyer in the short time frame granted by Congress, the bill would stiffly penalize app stores that allow users to download TikTok, resulting in a functional ban of the app while removing a major forum for both the production and consumption of speech.
[. . .]
Some proponents of the bill point to the existence of similar apps—such as Instagram’s Reels or YouTube’s Shorts—to suggest that losing TikTok would not be much of a loss. However, TikTok’s users choose it over competing products, and do so for any number of reasons, from its audience to its features. The fact that alternatives exist does not excuse or erase a violation of the First Amendment.
The mere suspicion that TikTok might someday be used to monitor American citizens or manipulate elections is not a substitute for the kind of evidence needed to justify a ban in court. Much of the data TikTok is allegedly collecting on users can be purchased on the open market, for as little as 12 cents a person—if the CCP really wanted this information, it could access it via means that wouldn’t kill TikTok.
Read it all.
Around Twitter (X)
From Canada, a librarian is fired for… praising the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism?
Via the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Heckler’s Veto strikes again. Click for the whole thread.
And finally, Jesse Singal brings to us the hero we didn’t know we needed: Shaun King!