Elon Musk Can Fix Twitter Culture

This is an institutional quagmire that existing management got sucked into and has been powerless to correct or perhaps even to see clearly. Example: a ruling last week banning ads that don’t affirm the “consensus” of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In private hands, management will find it easier to dismantle this tendency and free Twitter from the albatross of excessive obeisance to the progressive left—a sector, Pew tells us, that is overwhelmingly white, privileged and accounts for just 6% of the U.S. population.

So Mr. Musk’s real contribution may turn out to be a one-and-done move to relieve Twitter of its foolish overcommitment to the politics of the left—an overcommitment that has characterized many institutions in society lately, and not because of conviction, revealed truth or any accumulation of evidence. The reason is fear and intimidation.

The examples are numerous, like when name-brand corporate CEOs denounce a Georgia voting law they haven’t bothered to examine because they were personally terrified not to be seen denouncing anything that progressive opponents labeled Jim Crow 2.0.

Or when academics and journalists gather to discuss the problem of disinformation and then get lockjaw when a student asks about liberal-promoted disinformation such as a claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a creation of Russian intelligence.

Or when university presidents—oh, never mind, the instances of moral cowardice on campus are too numerous to need citing...

The Constitution was created by wise men. And they can be considered our “aristocracy” — not of noble or wealthy birth, but skin-in-the-game aristocrats by virtue of accomplishments in life and proven merit to society.

I believe Musk is in that camp and it’s wonderful that he has chosen to use his wealth wisely.

Ironically, the BoR is in a sense overrated - at least the first 8 amendments. 9A and 10A express the intent of the composers of the unamended constitution, and if they had been incorporated into the original, the Antifederalists would, arguably, not have been able to force the Federalists to promise and deliver the first eight.
The reason that matters is the tendency of people, some well intentioned, to suggest that “it isn’t a right if it isn’t in the Constitution.” That sounds like I just made an argument in favor of Roe, but that’s far from my point.
“the freedom of speech” - as 1A refers to it, already existed in American Common Law when the Constitution was being being crafted. Same, essentially, with the rest of the first 8 IMHO. But altho I once thought of myself as a First Amendment absolutist, there actually is no such animal. Why? Because freedom of speech has never been absolute. “‘Fire' in a crowded theater” is a famous example - but did you ever wonder why pornography laws were still a thing after the ratification of 1A?
I saw a youTube video in which Antonin Scalia explained it - explained why the New York Times Co v. Sullivan decision in 1964 - unanimous, with enthusiastic concurrences expressing a desire to go further - was actually bad law. Sullivan was actually as close to “First Amendment absolutism” as you will find. Even the 1964 Warren Court wasn’t absolutist enough to overturn antiporn law, but it did a number on libel law, and 1A was never intended - or, prior to 1964, understood by any court - as touching libel law. JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT - published the year Scalia died - wrote of Scalia’s objection to Sullivan:
But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”
Sullivan is premised on the idea that political parties naturally have comparable propaganda resources, so the courts should just butt out of their propaganda fights. That wasn’t even true of “the McCarthy era" in the 1950s - as Ann Coulter demonstrated in Treason - let alone during the Vietnam War, or at any time since.
Overturning a unanimous SCOTUS decision - a “First Amendment absolutist” one at that - would obviously be a heavy lift. But that’s what Clarence Thomas vote to do. There is crying need for a case to be brought which would allow SCOTUS to do just that. Elon Musk - a foreign-born citizen who isn’t even constitutionally qualified to be selected to be president - is doing yeoman service to the cause of freedom of the press by turning Twitter back towards the "poor man’s soap box" it was intended to be. But that does not necessarily meet the need entirely; the wire services have to be brought to heel.
The wire services are nothing other than continual, unending virtual meetings of all major journalists/journalistic institutions. And they have precisely the effect that Adam Smith might have predicted in 1776:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
Under Sullivan, the wire services have functioned as cover for libel: if it’s on the AP “wire,” it must be true. The irony is that the AP was held in 1945 to be in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act. That was in a business case, not an ideological one - but still, it is a precedent of sorts. SCOTUS simply must make it possible for a Republican to sue for libel without ridiculous impediments to even getting a chance to prove his case in court. Obviously Democrats don’t need to sue for libel.

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