David French: Josh Hawley’s Internet Censorship Bill Is an Unwise, Unconstitutional Mess

In his recent interview with Charlie Sykes, David French chuckled at the notion that he is “a milquetoast libertarian who is extremely meek about confronting the challenges of our time.”

Over the past month, French has written an article in Time magazine about joining the military and fighting in Iraq War to show his son how to be a man, justified the censorship of Steven Crowder by YouTube and whined about the blacklisting of Kyle Kashuv by Harvard and the “cruelty” of all those mean people on the “gutter right” who are mocking him.

David French has a new article out in National Review this afternoon in which he comes to the defense of Silicon Valley and decries Sen. Josh Hawley’s bill to tackle social media censorship:

“It’s often the case in Washington that the title of a bill communicates the exact opposite of its content or effect. Think, for example of the Affordable Care Act — a title that seemed almost laughable in the face of skyrocketing insurance premiums. Now we have the Republican version of a deceptively named bill, Missouri senator Josh Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.

In reality, it’s a bill that would inject the federal government directly into the private social-media business and grant it enormous power over social-media content. It would enable public censorship in the name of limiting private control. …”

After doing the Charlie Sykes show, Pastor French has done a new podcast with Nick Gillespie of Reason.com to cry about the “illiberal right”:

“So why are some on the right attacking David French and why should his travails be of interest to libertarians?

French is being attacked because he believes in the classical liberal ideal of a marketplace of ideas, where people civilly argue over ideas and agree to abide peacefully by the outcomes of elections. He mostly believes in the power of persuasion rather than coercion. Unlike a growing number of conservatives and Republicans, he thinks that social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube have the right to kick off whomever they want, even if that leads to fewer conservative voices. And he’s a resolute civil libertarian who remains skeptical of government power, even or maybe especially when his own side is wielding it. …”

We’re mischaracterizing him though!

In spite of what you may have heard, he is not a milquetoast libertarian evangelical cuckservative who is content to get steamrolled in the culture war!