Does Corporate America Really Want to Hold a National Referendum on Whether Americans Value Their Own Freedoms or Corporate Freedom to Import Chinese Censorship More?

Jay Cost writes on Twitter (sarcastically):

Corporate America going soft on the Chinese is definitely a smart move. There is nothing that warms the cockles of the American heart more than insanely wealthy c-suites coddling a country that spits on the Bill of Rights. This is a path to bipartisan popularity for Wall Street.

Americans also love to be lectured about the minutest of their personal, social, and political preferences while foreign oppressors get a total pass.

You are not waking the bear. This will be fine.

Don't think twice about the populist movements that have roiled American politics over the last decade. I'm sure they will never turn their attention to the various coastal billionaires profiting off the oppressive CCP regime. A+ work, crew. A+.

Sarcasm aside, the Houston Rockets should be more scared of the good people of Houston than the CCP.

They sold us on nearly completely free trade -- free in the sense that China could do whatever they wanted, so long as they paid off their counterparties in the US enough (and those counterparties, in turn, stuffed enough money in the pockets of owned-and-operated politicians and think-tanks to argue this was all to the good) -- on the theory that we would "export our values" to China.

Instead, we've imported Chinese authoritarianism.

And Cato, AEI, etc., keep telling us "this is how you get more freedom."

Because they're being paid to say that. And because they don't mind sacrificing a little freedom for a little short-term profit in the China trade.

We've exported our manufacturing jobs to China, and imported China's Social Credit authoritarianism in return.

And some continue claiming this is a great deal and we should have even more of it.

By the way: Just curious, but will the pro-corporate libertarian fake-conservatives who told us we should not punish the NBA for coercing a state to not pass a law forbidding #Woke local governments to mandate transgender/any-sex bathrooms please explain why it's now required to punish the NBA?

It's not that I disagree with punishing them -- I just want to know why "principle" now demands we punish a corporation for exercising its own "rights," whereas before, it was icky and nasty and mean and totally not-principled to punish the NBA for bullying the voters of an entire US state.

Can the people who flip back and forth on these issues depending only, it seems, upon whether their liberal twitter friends are demanding some punishment please explain what "principle" is guiding them in these case-by-case decisions?

I see Phil Klein and AllahPundit and BaseballCuck and David French and the rest of the Drag Queen Story Hour gang are all now fighting mad about the NBA imposing Chinese censorship on the US.

Okay, well: Why didn't you fuckers say a damn thing when the NBA imposed #Woke cultural Marxism on a state? Why was the NBA right and good to do that, but now they've erred so badly they must be #Cancelled?

Big media corporations -- including your precious social media monopolies -- have been imposing alien values of censorship, a nascent Social Credit system, for years now, and you have taken the opportunity in each new case of #Woke Corporate Censorship to argue for the unquestionable superiority of corporate speech rights over citizen speech rights.

Each time, you have championed corporate rights and demeaned those arguing for individual rights. Each time, you have sided with the corporate oligarchs against the dreaded "populists."

Now your liberal twitter pals are also upset by a corporation's imposition of censorship, and only now do you speak up and say that this is contrary to American values.

If there is any "principle" animating your flip-flopping on these issues besides the one of "not wanting to look icky to my Twitter palz," please do announce it at some point.

Because we'd all love to hear your deep thinking on this.

Does the NBA's action here -- and the action of ABC and ESPN and Nike in enabling/covering up Chinese censorship -- represent a watershed change in your thinking, or is this merely a one-off deviation from your usual insistence on the Doctrine of Corporate Infallibility?

Or are you only on the right side in this particular case because your liberal pals have permitted you to take this position here? Because, for the instant facts only and none other, this position is now popular with the Twitter Friends Club?

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:00 PM

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