Col. Schlichter and the New Rules

I like Kurt Schlichter's stuff, generally speaking. Right now he is pushing government regulation of businesses going against conservatives:

The liberal elite is using its social and cultural ties to those at the helm of big companies to essentially blacklist the NRA, and thereby the tens of millions of Americans who support gun rights. But oppression is oppression whether it’s done by a government bureaucrat or a corporate one, and our principle of non-interference in business assumes business stays out of politics. But now National, Hertz, and others are cutting ties to the NRA, and liberals are advocating banks do the same. Their intent is clear – what they can't do in politics they will simply do by not allowing the representatives of people whose politics they don't like access to the infrastructure of society. And we're not supposed to do anything about it because, you know, free enterprise and stuff.  You know, our principles.

I think he has more of a point with companies like Google. Not giving a discount to a particular group isn't the same thing as denying its members "access to the infrastructure of society." On the other hand, an algorithm that keeps traffic away from a site because Google doesn't approve of its politics kinda does, to a point. Then again, there's always Duck Duck Go.

No. They are exercising political power. We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. ... 

The first step is an executive order at the federal level directing that no federal contract can go to any company that discriminates against an organization based on its advocacy or exercise of an enumerated constitutional right. We wouldn't allow a company to do business with our federal government if it discriminated on other grounds, so why should we do it discriminate on political grounds? Why should taxpayers be subsidizing people who hate them? When those government employees start walking past the Hertz and National counters, the liberal jerks who run those companies are going to find that they're posing and posturing has a price. 

Well, I'm not opposed to such an executive order, but it wouldn't affect the companies disassociating from the NRA. Not giving or dropping a discount to an organization isn't really the same as discriminating against it, is it?

Next, Congress needs to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination regime designed to protect us into law and allow individuals and entities the right to sue any business that discriminates on the basis of the advocacy for exercise of any constitutional right.

Hm. That's pretty wrong-headed on free enterprise and free speech grounds, though I wouldn't mind a law that turns the above executive order into the law of the land.

He is also pushing to "Regulate Google and All of Silicon Valley into Submission." He claims that the conservative view of free enterprise was that businesses could do pretty much as they please, as long as they "generally stay out of the cultural and political octagon."

But the Woke Weenies of Silicon Valley, flush with cash, power, and unearned smugness, decided that they just couldn’t keep on the sidelines and make their money. No, they had to make change, as in, changing us. They violated the most important of the old rules – they chose a side. In the past, when a company or even an industry crossed the line, it rarely made much difference. ... 

Not so with the Googles, the Facebooks, and the Twitters. Their antics are not necessarily protected by the First Amendment, their internet monopolies choke out alternative channels, and, unlike the line-crossers of the past, they possess enormous amounts of personal information that can be used to manipulate, intimidate, and punish political opponents – you know, us. ... 

Now that's interesting: "not necessarily protected by the First Amendment". Apparently, a service legally considered a "neutral public forum," which Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter seem to claim to be, benefit from a form of legal immunity, and in exchange they don't get involved in politics. So, discrimination against people for their conservative views might actually be a legal problem for them. (However, John Samples over at the Cato Institute disagrees with that analysis.) Anyway, back to the good Colonel:

... They discriminate against conservatives, they actively assist leftist partisans like Felonia von Pantsuit, and they aggressively silence conservative voices within their apps ... 

There’s sometimes a moment when a system is unstable because one participant has changed the rules, but the other side hasn't yet reacted ... That imbalance cannot persist forever; eventually the people on the other side feel like suckers, so they stop playing by the old rules. That’s when the new rules arise. And that's why conservatives now need to savagely regulate companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. We need to use our political power in Congress and red state legislatures to incentivize Silicon Valley to return to a system where its companies embrace political and cultural neutrality, or suffer crippling consequences. 

Yeah, I know that heavily regulating private businesses is not “free enterprise,” but I don’t care. See, “free enterprise” is a bargain, and they didn't keep their part of it, and I see no moral obligation for us to be played for saps and forgo using our political power to protect our interests in the face of them using theirs to disembowel us. I liked the old rules better – a free enterprise system confers huge benefits – but it was the left that chose to nuke them.

He has a number of actions in mind, including using anti-trust legislation to break up "Silicon Valley's giants" like Google and Facebook. He points out the power Google, etc., have in having access to everyone's information and suggests federal and state legislation "that will impose staggering, gut-wrenching monetary penalties for ... even for the mere failure to safeguard it ..." He further suggests forcing these companies to make their algorithms open to the public so we can look for bias.

Sen. Cruz has also expressed concern about this and has questioned representatives of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter about it.

What do folks here think about all this? I'm fine with the federal government deciding that companies that get federal contracts need to remain politically neutral, and I like making Google, etc., responsible for safeguarding private information. However, I'm pretty wary of the government attacking a company for political reasons, which is what some of these suggestions seem to amount to.