About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 2018)
6A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Thursday, November 29, 2018 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. What Facebook doesn’t want you to talk about BY ALEX WEBB Bloomberg News The headline of the New York Times’ eye- opening Nov. 14 investigation into Facebook Inc.’s handling of the past year’s torrent of bad news was “Delay, Deny and Deflect.” In Tuesday’s hearing at the ludicrously named International Grand Committee on Disinfor mation and “fake news” in London, it became clearer than ever what the social network giant is trying to keep out of the public discussion: antitrust. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s non-appearance is itself a red herring. He was never going to turn up. The structure of the event, which saw lawmakers from nine countries con vene at a U.K. parliamentary select committee, would have been far more likely to elicit a faux pas from the 34-year-old than its Capitol Hill equivalent, since each lawmaker has greater expertise in the field and more time to quiz the subject. Instead, Richard Allan, Facebook’s European lobbying chief, took questions, and the commit tee ensured there was an empty seat behind a placard with Zuckerberg’s name on it — a barely disguised effort to generate a photo opportunity for the morning newspapers. Allan seemed willing to give ground on regula tion, but with caveats. When asked if Facebook needed a firmer set of rules to deal with political ads, Allan replied “to the extent that there is a simple playbook to work to, that would be incred ibly helpful.” But that concession might come at the expense of a broader debate. If it can focus attention on fake news, political advertising and campaigning, Facebook can draw the conversation away from the far more existential issue of antitrust, and whether it has an excessively dominant position in social media and mobile advertising. The question was raised at the end of the hearing by Charlie Angus, a Canadian member of parliament. The combined reach of Insta- gram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook is something that should be addressed, he posited. Before Allan had a chance to give a full answer, the committee chair called an end to the pro ceedings. Unfortunately, he deemed it beyond the scope of the hearing. Attacking the consumer-facing platforms only scratches the surface. Facebook has a signifi cant position in mobile advertising, and perhaps it should be forced to share more meaningful aggregated data with advertisers. That might pick away at its power, and force it to find other ways to monetize users other than securing their attention with content that includes ads. A broader conversation beyond political advertising is essential, despite the company’s best efforts to convince us otherwise. Facebook’s approach is to restrict public policy debate to political subjects, but just as worrying are the vast reams of personal data that it holds and its outsized role in dictating how people interact. I’m not going to follow my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Joe Nocera in advocating an outright breakup of the company. There’s no guarantee that an alternative player would be any more responsible than Facebook has been. But while Facebook waves the white flag on political content with one hand, it’s hoping that we don’t notice the powerful position it holds with the other. Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe’s technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco. Your government officials Hall County government Board of Commissioners, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville, RO. Drawer 1435, Gainesville 30503, 770-535-8288, www.hallcounty.org. Chairman Richard Higgins, rhiggins@hallcounty. org; District 1, Kathy Cooper, kcooper@ hallcounty.org; District 2, Billy Powell, bpowell@ hallcounty.org; District 3, Scott Gibbs, sgibbs@ hallcounty.org; District 4, Jeff Stowe, jstowe@ hallcounty.org. County Administrator, Jock Connell, jconnell@ hallcounty.org Planning Commission, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville, 770-531-6809. Tax Commissioner’s Office, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, P.O. Box 1579, Gainesville 30503, 770- 531 -6950, taxcommissioner@hallcounty.org Tax Assessor’s Office, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville 30504, rswatson@hallcounty.org. Real estate property, P.O. Box 2895, Gainesville 30503, 770-531-6720; personal property, P.O. Box 1780, Gainesville 30503, 770-531 -6749 Public Works, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville, 770-531-6800, krearden@ hallcounty.org Extension office, 734 E. Crescent Drive, Gainesville, 770-535-8293 Marshal’s Office, P.O. Drawer 1435, Gainesville, 770-531-6762 Elections Office, 2875 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville, 770-531-6945, elections® hallcounty.org Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Gerald Couch, 610 Main St., Gainesville, 770-531 -6885, www. hallcountysheriffsoffice.org Fire Department, 470 Crescent Drive, Gainesville, 770-531 -6838, www.hallcounty.org/fireservices District Attorney’s Office, District Attorney Lee Darragh, P.O. Box 1690, 770-531-6965, ldarragh@hallcounty.org Public Safety, Director Marty Nix, 470 Crescent Drive, Gainesville, 770-531-6774, mnix@ hallcounty.org Hillary is right (and wrong) about immigration, populism Hillary Clinton is right, mostly. In an interview with The Guardian last week, the former next president of the United States said that in order to stop right-wing popu lism, Europe “needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame. ” Clinton continued: “I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message — ‘We are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ — because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” If she stopped there, I wouldn’t have added the qualifier “mostly.” But Clinton couldn’t help herself. She had to also argue that people who are discomfited by immigration are little more than mind less authoritarians with “a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality. ” For many on the left, this was simply an argument for concession. Eskinder Negash, the head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, told The New York Times he was shocked by her comments. “If she’s simply saying you need to cut down on refugees coming to Europe to ask for asylum because they have a well-founded fear of persecution, just to appease some right-wing political leaders, it’s just not the right thing to do,” Negash said. He’s right. Clinton’s remarks were JONAH GOLDBERG goldbergcolumn@ gmail.com too transparently political and self-serving. (They also appeared with Clinton’s impeccably poor timing, right as the United States was deal ing with a serious refugee challenge at the southern border.) Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was interviewed for the same series in which Clinton’s inter view appeared, had a better take. “You’ve got to deal with the legiti mate grievances and answer them, which is why today in Europe you cannot pos sibly stand for election unless you’ve got a strong position on immigration because people are worried about it.” If you don’t ... you leave a large space into which the populists can march.” This has been the argument for rea sonable immigration restrictions for decades. The basic position of National Review, where I am a senior editor, has been that if responsible politicians do not address legitimate immigration con cerns, it will create a political vacuum for unreasonable politicians to exploit. If you don’t like how President Trump talks about immigration, you can appreciate the point. But even better examples can be found across Europe and Scandinavia. James Kirchick, in his book “The End of Europe,” notes that, across the Continent, “once-marginal, anti-systemic parties increase their popularity at the expense of mainstream ones almost entirely because of their absolutist stance against immigration.” The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party in Sweden that grew out of white nationalism and, some claim, neo-Nazi ideology, won a handful of seats in Par liament for the first time in 2010, solely because it was the only party to run on a platform of cutting immigration. The government, the media and the political establishment in Sweden waged an all-out campaign to demonize the party — and the policy. “Stigmatizing the Sweden Democrats in the hope that no self-respecting Swede would contemplate voting for them, however, had the opposite of its intended effect,” Kirchick writes. Five years later, during the migrant crisis of 2015, “the Sweden Democrats had become the most popular party in the country.” Were all of the Swedes who switched parties bigots all along? Unlikely. (Ditto Americans who voted for both Barack Obama and Trump.) But by insisting that voters should not believe their lying eyes when it comes to the problems associated with immigration — some overblown, some real — Swedish elites gave voters no place else to go. And now, irresponsi ble politicians have so much more room to maneuver. Clinton’s problem is that she under stands the need to triangulate the way her husband did, by taking culturally fraught political issues and framing them in ways that win over voters. But Clinton, like so many in her party and in the press, is captured by a narrative that insists anyone who disagrees with her (or supports Trump) has no moral legiti macy. She wants it both ways: “They” are evil, but we should appease them anyway. That isn’t appealing to anyone. Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. W&lr WWCH IMWNffi-BACKB) BRAND DUPK MORF S POOR 4WIHG RWK WTO B0I« \% FINANCIAL PROMKK <* PATRIOTISM? When Democrats win, freedom loses The headlines about the incoming 116th Congress scream that our repre sentation has never been so “young,” so “blue,” so “diverse.” If diversity is about how people look, this Congress is very diverse. It’s a fact that there has never been so great a number of representatives who are women and people of color. There are 124 women, 55 blacks, 43 Latinos and 15 Asians. But if diversity means diversity of thought, it’s practically nonexistent. Of the 124 women, 105 are Democrats. Of the 55 blacks, all are Democrats. Of the 43 Latinos, 34 are Democrats. Of the 15 Asians, 14 are Democrats. The celebration about alleged diversity is really a celebration of one, uniform voice on the left, dressed in different col ors, calling in unison for moving America further toward socialism and secular humanism. All the politics of today’s Democratic Party, which is as far left as it has ever been, is about how people look and where they come from. Once we called this prejudice or stereotyping. Now we call it progressivism. This is anything but Martin Luther King’s famous dream that his children would one day be judged by “the content of their character and not the color of their skin.” It takes a certain blind ness to miss the irony in these politicians of the left, who call for honoring and empowering individuals, and choose to do this by making them less free. They claim to enhance individual dignity by expanding government to dictate our health care, how we save and retire, our rela tionship with our employer, how and what we can say to others and what they can say to us, and just about every detail of our private lives and decisions. How has it become so lost in our coun try that the way we dignify individuals is by believing in them, by granting them freedom to take responsibility for their own life? In this election, Republicans won a national majority only from white voters. Hispanics voted 69 percent for Demo crats; blacks, 90 percent; and Asians, 77 percent. Minority Americans have bought the lie that personal freedom is not in their inter est — that government should run their lives. This is meaningful to us all because they represent the growth demographics of the nation. According to recent analysis from the Brookings Institution, white America will be in the minority by 2045. However by 2027, just eight years from now, the major ity of Americans 29 and under will be non-white. The socialists, the secular humanists, know time is on their side. It’s a waiting game for them. The new Democrat House has only one thing in mind — biding its time to inflict maximum damage on President Donald Trump in order to lay the groundwork for whomever they nominate for president in 2020. So expect a very noisy two years. What can Republicans do? Get far more aggressive in reaching into these minority communities about what losing or gaining freedom will mean to them. Republicans have a very important story to tell that is not reaching these communities. Countries that are not free don’t grow, because all the activity is about transfer ring wealth — not creating it. The progressive politics of blame, dependence and envy make the well- connected rich and keep impoverished people poor. It’s why over the last 50 years, many black politicians have gotten wealthy while the gap in average house hold income between whites and blacks is 50 percent greater today than it was in 1970. Republicans and all Americans who care about bequeathing a free nation to their children and grandchildren need to think long and hard about how to com municate the importance of freedom to Americans of color. It’s our only hope of not losing our country to the left forever. Star Parker is an author and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and a columnist for Creators. She Stines EDITORIAL BOARD Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas Community member Brent Hoffman
