Newspaper Page Text
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
