https://freedomoutpost.com/free-speech-
The sooner the rest of us stop trying to find common ground with the Left and start opposing them as if our lives depended on it, the better our chances of preserving an America worth living in. By Tom McCaffrey
Like too many of his colleagues on the right, including President Trump it appears, the usually estimable Daniel Greenfield of FrontPageMag.com has gone off the rails over the question of the censoring of rightwing voices on social media platforms like FaceBook, Google, and Twitter by their left-leaning owners.
One of Mr. Greenfield’s ideas is for the government to apply “public accommodation” law to such media, which would mean that FaceBook, et al. would be legally required to take all comers in the same way that the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires restaurants, hotels, and other so-called public accommodations to serve all comers regardless of race, religion, etc.
But the owner of a private business should no more be deprived of the right to decide whom to do business with than should a private homeowner be deprived of the right to decide whom to entertain in his home. When Americans conceded the principle that private property devoted to commercial use is thereby rendered “public,” they condemned America to a long, slow slide into socialism, which is precisely what we have experienced since 1964.
Mr. Greenfield appears to consider property rights to be dispensable. But without private property, free speech could not exist. Remember when the federal government regulated the “public” radio waves via the “Fairness Doctrine”? It was only when Reagan abolished the doctrine and restored the rights of station owners to decide for themselves whom to serve that free political discourse on the radio exploded into being in the form of Rush Limbaugh and his progeny.
