TikTok v. Garland and Free Speech Idiocy
Imagine this: a foreign company, with direct ties to the Communist Party, creates a platform that infiltrates the minds of Americans. It doesn’t come with bombs or bullets but with endless dopamine loops of fifteen second videos. No invasive procedure is required to get into the brains of the targets. It is beamed right into devices they already own and at which they stare for hours upon hours a day. Young people especially, the next generation, are easily addicted to this weapon, a weapon well designed to be so enticing that people voluntarily cede their private information to get it.
The result? A generational long game to destroy American culture. Who would promote this? Sounds like a disaster, right? Well, not if you’re a free speech absolutist. No, they’re too busy clutching their pocket Constitutions, declaring that banning China’s mind virus is a betrayal of America’s “free speech tradition.”
This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will likely rule in TikTok v. Garland on whether banning China’s TikTok social media platform from American markets, as Congress demanded in a bipartisan, popular bill signed into law last year, violates the First Amendment. The case is on appeal from the D.C. Court of Appeals which upheld the law.
TikTok’s lawyers argued that China, indeed, has a First Amendment right to speech in America and that, therefore, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company which is controlled by the Chinese government, cannot be forced to sell the app. Per the bill in question, ByteDance has just seven more days to divest or get banned. Apparently, participation in American markets affords foreign corporations the privileges and immunities of American citizens.
The same lawyers argued that the free speech rights of Americans would be violated if they do not have access to TikTok. Apparently, free speech means availing yourself of any and all mediums of global communication. Relatedly, the lawyer for content creators insisted that his clients should have the right to work with any publisher of their choice. The incoherence of free speech minimalists seems to never deter them from spouting their dogma incessantly.
TikTok has also argued that divestiture is impossible because China will not allow export of its algorithm. Curious. Noteworthy too is that India banned Tik Tok four years ago amidst military conflict with China—now why would it feel the need to do that? Thirty-nine American states already prohibit downloading the app on government phones. The same goes for the Army and Navy since the Department of Defense deemed TikTok a security risk in 2020. The Department of Justice also considers TikTok a national security threat, and the FTC and DOJ have sued ByteDance for violation of children’s online privacy law. Last year, Montana became the first state to ban TikTok. In 2020, the Trump administration attempted a forced sale via executive order citing national security concerns. That ByteDance is essentially an arm of the Chinese government is indisputable. That TikTok, like other social media companies, collects user data is equally indisputable, and that the app’s algorithm promotes different content in the U.S. than it does in China is also well documented. The threat of TikTok is clearly recognized even by government entities and officials.
You might then assume that advocates for foreign invaders having rights in this country come from the left. But, you would be wrong. Here comes the self-flagellating, deracinated form of “conservatism” ready to give China the means to infiltrate and destroy American life, at a very real level, it turns out, because somehow the First Amendment demands it. Par for the course for neo-conservative universalism, I suppose. If Afghanistan can become the American republic with sufficient wishful thoughts, then surely Chinese companies deserve American liberties. After all, an American is just someone who believes in equality and, say, the benefits of a timely post office, right? Even those “Americans” that prey upon our children and threaten security it would seem.
Take, for example, the recent Wall Street Journal article, “Banning TikTok Would Violate America’s Free Speech Tradition.” Replete with hysterical comparisons to authoritarian regimes, the author suggests that banning TikTok would put America in the same league as Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. The piece embodies the naïveté of certain so-called conservatives, who can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. They fixate on abstract, absolutist interpretations of the First Amendment while ignoring both history and the broader context: defending China’s TikTok isn’t preserving freedom; it’s facilitating national demise, to say nothing of the nonsensical notion of nationhood, citizenship, and rights in play here.
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” Lenin allegedly quipped. It turns out free speech absolutists are happily playing their part, eagerly wrapping the rope around America’s neck while congratulating themselves for “defending to the death [China’s] right to say it.”
TikTok is just the latest example of cancer in America’s cultural body. It’s not just a harmless platform where teenagers post dance videos. It’s a social and psychological contagion manipulating the mind of America to the joy of the puppet masters in China. And yet, we’re supposed to believe that defending TikTok is somehow synonymous with defending American freedom? As if the founding generation took bullets at Bucker Hill or Saratoga or Yorktown for this. As if liberty of the press meant welcoming foreign algorithms designed to make our citizens dumb, anxious, and immoral. As if freedom to deliberate on our political way of life meant ceding all to global market forces.
In any case, freedom isn’t TikTok’s goal; addiction, manipulation, and infiltration is. What’s worse, this isn’t just happening in a vacuum—this is a tool controlled by what is essentially a mafia regime undergirded by Communist ideology that would like nothing more than to see America crumble from within. TikTok is a foreign threat and should be recognized as such.
But let’s not upset the libertarians. Freedom of speech is at stake.
The Wall Street Journal article, along with other arguments defending TikTok on First Amendment grounds, is a masterclass in missing the point. These people genuinely believe—or, maybe, they just don’t care—that allowing a China-controlled platform to warp the minds of America—clearly something else darker is afoot—is some kind of patriotic duty. Why? Because banning TikTok might set a bad precedent, and apparently, the only thing worse than national infiltration is an ideological “slippery slope.”
Freedom isn’t allowing hostile foreign powers to manipulate your population. Freedom isn’t about watching as your nation’s youngest generations are turned into overstimulated, disconnected husks. But to the libertarian absolutist crowd, none of this matters. They’ve turned the First Amendment into a suicide pact, one where America’s enemies get to call the shots as long as they hide behind the fig leaf of “free expression.” In 1940, Justice Frankfurter wrote in the unanimous Minersville School District v. Gobitis decision that saluting the flag in public schools was necessary because national security was at stake. What happened to that spirit?
Advocating for TikTok’s continued operation is just the latest example of America’s self-destructive tendencies—policies that erode the social fabric in the name of ideological purity.
Take, for instance, the open-border immigration policies that prioritize a utopian ideal of inclusivity over practical concerns like cultural cohesion and national identity. By allowing unregulated immigration without any serious effort toward assimilation, America has created communities that are fragmented and culturally disconnected, undermining the idea of a shared national ethos for the glories of multiculturalism. This lack of cultural cohesion doesn’t just weaken the nation, it creates fertile ground for division and disarray. Historically, internal strife is always exasperated by externally instigated chaos.
And yet, those who defend these policies insist they’re upholding America’s principles of freedom and opportunity. Sound familiar? One need not look hard to find the “conservative” free market economist who tells you unrestricted immigration is actually a good thing for the economy. The same ideological blindness is now fueling the defense of China, our enemy. In both cases, the result is the same: a fraying of the bonds that hold America together.
If Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao were alive today, they would probably be scrolling through TikTok, laughing hysterically at America’s idiocy—all of our adversaries surely are, and China certainly is. Here we are, a nation supposedly devoted to liberty and strength, happily handing our cultural future over to China. And for what? To defend a demented version of free speech claiming the first amendment applies to China’s algorithm over the defense of our nation. And don’t forget that TikTok generates tens of billions of dollars for the global market, a benefit apparently more precious than our historic liberties and the wellbeing of our progeny. I’m certain I’ve read somewhere that the purpose of our constitutional order is to preserve both of those things, but no matter.
More seriously, we should stop pretending that banning TikTok is some kind of moral crime and start treating it like the act of national self-preservation it is. America has a duty to protect its cultural integrity, its future generations, and its place in the world. That means drawing hard lines, even if it makes the libertarian free speech crowd uncomfortable. For too long “conservatives” have let libertarians drive the bus.
Free speech isn’t absolute. It never has been. No right or privilege can be. We regulate industries that harm the common good all the time. Why should TikTok be any different? If we can’t allow ourselves to stop an enemy-controlled social platform from warping our minds, what will we stop?
Conservatives need to wake up. This isn’t about slippery slopes or abstract principles; this is about survival. TikTok is a Chinese weapon. And allowing it to continue operating in the name of free speech is like refusing to disarm a ticking bomb because you’re worried about upsetting the bomber’s rights.
The free speech absolutist argument against banning China’s TikTok is more than naive; it’s suicidal. America is worth defending. And by protecting China’s supposed free speech on First Amendment grounds conservatives are not just abandoning their principles; they’re actively facilitating the destruction of our own nation. Whatever else free speech means, it cannot mean aiding and abetting our adversaries. It’s time to stop selling the rope. It’s time to put America first. And it’s time to recognize that freedom doesn’t mean letting your enemies destroy you from within—that’s enslavement.
Most observers agree that the Court is unlikely to determine that the TikTok ban is unconstitutional. Let’s hope these predictions are right, and that the incoming administration takes this threat seriously. But this is, as they say, a teaching moment. For far too long conservatives have neglected cultural maintenance and protection. For far too long conservatives have refused to prioritize and reward American industry over and against foreign competition, much of which enters our markets with less than honest intent.
The TikTok case is just one example of a larger problem in conservative circles, namely, an unwillingness to ruthlessly favor America’s cultural and economic interest. It’s high time conservatives recognize that the culture war does not just apply to domestic squabbles. And if America–her way of life and future generations–isn’t put first, then what exactly are we conserving? Surely no patriot would want to have his country remembered as a useful idiot.
Excellent article. I think the same can be applied to pornography. How we ever arrived at the idea that pornography, which destroys everything it touches, is protected by free speech is beyond me. Thank you.