Conservative Senator Josh Hawley apes Communist China on internet restrictions for minors
Government paternalism creates effete, undisciplined, hedonistic small men incapable of accomplishing great things
United States Senator Josh Hawley (R-MI) is in bed with Communist China.
He is aping its internet paternalism.
The People’s Republic has barred children and teenagers from online gaming on schools days and to one hour a day on weekend and holiday evenings. Enforcement signals the death knell for online privacy with around-the-clock surveillance of internet use
The Communists recognize, in the words of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, that “A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished,” especially revolutions against tyranny or orthodoxies.
Senator Hawley, in a Sunday Opinion article in The Washington Post, “Congress must act to keep kids off social media,” (Feb. 19, 2023, A25), borrows a page from the Chinese Communist playbook. He posits that minors and parents are incapable of resisting social media blather and drivel instantly recognizable by an infant. He presumes they are like putty in the hands of social media Pied Pipers. He disputes Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ teaching that, “The irresistible is often only that which is not resisted.”
Accordingly, to save parents and minors from their own putative indiscipline and moral laxity, Senator Hawley is bugling for Congress to deny minors younger than 16 access to social media—the same Congress which includes Pinocchio on steroids, Representative George Santos (R-NY). A recent video that has gone viral demonstrated the incidence of criminality and moral dereliction in Congress is greater than in the NFL or NBA. Mark Twain quipped, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.” If you’re looking for surrogate parents, Congress would be your last choice.
Moreover, Hawley articulates no limiting principle to government paternalism to rescue the people from their putative moral droopiness or follies. Why not ban amusement parks, cosmetics, circuses, movie theaters, bars, liquor, fast food restaurants, hot fudge sundaes, jewelry, fur coats, fancy cars, television, profanities, or picking quarrels. The Senator’s views are at least first cousin to H.L. Menken’s unforgettable definition of Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.”
We have seen the likes of Josh Hawley before: namely, Dominican friar Girolama Savonarola and his Bonfire of Vanities to purify Florence, Italy, the Medici family, and the church. Savonarola was later defrocked and executed for his fanaticism.
Hawley would be well advised to renounce his swoon over government paternalism.
Your comparison of social media to vices and amusements seems to highlight the degree to which you understate its effects on people. Would “Trumpism” and “wokeism” have been able to become such all consuming polarities without the constant barrage of commodified “news”? I’m skeptical. While I agree that the govt isn’t more fit than parents to serve as stewards and shepherds--and certainly shouldn’t have the power of the necessary patrol--I think dismissing social media’s effect as a triviality comparable to amusement parks is a miscalculation on a grand scale.