Letter: Should there be limits on expression in public spaces?

By Letter to the Editor on February 6, 2021.

Dear editor,

Cash Moore’s Jan. 21 opinion piece starts off with, and Lynn Thacker’s letter underscores, a reasonable point. If privately held sites are acting as town halls they should not have the freedom to arbitrarily curtail certain voices. Does this mean, though, that they should never employ restrictions?

Mr. Moore avoids that question. In order to skirt it, he mislabels the events of Jan. 6 as a protest. Many attending that day were indeed mere protesters. The crowd also included a large number of people who stormed police barricades, assaulted police (killing one), smashed through doors and windows to gain access, vandalized and stole property. It forced employees and legislators to escape their workplaces in order to find safety. Some who invaded called for Mike Pence to be strung up and for Nancy Pelosi to be murdered. To call that anything less than an attack on the main legislative branch of the United States is wilful misrepresentation.

Characterizing the actions of Jan. 6 as a protest allows Moore to play the equivalence game. It gives him licence to accuse tech companies of employing a double standard. Unlike Mr. Moore, most of the world, including big tech, saw the event as an unprecedented attack on a key institution of American democracy. To not act as they did would have left those companies complicit in any further similar attacks. Like big tech or not, their actions to curtail both the incitement to and organization of further violence were reasonable and responsible.

While Mr. Moore whitewashes Jan. 6, Mr. Thacker ignores it. This leaves a hanging question, “What, if any, limits should there be on expression in public spaces – real or virtual?” I hope that either or both individuals take up the challenge of providing an answer to that question with an accompanying rationale. Doing so will help readers understand why they believe that the manner in which big tech acted was unwarranted censorship.

Ed Dick

Medicine Hat

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