Commentary by Richard Stern
In the wake of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden
was asked during a rare press conference—in reference to Twitter’s new
owner—whether he thought Elon Musk was a threat to national security. With a
pause and a smirk, the president said that topic was
“worthy of being looked
at.”
With those words, Biden made it clear that if you even seem
to oppose his politics, your private life will be under the direct scrutiny of
the state. Despite his constant prattle about saving our democracy, Biden seems
to think he’s running an authoritarian police state.
In truth, the federal government already maintains entities
that review acquisitions such as Musk’s for anything from foreign influence to
anti-competitive business practices. After many months in which Musk’s
negotiations to purchase Twitter happened in full public view, Treasury
Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that she sees no
basis for the government to investigate that purchase.
Despite Musk’s having followed the law, Biden, on a whim,
wants to change the game. Suddenly, and after years of Twitter and other social
media having significant foreign investors, a normal and transparent voluntary
transaction is a potential “threat to national security.”
Biden signaled his desire to strip off the veneer of the
rule of law and use the power of the presidency as a dictator would—by his whim
and without respect for the rules that everyone else must abide by.
It is important to remember that, unavoidably, all government
actions are rooted in government’s coercive power. As such, it is crucial for
the federal government to act within the bounds of the Constitution and in a
precise and careful fashion to avoid lurching into tyranny.
The mechanisms of our Constitution lay out one sacred duty
of the federal government—to protect each of our natural rights. The Framers
intended this design to ensure that the government could not interfere
arbitrarily with civil society. The goal was to ensure protection of rights and
not otherwise invade our personal lives with the coercive whims of bureaucrats
and politicians.
With the protection of our individual freedoms, America
developed a strong and flourishing civil society and became the most prosperous
and advanced nation on Earth—a beacon of liberty and a model for the rest of
the world.
A core component of our civil society is the free market.
It is a system where everyone’s natural rights are defended and where everyone
plays on the same field and by the same rules. A free market is a place where
talent and determination are not suppressed and where innovations lift the
standard of living for all.
Tragically, our free society has given way to
increasing government
manipulation—weakening our
communities and civic institutions along the way.
Niche corporate and political interest groups stopped
focusing on how to produce value for other people and instead on how to
persuade politicians to regulate in their favor—a system where you’re rewarded
for wielding the manipulative
power of government, not for providing value to society.
We stand now at a place where the federal, local, and state
governments consume and redirect more than a third of
what Americans work hard to produce, and where the burden
of regulations is an additional quarter
of our economy. Put differently, out of your five-day workweek, two days
are there just to feed the government.
This isn’t the free society and free market our Founders
envisioned, where the government serves the people. This steady fall into a
controlled society has been the playbook of the Left—a callous shortchanging of
most families to concentrate power and money in the hands of a well-connected
few.
What does it say of our nation if the president, with no
accountability and in deference to no law or electorate, can on a whim command
the people as if he regards us all as his property? What does it say that the
president can marshal the force of government against a single individual for
simply not sharing his politics?
With his shameful comment on Musk and Twitter, Biden made
it clear that the rules apply as he sees fit, to whom he sees fit. There can
be no
prosperity in a country where your right to the fruits of your labor
is not sacrosanct, and where the law is applied unevenly to favor those
connected to the regime.
The Biden administration has acted with reckless
irreverence toward our institutions and continued the intentional chipping away
of the rule of law. The administration increasingly has weaponized the
federal government against the American people.
We’ve seen the Biden administration come for industry after
industry and sap
the strength of our nation through an onslaught
of regulations. He has unleashed an inflationary
plague that already has stolen $7,400 from
the average American family.
One need only look to the coal
industry to see the honorable and necessary occupations that Biden now
attacks. If history is any guide, heads of state who recklessly abuse the
natural rights of their people rarely curtail their own crusade.
Biden may have directly named Elon Musk at that press
conference, but his threat was aimed at every household in America.
***
Richard Stern is a senior policy analyst for
budget policy at The Heritage Foundation.
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