Debate: Government Must Intervene in the Culture War To Preserve Liberty

In an ideal world the world of the “first-best” this public-private binary has much to commend it. The arbitrary exercise of private power will be checked by market forces and freedom of choice. Employers or restaurants that discriminate will find themselves bankrupted in competition with those that do not. Adapt or die.

But in the “second-best” world where we live today, grasping at this idealized vision may be counterproductive to the long-term preservation of liberty. There is a culture war, and virtually every public and private institution in society has enlisted itself on the anti-liberty side, even those historically thought of as largely nonpolitical actors: media, social media, K-12 schooling, employers, universities, the permanent government bureaucracy, mainline Protestant churches, and even the last holdouts, corporations and the military. The left has shown repeatedly it’s not shy about using coercion to force compliance. No longer a buffer against social hyperpoliticization, commercial and civil-society institutions have now become the tip of the spear for woke conformity.

State action remains the largest potential threat to individual liberty. But state action is subject to constitutional constraints that place some limits on oppressive actions. Today, many of the restrictions on individual liberty that affect people most are imposed by private actors, such as banks, employers, and social media companies. For example, financial institutions increasingly are “debanking” certain individuals, nonprofit organizations, and industries based on disapproval of their political views. Employers are requiring employees to attend racial sensitivity training seminars that bear minimal, if any, relationship to their job duties, and are disciplining employees for opinions expressed in their private time on social media. Social media companies have engaged in widespread censorship and suppression of speech. In many of these instances, government has played a vague role in the background, “encouraging” these private businesses to engage in these activities. But not always.

via reason.com

Todd Zywicki has a point.