Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“When, on Friday, the Supreme Court hears the Biden administration defend the law that bans TikTok, the justices should remember what the administration said the previous Friday: ‘National security’ justifies the president’s blocking the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel of Japan. Formulaic uses of that phrase give a patina of respectability to government’s abuses — concentration camps in the past, control of the internet in the future. Oscar Wilde was said to have remarked that anyone who could read Charles Dickens on the death of Little Nell (in ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’) without laughing ‘must have a heart of stone.’ Anyone who can read with a straight face Joe Biden on his ‘solemn responsibility’ to protect U.S. ‘security’ from a privately held corporation, almost a quarter owned by non-Japanese, must be incapable of laughter.” (01/08/25)