Because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would tear through the strongest cords of our Constitution, just as a whale breaks through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other.
I listened to an interesting discussion on an X Space yesterday from Eric Weinstein. Paraphrasing his point, he likened social media (specifically X) to a public park. Creating a public park isn’t the challenging part—just as Elon Musk buying X and declaring it a free speech zone wasn’t the difficult part. The real challenge lies in maintaining the park: keeping it clean, safe, free from drug dealers, junkies, homeless encampments, sexual predators, and thieves—the kind of people polite society tends to avoid.
Today, X has become like an overrun park, full of misinformation (“Jews cause hurricanes”) and propaganda from both state and non-state actors. If this continues, Weinstein suggests, eventually a majority will call for curtailing free speech altogether. He then posed an intriguing question: Why, in the past—say in the 1950s—did parks remain clean and orderly?
Though he left that question open, it brought me back to John Adams’ words. The more religiosity (not just as creed, but as lived values) declines, the more the proverbial parks become filled with those who mean harm to others.
Free speech remains enshrined in the Constitution, but with current trends, we risk its curtailment sooner rather than later. We’ve already seen limitations imposed in some instances by the Democratic Party.
The ideal solution is that people turn back to their faith. But that does not seem to be in the cards anytime soon.
Another possible solution, consider a ‘gated rose garden’ approach. Require users to sign up with their real names to get in, and showcase exceptional posters who deserve to be amplified by the algorithm. If someone breaks the company’s decorum—which should be based on a constitutional, legal understanding of free speech—they should be escorted out for a set amount of time (suspended). There are risks with this approach, but it could help tamp down the toxicity on X. Right now, a lot of X users are akin to people wearing masks, and kufiyas on the streets of America, hiding their identities.