Tea at Trianon: Jailing People for Misinformation is a Horrible Idea

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Jailing People for Misinformation is a Horrible Idea

From Culturcidal:

So, who would ever be targeted by a law like this?

Conservative media outlets, amateur media outlets, and YOU. The sort of people who don’t have contacts on Nancy Pelosi’s staff, who’ve never been to a cocktail party with AOC, and who don’t have any Democratic donors advocating on their behalf.

And what would this “misinformation” consist of? Certainly, there are people who make up “misinformation” from scratch and that should be considered indefensible. People who get caught doing that -- and it happens semi-regularly via Community Notes on X or via other ways -- should have their reputations ruined, lose their audience, and lose all credibility. Sadly, this seldom happens anymore in our highly partisan, entertainment-obsessed society.

However, most of the people who get it wrong, on the Left and Right, are not deliberately lying per se. Many of them are just careless, prone to be conspiratorial or so hyper-partisan that they believe pretty much any negative thing they hear about the opposition.

But there’s another level beyond those people. Most “misinformation” tends to be things like someone misinterpreting a study or a statistic and rolling with it, an initially reported fact that was later discredited without the person repeating it realizing that, someone legitimately buying into a fake story or fake claim, an educated guess that turns out to be wrong, uncharitably interpreting something that actually happened, people talking about things that are far outside their areas of expertise, etc., etc. In other words, many of the people in these groups are not even malicious per se, they’re just wrong.

So, how could we morally justify jailing some guy with 100,000 followers on X who misinterpreted a study or some small news website for “misinformation” when politicians and guests on CNN do worse on an almost daily basis without ever facing any real consequences for it?

We couldn’t. (Read more.)