There’s a certain kind of liberals involved in politics for whom The West Wing is the bible. It’s the holy writ of how politics ought to be.

Aaron Sorkin’s skill, from The West Wing to the Newsroom to the Social Network is making up stuff and making it seem like it’s actually relevant to the real world. At his worst, as in The Social Network, he claims to be writing about reality when he doesn’t even understand the subject. So of course he’s the perfect person to be the face of the Left’s insistence that Facebook censor conservatives.

Bizarrely, Sorkin begins by defending the fictional garbage that was The Social Network. “In 2010, I wrote “The Social Network” and I know you wish I hadn’t… I didn’t push back on your public accusation that the movie was a lie because I’d had my say in the theaters,”

What Zuckerberg didn’t do was sue Sorkin, Sony, etc… or even ban ads for the movie from Facebook.

Rather than acknowledge that, Sorkin treats it as some form of validation and then demands that Facebook ban his political opponents.

“It was hard not to feel the irony while I was reading excerpts from your recent speech at Georgetown University, in which you defended — on free speech grounds — Facebook’s practice of posting demonstrably false ads from political candidates.”

I have no idea what the ‘irony’ here is. Does Sorkin?

Zuckerberg called Sorkin’s garbage pile of a movie a lie and let it go at that. That’s free speech. That’s what Sorkin is opposed to.

“I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong. But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together. Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.”

If only the Framers had thought of that…

Crazy lies, whether they’re Sorkin’s or Warren’s, are free speech. When they hurt somebody, that person may have a right to sue. But there should not be an infrastructure for censoring people because somebody, like say Sorkin or Zuckerberg, claims that they’re lying.

Maybe the creator of the West Wing doesn’t actually understand what the First Amendment is or why we have it?

Or what the alternative to it is.

Half of all Americans say Facebook is their main source of news. Of course the problem could be solved by those people going to a different news source, or you could decide to make Facebook a reliable source of public information.

As decided by whom?

The difference between free countries and non-free ones is that individuals decide things for themselves. That’s what Aaron Sorkin is campaigning against.

And right now, on your website, is an ad claiming that Joe Biden gave the Ukrainian attorney general a billion dollars not to investigate his son. Every square inch of that is a lie and it’s under your logo. That’s not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth.

Defending free speech means assaulting anyone’s notion of an absolute truth that society must uphold through censorship.

Again, Aaron Sorkin has no idea what free speech is. His understanding of the First Amendment is that it should only apply to him and people he agrees with.

You and I want speech protections to make sure no one gets imprisoned or killed for saying or writing something unpopular, not to ensure that lies have unfettered access to the American electorate.

The former already happened. Preventing it requires allowing people to decide what they want to say and believe. 

The moment you toss that overboard, you open the door to the worst case scenarios. But you don’t just defend free speech to head off the worst case scenarios. Once upon a time the ACLU knew that. Now it’s become a curiously silent lefty hive group.

You prevent the worst case scenarios by fighting any incursion on freedom of speech.

You don’t wait till guys like Sorkin decide that the lie emergency requires locking people up.

“I hope your C.O.O. walks into your office, leans in (as she suggested we do in her best selling book), and says, “How can we do this to tens of millions of kids? Are we really going to run an ad that claims Kamala Harris ran dog fights out of the basement of a pizza place while Elizabeth Warren destroyed evidence that climate change is a hoax and the deep state sold meth to Rashida Tlaib and Colin Kaepernick?””

No mention of ,”Are we going to run ads claiming that President Trump is a Russian asset.”

Because we all know that in Sorkintopia, some lies will be allowed and even protected.

Then, when she pushed you further, asking you if Facebook would or would not take down lies, you answered: “Congresswoman, in most cases, in a democracy, I believe people should be able to see for themselves what politicians they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.”

Now you tell me. If I’d known you felt that way, I’d have had the Winklevoss twins invent Facebook.

Does Sorkin really want to live in a country where he couldn’t do that?

Does he really want an authority to be able to silence his lies? Or does he just want it to silence the people he hates?