Balancing rights, security hard

I like collecting old saws — not the tools, mind you, but those little analogous nuggets of wisdom that describe a situation or item perfectly.

The two that come to mind regarding the debate over the U.S. House passing a bill seeking divestiture of TikTok are “You can’t polish a turd” or “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

House Resolution 7521, or the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, seeks to force ByteDance, the owners of the TikTok application and such, to sell the company to American interests, since ByteDance is a Chinese company and currently, we don’t like the Chinese.

Proponents of the bill say that since China owns the company, so any and everyone that installs or uses the app is essentially allowing the Chinese government to spy on them and us and such, which is a serious threat to national security.

Opponents call the bill yet another egregious attempt on the part of our glorious leaders to stifle free speech, for which TikTok apparently is the main outlet.

On a recent talk radio segment I listened to, a representative claimed that (in a nutshell) “oh, no, we’re not trying to ban TikTok at all. This is us trying to force a change in ownership to ‘Murica so we can feel safe and secure and puppies and we won’t lose the nuclear launch codes.”

I’m pretty sure that there was a quatrain or two from Nostradamus about kids doing dumb stuff with dumb filters about dumb subjects that ultimately kicks off World War III and the End Times.

Sure, I mock this movement, but only because to give it any credence is to finally admit that this vaunted Democracy that needs so much protecting from China and Trump and Putin has already been lost.

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Not to mention, that once we start tippy-toeing down this particular garden path, the government will now start dictating who can own what company, and call it protecting national security. So if, say, Donald Trump was to own a business, and since apparently the Powers that Be believe he is Antichrist-adjacent, his companies will need to be sold to someone less evil.

(Oh, wait. Seems that attempt currently is being made by the State of New York, claiming Trump committed fraud on business loans and now must pay bazillions of dollars and not participate in his own company in any capacity for three years. At one point, the judge was going to order Trump’s companies to be dissolved, but instead has appointed a “monitor.”)

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s seminal “Atlas Shrugged” would recognize what’s happening here, and that another old saw, “being on a slippery slope,” has never been more apt here.

The idea that a government not only can dictate who can operate companies, what companies can produce, who can own the products, how much people creating the products are to be paid, and then charging companies fees (in the form of taxes) for all of that doesn’t point to a free society.

It points to tyranny.

A saying that isn’t an old saw, but one that should be, comes from Montesquieu: “The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.”

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..