Tragic Kingdom
Is Florida punishing Walt Disney Corp's free speech? If it is, should we be okay with that?
Yesterday, April 21, 2022, The Florida House passed Bill SB 4-C which strips Walt Disney World’s self governing powers and special tax status. This happened after the company declared that it would be working to get The Parental Rights and Education Bill repealed and making false claims about what the bill does and does not do.
Of course, the Left is hella mad about Disney having to pay their “fair share” now, but there are some on the right voicing complaints as well. That is not surprising from the likes of the National Review, who have abandoned anything that might be called common sense for a conservative façade that only fights the Left’s depravity when it means nothing and then supports it when it means the most. (Was that scathing enough? I’m not sure…) What’s surprising to me is that there are some in the MAGA crowd who are against it, claiming that the state of Florida is punishing Disney for exercising their freedom of speech.
Is this true? At face value, it seems to be so. Disney wanted to propagandize the country against what Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature were doing with the Parental Rights and Education Bill and DeSantis didn’t like it and proposed that they take a look at Disney’s special status in the state. It looks like Disney ran their mouth and got slammed for it. How can I, a self described free speech absolutist, be okay with that then?
Well, firstly, why does Disney have a special status with the state of florida at all? I live in Florida. Have lived in Florida my whole life. I don’t have special status. My family and friends don’t have special status. Does Universal Studios or SeaWorld have special status. Are they their own city? NO. I am 100% against the government getting involved in the free market. It probably should have never happened, but definitely shouldn’t have persisted beyond what Disney needed to make Disney World a thing. Is it really “punishing” to set the scales back to zero? No doubt it will hurt. It always hurts to lose special treatment, but is that the same as punishment.
But, you have correctly surmised, that doesn’t deal with the free speech aspect. They were just exercising their First Amendment Rights. This is true. Let’s take this from a different perspective. Let’s say I have a deal with a company to promote their brand and in doing so I enjoy special pricing and other perks. Then I proceed to proclaim to the world that I don’t like what that company is doing, and that I will be spending my time and money working against that company’s efforts for its customers. That company would be perfectly justified in nullifying our deal. Is that not what just happened with Florida and Disney? Free speech is not without consequences for that speech. Even for free speech absolutists.
Now I realize that we are talking about government and powerful authoritarian governments are a great evil in this world. I am, myself, becoming more and more anarchistic in my thought processes regarding government. I think I would be perfectly fine waking up tomorrow and finding out that the federal government had completely shut itself down. I think we all would be perfectly fine. So why am I okay with what appears to be such blatant government overreach? Well, while it is, indeed, true that governments are a source of many problems, so are giant multinational conglomerates like Disney. It turns out when you really look at the whole picture, we are watching a fight between giant monstrosities. Except, the monster that usually ends up destroying everything (government), is actually defending our children from another giant monster (Disney) that is on the side of grooming children for all manner of sexual perversion. This is Godzilla vs. Mothra and here we are, the bystanders saying, “Godzilla shouldn’t be attacking Mothra like that. These are the kinds of attacks we don’t want Godzilla to use on us.” No, we don’t want Godzilla to attack us, BUT MOTHRA IS ATTACKING US RIGHT NOW!!! While it still exists, let’s let Godzilla do some work for us for a change.
-The Philosopher King