TD tried several times to post a jpeg photo of Jones but the server rejected it every time, even the photo that came with this Weekly Standard article. It finally accepted this political "cartoon".
Weekly Standard
"There's no reason for conservatives to be defending this guy.
"One of the downstream effects of Trumpism is that the fact of having a President Trump has given conservatives a hair-trigger on defending every marginal figure, no matter how stupid or malicious. It’s easy to understand why: Trump is close to these people in form and substance, so allowing them to be attacked can be seen as a proxy argument against Trump. No conservatives would have felt duty-bound to defend Milo Yiannopoulos had Mitt Romney been president.
"But we are where we are, so various conservatives have risen to defend Alex Jones in the wake of Facebook, YouTube, and Apple kicking him off of their platforms. Their defenses come across three vectors, each of which is flawed.
"(1) It’s a First Amendment issue. Let’s dispense with this one off the top: No, it’s not. And conservatives used to understand the difference between having the right to say something and having the right to say something without consequences.
"None of the tech companies that have de-platformed Jones are impinging on his right to speech. He can still record and disseminate podcasts and videos. He can still publish whatever conspiracy theories he wants. No one is threatening him with violence or jail or a fine or denying him a license to carry on as he pleases. No arm of government touches this case in any way.
"All that is happening is that privately owned companies are declining to allow him to use their resources to broadcast his speech. There is no First Amendment case—none at all.
"(2) It’s an equal-access issue. You might recall a couple months ago when conservatives celebrated the Masterpiece Cake Shop decision. (Rightly, in my view.) The nub of their argument was that privately held businesses ought to be allowed to refuse certain kinds of services to certain customers, provided that (1) the refusal was based on reasonable, non-discriminatory grounds and that (2) the person being refused had reasonable recourse to an alternative remedy.
"That’s precisely what has happened here. Jones is being denied access based on his behavior and actions, not who or what he is. And he has an enormous, obvious, and reasonable remedy: The Internet." . . .
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