Torvy
Super Member
I agree 100%, however it is a bit of a straw man argument. I believe @IndyJay was talking about cancel culture where individuals and groups take it upon themselves to squash dissent from their narrative. Sometimes (often?) the owners of various public fora are coerced into silencing some voices. Abusing the legal and commercial system to stop political dissent is hardly democratic. You may enjoy having opposing views squelched, I wouldn't know. But something about the concept of silencing opinions, especially political opinions, flies in the face of the purpose of the right to free speech. We used to say you can just choose not to listen (change the channel, as it were). Now we have a good number of people who are offended by the mere existence of other points of view.The first amendment says that the government cannot restrict your speech.... Private ownership and the ability for private owners to establish rules are an essential and long standing part of our democracy.
BTW, those of us who live in the US don't live in a democracy, we live in a federal constitutional republic.
To bring this back around to the actual topic, the short answer is that the tractor and other shortages have a few root causes. Many of them are political in nature as are the potential solutions.