The Atlantic

01/23/2025

Today, the three richest men in America are Bezos, Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. These new robber barons have proclaimed their commitment to free speech. When Trump, in his second term, makes good on his promises to seek revenge against the American citizens who work as journalists, we will see whether they choose to back up that commit­ment. Like the robber barons who preceded them, Musk and Zuckerberg seem less interested in the public good than in their own personal enrichment. Musk, in particular, has built a platform designed to advance his political goals and discredit his opponents. But Bezos, too, has gone so far as to write a column in his own newspaper blaming its journalists for public distrust in them. Somehow, he managed to leave out any mention of Trump’s years-long campaign to cast them as “enemies of the people.”

Plenty of Americans can still see all of this quite clearly—
those who believe in truth, and who know that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are God-given rights, not granted to us by the government, or Elon Musk, or anyone else, but rights that we are born with, and that many of our fellow Americans have died for.

Sycophancy, as we see, has momentum, but so too does courage. Ida Tarbell, in her investigation of Standard Oil, documented a pattern of bribery, fraud, and monopolistic business practices. She described a culture in which “business is war” and “morals have nothing to do with its practice.” But she also implored her fellow citizens: “What are we going to do about it? For it is our business. We, the people of the United States, and nobody else, must cure whatever is wrong in the industrial situation.” There is much talk of the institutions that protect democracy, and how crucial they are to the American project. But those institutions work only because of the individuals who make them work. For every powerful person who capitulates, there are among us many more who see the world as Tarbell did, and as Telnaes does, and are willing to act on their principles.