From the start a great piece.
“In 2015 Google’s parent company Alphabet retired the old motto, now substituting for it “Do the right thing.” The old motto was better. Negation has advantages that positive assertions lack. Our First Amendment, for instance, doesn’t extol doing right by allowing free speech. Rather, it simply forbids the federal government from making any law abridging free speech. Once the federal government gets into the business of allowing free speech, it can define what’s allowable free speech. And you need only look at our northern neighbor or our friends across the Atlantic to see how that’s working out.
In the same vein as our First Amendment, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian remarked, “Write not so that you can be understood, but so that you cannot be misunderstood.” There’s a power and clarity in no that’s absent from yes. It’s no accident that Judaism’s Ten Commandments and the Buddha’s five basic moral precepts are formulated as negations. The ability to say no is the mark of freedom. “Resist the devil [i.e., say no to the devil] and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) The mark of tyranny, by contrast, is to tell you what to think and do, and not take no for an answer. Or, as memorably captured by Don Corleone in the Godfather, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.””
https://billdembski.substack.com/p/the-evilization-of-googleand-what