Best of Right Opinion

• Mona Charen: What Is the Real Message of #MeToo?
• Victor Davis Hanson: The Trillion-Dollar Chameleon
• Ed Feulner: The Cosmetology Cops
• Hans von Spakovsky: Judge Upholds Alabama Voter ID Law in Win for Common Sense
• Marvin J. Folkertsma: Abraham Lincoln on the Suicide of America

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

Opinion in Brief

Victor Davis Hanson: “Today, five companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) — have a collective worth of more than $3 trillion. Yet such transnational companies remain mostly exempt from the sort of regulations and accountability faced by most other industries. Major corporations understandably fear product liability laws. Oil companies are hectored by class-action lawsuits and headline-grabbing attorneys badgering them to pay up for supposed climate change brought on by commuters filling up each week. Tobacco companies have paid out billions of dollars due to cigarettes’ contribution to lung cancer. Pharmaceutical corporations are often forced to pay millions in fines when their prescription drugs cause dangerous side effects. Yet every year, nearly a half-million Americans are injured in traffic accidents due to distracted driving involving a cellphone. No one knows how many millions of people worldwide are addicted to the apps on their smartphones — a habit that can be harder to break than an opiate addiction and can leave addicted users in a similar zombie-like condition. Yet unlike Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Tobacco, Big Tech is rarely held responsible for the deleterious effects of its products on millions the world over. … High tech has become a brilliant chameleon — invisible in plain sight.”