Just a quick pointer for those of you who saw the title and opened the post thinking it was one of Ed's weekend theology treatises: it's just me, Mitch, and it's not.
Work with me, here.
Forgiveness is in the news.
Let me say that I did not have "writing 'forgiveness is news'" on my bingo card. Ever.
But here we are. Erika Kirk made news - huge news, for people of faith - by forgiving Tyler Robinson, her husband's alleged murderer.
Erika Kirk forgives husband Charlie Kirk's alleged shooter, "I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do." pic.twitter.com/AR14tzcN4s
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 21, 2025
And that example is having some knock-on effects:
When Erika Kirk spoke the words on the man who killed her husband: “That man… that young man… I forgive him.” That moment deeply affected me. I have struggled for over 60 years to forgive the man who killed my Dad. I will say those words now as I type: “ I forgive the man who…
— Tim Allen (@ofctimallen) September 25, 2025
Forgiveness is something the aggrieved, the victim of the transgression - say, the widow of a murdered man - offers, freely and of their own will.
But while forgiving a transgression may be good for the soul and psyche of the victim, it does nothing for that of the offender, if there's not some sort of atonement, ideally leading to some change of behavior. A shopkeeper can forgive a shoplifter all he wants - but if the shoplifter keeps on stealing from the store, not only is the shopkeeper just as screwed, the forgiveness does the shoplifter no good.
So we've had a few major institutions admit some kind of fault or another for using their power, at the behest of the government, to. oppress conservative institutions, groups, and individuals.
During the pandemic, David Strom and I ran a Facebook page dedicated to trying to convince Governor Walz to re-open Minnesota; the Governor kept. emergency power for almost a year and a half for an emergency that lasted, let's be charitable, three months. It was a reasonable, not\ inflammatory page, lighter on conspiracy theories and heavier on evidence...
...and that wasn't enough to save it, first from having its traffic throttled, and then from just, poof, disappearing one night,
Now, Meta was one of the first Big Tech companies to come clean about having worked hand-in-glove with the Biden administration. That was something. And in December 2024, Meta's president of global affairs, former British deputy prime minister NIck Clegg, did express regrets over censoring free speech. It didn't bring back the destroyed content, much less re-litigate the election shaped by the censorship, but it was the right idea, more or less.
But there are more opportunities.
Last week, Google admitted they actively censored conservatives, demonetizing conservative content producers and terminating over 8,000 accounts on YouTube, and driving down search results for conservative groups, in some cases sandbagging the algorithm to cut search appearances by 90-99%.
They are admitting there's a problem:
Company officials acknowledged they had gone too far in banning content related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election results
Their censorship came mostly in response to senior Biden administration officials who repeatedly pressured them to take down content even though the material did not violate the company’s policies.
Company officials said Biden administration aides and President Biden “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”
But there's no real assurance it won't happen when the administration changes again:
Google was accused of demonetizing conservative media publisher The Federalist in 2020, along with the conservative website ZeroHedge, among others.
“Google owes us all damages for what their censorship cost us,” Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said Tuesday. “A quick ‘we’re sorry’ now that they’re in trouble isn’t going to cut it. Their censorship cost us millions.”
Not to mention, it is likely, the 2020 election.
The banking industry is also being held to account: they've been "debanking" conservative groups for years, especially gun industry and Second Amendment groups: while the banking industry has announced they're discontinuing the policy of political debanking, there's been no real penitence:
Six pro-Second Amendment groups, including the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action and Gun Owners of America, sent a letter confronting the heads of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the Bank Policy Institute with their debanking records.
The letter referred to these policies as "un-American" and challenged the three companies to issue a new pledge against the debanking of entities that engage in activities protected by the Second Amendment.
The admission is nice, don't get me wrong.
But where is the assurance they won't slide into their old, censorious ways when progressives take the White House again?
