On: France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s

The news from France today is a lesson in the architecture of liberty, built not in sweeping declarations but in the careful, necessary resistance to a single, well-intentioned brick. They wished to build a wall, to declare all those under fifteen unfit for the public square of social media. The court, in its wisdom, struck the mortar from the joints.

The argument for the ban has a familiar, paternal cadence: we must protect the young. Who could dispute the premise? The dangers are real, the vulnerabilities acute. But you say you must protect them. Protection implies guardianship. Guardianship implies a temporary stewardship, exercised until the capacity for self-governance is proven. Yet this law did not propose stewardship; it proposed exile. It did not say, “We will equip you to navigate this square.” It said, “You may not enter the square at all.” To deny the entry is to deny the possibility of the capacity. It is to say the protected class can never graduate from its protection, that the gate is locked not for a season, but by the immutable fact of their years.

This is the old poison in a new vial. The claim of benevolent exclusion, built on a category - age - rather than on the assessment of an individual mind. It is the argument of the plantation, of the factory floor, of every closed room where power says, “I know what is best for you, and you are not fit to know for yourself.” The court saw the flaw in the foundation. Freedom of expression is not an adult privilege, earned at a certain birthday; it is a human practice, learned only in its exercise. You do not learn to speak by being silenced. You do not learn to judge character in a curated silence.

Macron vows to draft anew. Let him. But let any new draft be measured against this standard: does it prepare a child for liberty, or does it merely postpone it? The former is education. The latter is a softer form of bondage, and no less binding for its gentle intent.