Public education, the Presbyterian scholar and pastor J. Gresham Machen once wrote, is one of the greatest achievements of the modern era. And yet, he warned, “when once it becomes monopolistic, it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised.”

Something similar could be said of Big Tech companies and online retailers such as Amazon. Truly, Amazon is a miracle of modern society: same-day delivery, instant streaming, and an endless selection of just about anything one could want. But when the world’s largest online retailer makes itself the arbiter of a new cultural orthodoxy, as it has done in recent days, it quickly becomes one of the most insidious instruments for, yes, tyranny.