Senator Joe Lieberman and his like-minded friends in government seem to think that censoring swathes of the Internet will somehow make all of the “bad guys” go away. The real problem? They actually expect the public to believe them.
A few days ago, TG Daily discussed Lieberman’s letter to Google CEO Larry Page which suggests that the search giant needs to do more to censor terrorist content on its blog platform. Unsurprisingly, Lieberman apparently believes that people may engage in unlawful activity simply because they are free to read about terrorist rhetoric on Google’s blogs.
So according to Lieberman’s logic, we could get rid of all of the bad things people do by simply enacting a strict government censorship policy.
Don’t like commies? All we have to do is use Lieberman logic and censor the results of every popular search engine so that the philosophy of communism never comes up. And then we can just sit back and watch while all of commies die off.
Because if people don’t know that different ideas exist, they won’t ever challenge the status quo. Right?
I don’t believe for a second that censoring everything that government says is bad will lead to a better world. Does anyone honestly think that by disallowing people to read the ramblings of suspected terrorists that it will become easier to eliminate the terrorists in the world?
Lieberman’s logic is too simple for it to actually work in the real world and the fact that he’s an educated man who is pushing his simplified perspective on the public raises many concerns for me. I don’t think that Lieberman even believes that banning terrorist content will eliminate terrorism.
I think he just wants to expand the government’s ability to control the most used medium for communication in the world.
Besides, what is a terrorist anyways? Just yesterday the Senate voted to allow a provision in a bill that would let the military detain anyone that they think is a terrorist indefinitely. They won’t even have to have proof or give you a trial, if you do something that makes you seem like a terrorist, you will be treated like one.
This means say goodbye to due process and the trial you were once guaranteed.
It looks more and more like the government wants to be able to classify regular people as terrorists. And if you happen to be a curious person who wants to read the blog of a whack job terrorist, then you’ll probably be viewed as a terrorist sympathizer.
Because what patriotic American would ever want to read anything the bad guys have to say? Curiosity killed the cat as they say, so Lieberman wants to make sure you don’t have the opportunity to let your curiosity get the best of you.
Censoring the Internet will not make the bad guys go away. It will take away the freedoms of regular Americans and our enemies (if they even exist anymore) will laugh at us.
