Google Can, You Can't, Joe!

Google runs a private blogging platform, blogger.com. In fact, it hosts Rage Against the Kakistocracy. Now, Joe Lieberman is exhorting Google to ban terrorist content on blogger.com. While I am no friend of Muslim extremism and terrorism, I am also no friend of government oppression, or the infringement of our First Amendment rights. As long as Google decides to ban terrorist content on their own property, that's fine. As an officer of the government, I don't think it's appropriate for senators to suggest it.

Now, Joe has freedom of speech also, and I'm not suggesting that he shut up. But instead of making veiled threats to Google's executives, telling them how to run their private enterprise, perhaps Joe would be more effective if he were to expose the terrorist blogs to the American public, and let us draw our own conclusions. We can shun those sites. We can flag the content or the site as offensive. We can boycott Google. As free Americans, we have all sorts of options. We don't need illiberal control freaks oppressing our civil liberties. That means you, Joe.

The risk is that once government has the power to control terrorist content, what's to stop it from designating Rage Against the Kakistocracy as dangerous to the regime? In fact, it is dangerous to kakistocrats. I intend it to be. And that is the exact reason The First Amendment exists in the first place.