When people say the Internet is a threatening place, they usually mean for children, whom it can expose to all manner of inappropriate things. They aren’t usually talking about adults and political materials they may come across online.
But some in Washington’s bureaucratic class seem to think the Internet is too dangerous and full of foreign influences for adults to judge for themselves. And that attitude is a greater threat than the Internet itself.
At a forum in New York City last week, Democratic FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel raised the specter of foreign influences entering American politics via the Internet. “I’m not trying to regulate the Internet,” she opened. She went on: “I have said we need to talk to people, to technologists, to people who are thinking about this subject, and who understand that issues of voting and issues of campaign finance are going to the Internet.”
Ravel was echoing the concerns of her colleague, Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, who warned last week that the Islamic State could set up a political action committee unless something is done. And of course, all protestations aside, doing something about foreign propaganda on the Internet implies new rules for the Internet.
Is such a thing necessary? No, it really isn’t. When it comes to true enemies, the Justice Department has robust powers to freeze or seize assets connected to proscribed persons and regimes. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have worked with social media companies to reduce the online footprint of terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State, which at any rate clearly prefers a strategy involving bullets, not ballots.
Even when it comes to ostensibly friendly foreign nations, Americans who agree to represent their interests in this country are covered by the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires transparency about their affiliation under penalty of five years’ imprisonment.
So the actual question is not about national security or foreign propaganda. Nor is the issue whatever precise new FEC rules Ravel or Weintraub might have in mind.
The issue is that this is a conversation we shouldn’t want to start at all.
It is fundamentally wrong that bureaucrats’ first reaction to anything they cannot control, such as the Internet, is to offer the helping fist of government to bring it into line. The freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are too valuable for government to chip away. Indeed that is the point of the first 12 amendments to the Constitution; they are protections against encroachment by government on every citizen’s liberties. The government cannot and should not seek to prevent every possible evil, and certainly not one as overblown as problems with campaign finance. If the Internet is making the FEC or even all campaign finance restrictions on outside voices unenforceable, perhaps that’s the way it has to be.
It is true that the Venezuelan government and even an Iranian militia have actively tried to affect American public opinion with propaganda campaigns in recent years. RT, controlled by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, has become a regular feature in many cable packages on American television. Middle Eastern countries with oil interests have been active in funding anti-fracking activism. The United Arab Emirates paid for a full-length anti-fracking Hollywood movie starring Matt Damon, in efforts to persuade American citizens to think and vote against their own interests and in favor of restricting domestic oil production.
But the only good way for a society that values freedom of expression to handle such speech from the outside is to respond to it with more speech, and with a free press capable of finding and reporting foreign influence. That way, the public of this mature democracy can judge matters for themselves without interference from a nanny state. For government to insert itself here would not only prove futile but would also open a can of worms.
Immediately after Sept. 11, left-wing politicians warned, with good reason, against curtailing citizens’ rights out of fear of foreigners. Today, something has clearly changed with the Left. They seem to have reached a tipping point at which the Constitution is seen not as making it easier to implement their agenda but as an impediment to doing so. The Bill of Rights, once seen as their most potent weapon, is now more often regarded as an obstruction.
Hence the current campaign to make Americans so afraid of foreign influences that they might consent to sacrifice their rights to gain security. They readily depict Donald Trump as a potential oppressor and yet suggest remedies that would themselves be oppressive.
What the FEC commissioners are hinting at is similar to what Senate Democrats proposed in 2014, when they all voted to weaken the First Amendment protection of free political speech so government could regulate campaign finance. There is also a parallel to what President Obama and Senate Democrats are trying to do with their bill to take away gun rights from people placed on secret lists by federal authorities without due process.
Ravel has previously commented that it is not her job to consider the constitutional implications of her work. That should be sufficient grounds for her removal. But the busy-bodying at the FEC should at least serve as a reminder that we need to guard against left-liberal encroachments on First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
