A response to a dumb thing Donald Trump said about the Internet

[Commentary]On Dec 7, Donald Trump said, “We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet, and we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. And we have to talk to them. Maybe in certain areas closing that Internet up in some way [audience member cheers]… Somebody will say, ‘oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a LOT of foolish people.”

Sigh. Let’s ignore, for a moment, how Trump gleefully mocked one of our fundamental constitutional rights. Let’s ignore how he likened the people who support that right to a swarm of idiots. I’d rather talk about the Internet -- specifically, the idea that you can shut parts of it down at will. You probably can’t, at least not here. Even if we did somehow succeed in selectively taking a major metropolitan area offline, we would not be left safer or better insulated from terrorist threats. Far from it. Doing so would undermine commerce, put our critical infrastructure at risk, and violate fundamental freedoms of speech and expression that are (which I hope Trump will someday come around to realize) the best tools we have to fight cultists and totalitarians. In short, this is a foolish idea, borne of foolish minds, and replicated time and time again by foolish authoritarian regimes around the world. Let’s not be one of them.