The net as bastion of Liberties?

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081207/D94U21DG0.html

'"Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded - ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," he said.'

Name me one fascist criminal plot derailed by the internet so far? What a bizarre and counter-intuitive theory. Apart from the normal political discourse, the net has become the prime way for nutjob conspiracy theorists to connect with each other from their feotid bedrooms and reinforce each others delusions. It is full of conmen, hard-sell ad merchants, scammers, hackers and pervs.

Despite a deluge of information from reputable sources on the net about Barack Obama that at the very least he is a shapeshifter with no moral foundations and no fixed cultural roots, the electorate swooned at his feet and voted for him. A number of issues about him would have ruled him out of contention in any previous election, and I don't mean his dark tan (he's hardly black). Not only that, but the extreme left in America have spent the last eight years using the internet to spread extreme vitriol and lies about President George Bush.

I hardly see the net as a stalwart against the spread of criminals conspiracies- indeed, if anything it provides the same volume to extremists and criminals as it does to the honest and intellectually able. Probably more for the former, actually. Ideas are like viruses, and its not only the ones we approve of and want to foster that get spread around, sadly.