Laws need to be extended to web

The real threat to our democracy these days is occurring on the Internet in our own country.

There is plenty of cause to be concerned that foreigners, including communists and socialists (and Russians) continue to utilize Google, Facebook and Twitter social media platforms on the Internet to try and influence American elections and destroy American democracy.

And to be fair, workers employed by the U.S. government have probably been using the Internet in the same way to try and influence elections in communist and socialist countries for many years, too. 

But if you thought foreigners and Russians were good at meddling in American politics, you may be surprised that Google, Facebook and Twitter Internet employees reportedly have been very busy also trying to manipulate how Americans think and feel about politicans.

A group of self-proclaimed conservatives working for Google recently released company videos that showed their rabidly-liberal management executives expressing extreme remorse - some crying - that Donald Trump had been elected president, that Hillary Clinton had not, and that they had not done enough to stop Trump during the last presidential election.

Google executives, like co-founder Sergey Brin, have admitted to slowing, and in some cases, deleting, the Internet posts of some influential conservatives and Trump supporters in their effort to get Clinton elected.

Similar politically-motivated actions have been reported by Facebook and Twitter employees.

These revelations about powerful Internet-based executives – such as those at Google - working feverishly and deliberately to force-feed American Internet users their own personal, extreme political ideologies should worry all Americans.

The first thing that our government must do is take away the monopoly tag from mega-corporations on the Internet and ensure that they all have real competition.

Let liberal Internet consumers choose Google, Facebook and Twitter, if they want. Let conservatives choose their own social media sites, too. But let everyone know the laws protecting free speech in this country apply to all and that illegal efforts to brain-wash Americans to hold the same political views, for example, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The second thing our government should do is to finally extend the same libel and slander laws that  have always applied to the print, radio and TV media all these years to the Internet.

It’s not the point that liberals are manipulating the Internet to serve their own political agenda. The point is that no business and no people are above the law. Today, it is fanatic liberals. Tomorrow, it could be fanatic conservatives.

We don’t need new laws to rein in Google, Facebook and Twitter and others. We just need to extend the current business laws on the books to Internet businesses.