[Note: This post has been superceded by this one. If this is your first visit here, I’d suggest reading the final version. Then if you’re interested, come back to this one, and read all the comments.]

I often disagree with Bill O’Reilly, and a lot of smart people are bashing him on line, particularly in the blogosphere, but I think that this just proves his point, and I want to defend him. I think that he’s spot on with this erudite and well-reasoned editorial. This “Internet” thingie is just too powerful.

When the Founders wrote the First Amendment, they could never have conceived a technology that would allow anyone to publish anything at any time, at almost no cost, and have it readable by millions instantaneously.

It’s one thing to have free speech when the most effective means of communicating ideas is with a printing press that few can afford, and has to have the type set by hand, and they have to be printed on expensive paper, and transported no faster than a horse can run, and distributed by walking door to door. Such a laborious and expensive process ensures that potentially dangerous ideas are more thought out, and well edited, and can usually be easily traced to their author. Such a high required investment makes it much more likely that only responsible people will be publishing things, and that you won’t have wackos running around spewing crazy or confused, even false or misinformed notions at innocent and naive passers by.

In that environment, it made perfect sense to grant an individual right to print things (to bear presses, as it were), because there was little danger of it getting out of hand.

But surely the Founders never intended for every single citizen to be able to exercise such a right–they would have known it would lead to chaos and unfettered thought. They couldn’t possibly have imagined the rapid-fire distribution of dangerous ideas made possible by twenty-first-century technology. Why, some people might have even put forth the absurd notion that free speech is the right of everyone.

Had they actually anticipated the possibility that the cost of publishing could drop so dramatically, they would surely have made the First Amendment a much more explicitly collective right (like the Second), in which people would only have a right to free speech in a well-regulated state newspaper.

Let’s be reasonable–of course it’s fine to let people have typewriters, and copiers, as long as they don’t have a paper magazine of more than a quarter-ream capacity, and can’t print more than two pages per minute in high-density color. There are legitimate uses for such things–printing up book reports for school, making PTA meeting notices and party invitations, and the like. We respect the rights of those who wish to indulge in such innocuous, if pointless activities, long a part of the American cultural tradition (though it would certainly make sense to register such devices, in case they’re stolen, or lest they’re used to express some untoward or scandalous thought).

Of course, we do need to outlaw the cheap Sunday-night specials, old manual machines still available in pawn shops, with sticky keys, that cause ink stains, and from which a large number of late term papers are produced by the criminal procrastinating class during the witching hours. But really, folks, chill–no one wants to take away your typewriters.

But the Founders would realize also, just as Bill O’Reilly and I do today, that no one, other than the police and politicians, needs the kind of “idea assault” publishing capability offered by word processors, blogging software, and even fifteen-page-per-minute ink-jet printers, which really have no legitimate use–they only propagate calumny and wrong-headed notions, tragically damaging innocent celebrities’ egos, sometimes permanently.

Surely the far-fringe First Amendment absolutists are misreading it–there is a hint of a shadow of an umbra of a penumbra in there, easily accessed by referencing the Second Amendment. Bearing this in mind, it is more properly read with the following implicit preface: “A well-regulated press being necessary for the security of the State and self-important talk-show hosts, Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”

Clearly, viewed in the light of that implicit purpose clause, these were not intended to be individual rights, any more than they were in the Second Amendment, because obviously, the Founders wouldn’t have meant one thing by the words “the right of the people” in the one case, and a different thing in the other, particularly in two adjacent amendments.

Accordingly it is equally clear that we need to implement what would obviously have been the Founders’ intent had they foreseen the Internet, and immediately pass some laws to get this thing under control. Let’s do it for the children.

Particularly Bill O’Reilly.

[Update at 4 PM PDT]

Richard Heddleson points out in the comment section another little-known fact of the technology of colonial times:

The fallacy of our understanding of the meaning of the first amendment in early times is exposed in the book, Printing America, whose author will be on O’Reilly next week. Incredibly detailed research into probate inventories shows that not only did most Americans not have a printing press but that those who did had let them fall into such disrepair that they could not be used. That is why the Continental Congress had to create Committees of Correspondence. Congress understood that this dangerous activity had to be conducted under the guidance and control of the state.

Exactly, though I suspect that the print nuts will attack this brave author’s work as a fabrication.

[Another update, at 4:54 PM PDT]

Kim du Toit asks if I have a license for my “assault keyboard.” No, I didn’t need one, because I employed the “computer show loophole.”

I bought it from a no-name vendor in Pomona last weekend, with no background check. It only cost me $7.50 and it’s fully automatic–you can hold down any key, and it will spit out hundreds of characters per minute, and it doesn’t even need a belt. We simply have to shut down this madness.

[Update on Wednesday at 5 PM PDT]

I’ve written a new version, based on further thought and some of the comments here–thanks for all the input. It can be found here.