Carly Fiorina, U.S. Senate candidate in California, stepped in a cow patty the size of Los Angeles with her recent calls for regulation of the internet. Referring to the “wild wild west” that is the World Wide Web, Fiorina claimed that for reasons of safety, the internet should and will be more regulated as time goes on. Her statement echoed recent moves in Washington along the same lines, and I'm left wondering when the heck Republicans like Fiorina are going to learn that if it walks like a Democrat and talks like a Democrat...well, you know.

It is well known that President Obama has appointed people to the Federal Communications Commission who support things like net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine. Give them more control over the internet, and what do you think will happen? A crackdown on freedom of speech, taxation for internet sales, and even blocking of certain kinds of sites and searches deemed politically incorrect or subversive – none of this is out of the realm of possibility. None of those things sound very American, either, but more like what we see happening in Iran or China. No need for revolution, kids, because Big Brother is taking care of you. Watching you and breathing down your neck, more like.

Carly Fiorina has advocated greater regulation of the internet in the name of “women and children.” There's that dreaded line – do it for the children! - that so frequently precedes high taxes and nanny-state protectionism. Fiorina claims that women and children are not protected on the internet. What, precisely, do they need protection from? One assumes that the people who choose to use the internet (or let their children use it) are aware of the dangers inherent in an environment that benefits from freedom of speech. Not unlike bookstores, grocery store aisles, or billboards and phone books. Carly Fiorina, though, apparently doesn't trust people to be smart enough to protect themselves, and would like government to step in and do it for them.

This is one more realm that government wishes to regulate for no more noble a reason than to profit from it. Making access harder or more complicated to obtain, limiting options and obstructing the free market, as net neutrality would do, should never be the goal of constitutional governance. Placing encumbrances on freedom of speech is clearly outlawed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If Ms. Fiorina truly wishes to step on this first and most fundamental of rights, what else might she be willing to do in order to “protect” citizens?

Thomas Jefferson once said that he would “rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” I couldn't agree more, and I wonder what Carly Fiorina would say to it. Her clear intent to force government regulation in places where it is neither needed nor wanted is so blatantly opposed to the principles of small and limited government that I question whether it would be wise to allow her into Washington in the current climate. She does not sound like an enemy of big government, but rather a willing partner.

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