Glenn Reynolds and Radley Balko took issue this week with the Senate’s recent passage of a measure designed to curtail Internet gambling by American citizens. Reynolds and Balko object to the bill (well, technically, a rider on another bill) from a purely libertarian point of view, namely: if people want to be stupid with their own money, it should be within their power to do so. To wit:
I enjoy playing poker with real people, but I’ve never really had the gambling jones. Still, if people want to waste their money on this stuff, it’s nobody’s business but their own.
Their comments were initially spurred by an Andrew Stuttaford post over at The Corner in which he posited that this bill makes Republicans look dirty and drives away libertarian-minded voters. (Jonah Goldberg and Matt Yglesias comment on the “impact” such libertarians are likely to have on the election here. Answer: not much.)
Now, this line of thinking makes perfect sense, as long as one is a member of the Internet-savvy elite that actually pays a goodly amount of attention to politics, but what it fails to take into account is this: the Internets, in all their tubular (not dump truck-y) glory, are the current favorite bogeyman for American news organizations, lawyers and politicians, having supplanted previous favorites like Dungeons and Dragons, rap music, heavy metal music, comic books, etc. Even Jack Thompson is having trouble getting anyone to listen to his insane anti-videogame rants these days (see his latest go-round with Rockstar vis-a-vis Bully for more info), so pervasive is the idea that the Internet is a bustling hive of barely-constrained evil sexual predators, school shooter-uppers, scammers, phishers and identity thieves. Internet gambling is lumped in with this collection of scum and villainy in the average media consumer’s mind. Heck, it even drove a Lehigh class president to rob a bank, dontchaknow? Myspace is the new plotting grounds for all nefarious deeds, if CNN Headline News is any indicator. The Internet will continue in its role as News Media Stand-In For All Things Scary until someone invents the Next Big Thing.
Thus, I contend that Balko, Stuttaford and Reynolds are wrong if they think that Congress tacking internet gambling strictures on to the end of a ports security bill will have any measurable effect upon the electorate come November 7th. They’ve got more important things to worry about, after all: salacious Congressional IMs, gas prices and Sara Evans dropping out of Dancing With The Stars
