Inventions will be invented. The Internet and social media have positive uses. They are like fire and the wheel and explosives. There is no point in agonizing over their creation.

Social media's deep significance is targeting. Social media brings the rabble to the rouser instead of the other way around. That simple fact makes all the difference in the world. If there are only fifty people in the country who share your bizarre ideas, you can find those people on social media, because they will find you. That's why de-platforming is so important action.

I like to think I'm a First Amendment absolutist, but I wonder if the founders would have been so solicitous of political speech if they knew how easily it could be weaponized among widely dispersed hotheads. Freedom of assembly is tolerable because it is difficult to assemble a real mob in private. But it is a cinch to do it online. The Constitution cannot be a tool of asymmetric war against itself. And yet, the slope away from absolute protection is slippery.

We may need to adopt something like the British view of free speech - politically respected, but not immune from legislative control. Perhaps we need to look past "speech" to "conspiracy to commit sedition" or a RICO violation in which an informal group of chatters is regarded as an "organization" established to commit crimes against the state. There must be a way to nip events like those on January 6 in the bud and punish the plotters for the plotting before they strike.