De Santis understands that free market capitalism isn't a suicide pact.

Nearly every day now the Washington Post runs a “news” story attacking Ron DeSantis. Some days it runs more than one.

Good. It means that, like me, the Post views DeSantis as a very serious contender for the presidency.

The Post’s attacks on DeSantis range from the strained to the laughable. I’ll leave it to our readers to decide where in this continuum the latest example falls.

The Post’s thesis is that DeSantis has stopped being a classic conservative concerned with the threat to freedom posed by government regulation, and is now “leading the charge for a more coercive conservative government” (to use the Post’s overwrought words) . DeSantis, says the headline of the Post’s report (paper edition), is “increasingly embracing the regulation of private business.”

Is this true? It depends on the kind of private business we’re talking about.

If we’re talking about businesses in general, I see only limited evidence (nearly all of it involving the Walt Disney Co.) that DeSantis favors regulation. If we’re talking about the internet, then yes, DeSantis now favors government regulation.

The distinction is important. There’s a big difference between regulating light bulbs, toilets, or pollutants and regulating internet companies that suppress speech.

In the first instance, government regulation is an intrusion on freedom, although the intrusion and the burden it carries may be justified by a cost-benefit analysis. In the second instance, government regulation is still an intrusion on the freedom of tech companies, but it promotes free speech — a foundational American value.

Surely, the Post understands this distinction. After all, its motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” Granted, the Post probably doesn’t have in mind the “darkness” that descends when conservatives with whom the paper disagrees are censored. But at some general level it must recognize that regulating toilet flushes has no implications for democracy, whereas limiting Big Tech’s ability to stifle political speech promotes a healthy democracy.

Free market capitalism shouldn’t be a suicide pact. When tech companies threaten the free speech on which American democracy depends, it could be suicidal for the government not to intervene.

It’s true that back in 2017, DeSantis spoke against government regulation of the internet. But in pointing this out as if it were a “gotcha,” the Post ignores the fact that since that time Big Tech’s infringement on free speech has increased exponentially. Since DeSantis spoke in 2017, we have experienced (and learned about) Big Tech’s censorship of pro-Trump content. We have also experienced Big Tech’s shameless censorship of plausible content about covid and the pandemic — some of which turned out to be more than plausible.

DeSantis’ instinct to oppose internet regulation was a reasonable one. So is his decision that, given what we now know about Big Tech, such regulation is called for.

The Post tries to tie this decision by DeSantis to the controversy within the conservative movement between classic free market, limited government types and “common good conservatives” who, to one degree or another, want the government to impose conservative social values. The controversy is real and important. It will probably become increasingly divisive and DeSantis will likely be caught up in it.

But the controversy isn’t implicated in the governor’s views about regulating internet providers. Free speech isn’t a conservative social value; it’s a politically and socially neutral one. And it’s the sine qua non of American democracy.