The new 2nd amendment

In the wake of some very high profile Internet revolts in 2011 and earlier this year, one can't help but wonder what other changes are in the wind.

This reminded me of something interesting: The 2nd amendment. Far from its current incarnation as a rallying cry for the patriotic conservative and card-carrying NRA member, the 2nd amendment was originally devised as a method of deterring an undemocratic government. I've argued for a while now that the original intention of the 2nd amendment is now pointless with regards to its original intention -- there's no way a private citizen (or citizens) could possible compete with tanks and nukes.

Yet the effective trouncing of SOPA and PIPA in recent months has brought to light a new type of defense against an undemocratic government: The Internet. I'll even take that one step further, and say that it's not JUST the Internet, but in particular Facebook.

At the time of this writing, Facebook sports over 800 million users, 50% of which log on every single day. That's more than the entire population of the United States. That's a lot of reach, and provides a very effective medium for ideas to go "viral". Ideas such as "stop sopa", which gained support from websites such as Google and Wikipedia.

The effectiveness of this campaign can destroy a bill's support base and increase it's opposition in a single day begs a new question: Are we in a new era of government?

Now that the people have a powerful voice to speak with, what will new legislation look like?