Mock, but verify.

The mockable Ben Velderman.

Blogger and Florida professor Sherman Dorn suggests that some folks have made too much of the Wisconsin GOP’s FOIA requests of University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon’s emails.

Dorn rejects the suggestion that this development is a form of McCarthyism.

If I get it right, Professor Dorn thinks we should make a distinction between McCarthyism, which he describes as a state-run affair, and the current situation, which he compares to the goofy anti-intellectualism of David Horowitz.

Ridicule is the appropriate response, says Dorn.

Not only do I agree with that suggestion. I practiced it. When the mini-outfit called the Education Action Group used Illinois FOIA law to get hold of my emails, mocking them was exactly how I responded.

But the fact that some of these right-wing groups are excessively mockable, or that sometimes they pick on the wrong guy, like Professor Cronon, doesn’t diminish the danger.

The distinctions between government and non-governmental investigations become somewhat blurred by the interlocking network of billionaire right-wing funders like the Koch brothers, ALEC and the Republican Party (which controls the state governments in Wisconsin and Michigan).

Just in the last few days, the threats by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has caused the administration of Wayne State to shut down the website of their labor studies program (their professors had been the target of MCPP’s FOIA requests).

McCarthyism wasn’t characterized just by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the Smith Act trials. The Blacklist, after all, wasn’t a government operation.

I’m for mocking. But some of this isn’t funny.