Once again, the political right and the political left are united by one common objective: the suppression of unorthodox speech that threatens their two-party duopoly.

Sneaking in quietly, on little bureaucrat feet, lawyers and other agents of the Incumbent-ocracy are enacting rules that will threaten the economic livelihoods, and possibly even the personal freedoms, of those who express heterodox opinions.

On the right, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants criminal penalties for “indecent” speech over the airwaves. Fines weren’t good enough. Sensenbrenner & Co. think the likes of Howard Stern should go to jail.

Some say that Stern is just a potty-mouth.

Well, the authorities in ancient Athens said that Socrates was corrupting their youth, so they killed him. In fact, amid all his scatological humor, Stern communicates a distinct political worldview: anti-government and pro-personal freedom.

Indeed, he has flirted in the past with running for office as a Libertarian candidate.

And the Libertarians, with their consistent message of personal freedom and limited government at home, combined with nonintervention abroad, have an attractive message to many Republican voters.

Strong Libertarian candidates could jeopardize Republican power. No wonder Sensenbrenner & Co. want to see Stern snuffed.

Sensenbrenner has plenty of allies on the left, too.

More than a few Democrats believe that it’s never a good idea to give people too long a leash, because government experts know what’s best.

In the words of John Berresford, a communications law professor at George Mason University Law School, “Many people sincerely think that the flow of ideas would be improved if they controlled it; others want to guarantee themselves a channel and to force people to listen; others just want to suppress ideas they consider wrong.

All these people try to use the government to carry out their agendas.” One such agenda item is the maintenance of the Republican-Democrat political duopoly.

As Republicans and rightists seek to stymie libertarians, Democrats and leftists seek to squash another outpost of personal freedom: The Internet. Bloggers, in particular, are an ornery and uppity bunch – who knows who or what they’ll topple next? So any incumbent politician would be well advised, career-wise, to beat them back down.

Fortunately for Incumbent-ocrats, there’s an anti-blogging law on the books. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as McCain-Feingold, established a regime that empowers the government to supervise all campaign spending, including “in kind” contributions, such as copying and circulating campaign materials. Which is to say, every American with a copying machine is potentially violating the law, because he or she might be seen as helping a candidate too much.

That’s the essence of McCain-Feingold: Free political speech should not be free, after all.

Flukishly, the Federal Election Commission, conceived out of the marriage of Big Brother and the Nanny State, went against its power-grabbing parents’ wishes and issued a strongly libertarian opinion, saying the Internet should be exempt from such regulation.

That stance didn’t last long. The campaign finance crusader-controllers, who will not rest until all campaigns are run by bureaucrats, sued the FEC, demanding the commission start regulating the Internet.

A judge, loyal to the power class, agreed with the crusader-controllers, and the FEC will start writing rules and hiring regulators to dragnet the Net.

FEC Commissioner Brad Smith, who fought the good fight for freedom, laments, “The basic paradigm has shifted, from the presumption of no regulation of the Internet to the presumption of regulation.”

While Smith’s commission is inclined to regulate lightly, it’s easy to imagine an FEC piling on new regulations in the future.

Some day, some regulator will pile on the piece of bureaucratic straw that breaks freedom’s back.

That regulator will win a big reward from the ruling class.