So I couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit, a few weeks back when we had to report on the latest silly waste of public time brought to you by some of our county’s finest elected officials.

In case you missed it, county supervisors unanimously voted to lobby for some kind of ban on anonymous online comments.

I’ve kind of kept my mouth shut about this until now. I guess part of me thought, “These guys will realize how completely silly that idea is, how impossible it would be to enforce and how incredibly against the U.S. Constitution’s most important amendment it is.”

I was wrong.

They’re continuing to pursue the idea.

Perhaps the eve of our country’s annual celebration of our independence is as good a time as any to publicly suggest the notion is off base.

The problem, they say, is that the anonymous commenters online should have no right to express their opinions without clearly signing their names to their work.

Perhaps in principle, in the 1950s, idealistic world in which supervisors apparently live, such a move is possible and even an admirable feat to seek.

But thinking through just how crazy of a notion this is quickly bubbles up to anyone remotely familiar with technology and the modern world.

Most folks today realize that proving an absolute fact — particularly the subject of one person’s identity — is nearly impossible to determine beyond a doubt.

The fact is that we live in an information age and that information travels at light-speed. We don’t have to necessarily like that fact, but we’re wise to accept it.

Any sort of public ban on expressing one’s opinion — anonymously or publicly — would be next to impossible to enforce. That would mean that every personal website, blog, social media post would somehow have to be verified.

How would supervisors propose we even remotely begin to do that?

Beyond the complexities of doing that in this country, Internet communications are global. Aside from the occasional communist or dictator-led country that seeks to shut down or filter a free exchange of information and ideas, most countries of the world realize that open communication is the best policy.

This newspaper has taken a good bit of grief from a few citizens over our anonymous comments on news articles.

Of the comments, probably 95 percent of them or more are harmless. Unfortunately — as in life — a few troublemakers do tend to push the limits. Most often other, more law-abiding commenters will quickly report the misbehavior and the comments are removed.

So-called “negative” comments generally boil down to two camps of people: folks who don’t understand all sides of the issue and are simply asking more pointed questions and those with an axe to grind. The axe grinders are usually easily spotted and almost universally discounted.

The folks who have legitimate questions deserve a chance to ask them. If the supervisors — or anyone else in elected office — do not like the manner in which the question is asked, they need to get over it. The more loudly they fuss about this, the more the general public asks, “What’s the big deal? Do they have something to hide?”

As we prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July, let’s remember that we can shape our community.

The question is do we want to shut out the questions and opinions of some citizens just because of the manner in which they express themselves?

The actions of our founding fathers were clear when they wrote the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — citizens should have free speech — period. With no asterisks or footnotes regarding anonymity.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.