Who Invented the Internet?

I know that I can't respond to every piece of right-wing bs that finds its way onto the Internet, but sometimes you have to draw a line. Case in point, this from the Wall Street Journal, where someone named Gordon Crovitz tries to claim that the government didn't have anything to do with the creation of the Internet, and that it was created by Xerox instead.

This piece is such an blatant example of corporatist flummery that it boggles the mind, but I see the point of it from a corporatist perspective: if you are always going to argue for a reduction of democracy in order to expand the powers of the corporations, then it would be convenient if no good things arose from the activities of democracy and all good things arose from the actions of corporations. Take the Internet for example; it would really help the corporatist cause if the Internet had been created by private corporations rather than by the government. And because there are wingnuts and hacks like Gordon Crovitz and the Wall Street Journal around, you can actually find someone to claim that private corporations created the Internet, rather than the US government.

I am sorely tempted to go into a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr. Crovitz's hackery, because internal inconsistencies alone are enough to put his thesis in grave doubt. But life is short, so let me just suggest that you read an actual, serious, history of the Internet. Which one, you ask? Any of them. Any of them at all.