Whether it is “little punk staffers,” or talk radio chatter, or the various Tea Party groups, suddenly a chorus of our elected representatives on Capitol Hill is calling such comments or speakers “dangerous” or “scary.” Really? Occasionally impolite perhaps, but more likely they just don’t like what’s being said, and then feel free to engage in their own overblown hype undergirded with hubris.
In other words, our elected officials continue to try to gain politically by bullying those who would speak freely as is their constitutional right.
This is just one of the many reasons why the schemes for government to gain control of the Internet (the overt goal of those who support so called network neutrality) are wrongheaded. Failing in their legal fight they now support the dramatic—either congressional action to hand the Federal Communications Commission control of broadband or to have the FCC reverse its own decade old precedent and suddenly decide it should heavily regulate the Internet.
And of course the desire does not stop there. As has been made clear, regulating the content of the Web, whether by support of state-operated “media” or in other ways, is the endgame.
But the real problem is “control” of any sort. Who can be certain that if broadband is subsidized, controlled by, or dependent on the government, that citizens have some guarantee of “neutrality”?
Remember that the First Amendment is not a grant of power to the government, but rather a restriction placed upon government requiring it to allow free speech. That’s because the Founders, and the courts and the people since then, knew that government could not be trusted to umpire speech.
Free-marketers and others who are leery of FCC dominion over broadband—like the dominion the FCC had over telephones—are not arguing for corporate control of the Internet. Rather, control is not needed—neither government control, nor corporate control. What is needed is a balance much as we expect elsewhere, with good law enforcement making sure that good companies do not go awry.