We less government types have all along the way opposed the ridiculous policy known as Network Neutrality. For a whole host of rational, reasonable free market and free speech reasons.
More government is always bad for all things free market and free speech. And Net Neutrality is a dramatic increase in government’s involvement in the Internet.
We have all along the way warned that what the Left says Net Neutrality is isn’t what Net Neutrality will actually turn out to be. No government policy or program ever is.
Anything the government ever does, does nothing it is supposed to do, and everything it is not.
To wit: Obamacare was officially entitled “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” But from the very moment of implementation, Obamacare has targeted for destruction patients and rendered health care exponentially less affordable.
What Obamacare did do was dramatically increase the government’s control over all things health care, which is what the Left actually wanted.
And it set the table for total government control down the road, which the Left wants even more. See single-payer, government-only medicine. Say, trillions-of-dollars-short “Medicare for All.”
Don’t believe us less government types? Ask Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare’s author. He’ll tell you. Government-only medicine is the ultimate objective of Obamacare.
Net Neutrality is no different from a Left’s-desired-outcome perspective.
Yet again, government promises us "A," "B" and "C" then ends up swallowing the entire alphabet.
Net Neutrality a decade ago was four innocuous things. Two years ago, the Barack Obama Administration used the Net Neutrality fig leaf to unilaterally power grab dramatic new controls over all things Internet.
This grab was the Web equivalent of the Obamacare grab. It's setting the stage for the ultimate grab - single-payer, government-only broadband.
How do we know this? One of the long-time, lead proponents of this ridiculousness is college professor and avowed Marxist (please pardon the redundancy), Robert McChesney. Who more than a decade ago told us:
“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
As we are so fond of saying, how very Venezuela of them (and they LOVE Venezuela).
Another of these uber-government-Internet authoritarians-cum-totalitarians is Gigi Sohn, who was a lead adviser and counselor to the Chairman of Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - the bureaucracy that executed the Obama Internet power grab.
Thankfully, the Donald Trump FCC is in the process of undoing said massive power grab. Needless to say, Sohn is more than a mite upset about this. In expression of her disdain, she recently penned this:
“In just a few months, I went from helping to shape, adopt, and expand some of the most progressive communications policies in history to having to defend them.”
So Sohn has now joined Prof. McChesney as a Jonathan Gruber of Net Neutrality. Proudly proclaiming their massive expansion of government power.
As we said, this grab wasn’t last decade’s four innocuous items. This was, in her words, “some of the most progressive communications policy in history.” Government promises us a little bit of "A" and instead delivers us a heaping helping of "Not A."
This Net Neutrality grab is the Web’s Obamacare - on the way to single-payer, government-only Internet. Joe Biden might very well have called it "a big f***ing deal."
Where does this government-only Internet end up? In places like Peking - oops, I mean Beijing.
From "China's Internet Crackdown Isn't Going Away":
"China is in the throes of the biggest crackdown on freedom of expression and media in the internet era. Foreign companies complain of restrictions that hamstring operations and favor homegrown players. Police are shutting businesses and arresting civilians on message groups as Beijing plugs more holes in its ‘Great Firewall’ blockade of blacklisted sites."
Also see, "A Stronger Xi Means No Letup in China's Internet Restrictions" and "China Is Creating a Database of Its Citizens' Voices to Boost its Surveillance Capability."
How very pleasant. And open. And fair. And… equal.
Because Net Neutrality is socialism for the Internet, it guarantees everyone equal amounts of nothing.
Our domestic Marxists aren’t shamed either (and, unfortunately, haven’t been in a VERY long time).
They happily champion their version of China’s sham “democracy.”
Oh, and we aren’t a democracy. We’re a republic.
The Left shoves upon us their uber-government, totalitarian “democracy” nonsense. On the Internet and everywhere else.