The Public is Learning the Truth about Net Neutrality

And as with all Leftist things, the more they know the less they like

On August 11, more than 150 organizations (including 35 TEA Party groups), state legislators and bloggers signed onto a pair of letters urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to give up on their unilateral Internet power grab – the reclassification of the Web under the oppressive 1930s land line telephone regulatory regime, and the implementation of Network Neutrality.

(Full disclosure: As StopNetRegulation.org’s Editor in Chief, I signed on. As did the President and Vice President of Legal Affairs of the Center for Individual Freedom, the organization that publishes StopNetRegulation.org.)

We became part of a great and growing bipartisan chorus all singing the same song – that the FCC is dramatically overreaching in trying to assert this sweeping new authority. More than 284 members of the United States Congress – from both Parties – have also signed letters stating the same.

Seventeen minority groups did so as well. And the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court – led by a Democrat-appointee judge – ruled 3-0 that the FCC isn’t empowered to do what it’s trying to do.

The FCC only has the authority to do what Congress and the President have given it via legislation. And they have not sanctioned the FCC to regulate the Internet. The Right understands this. The Left does not – or chooses to willfully ignore it.

Word is spreading about the destructive power of FCC Internet reclassification Network Neutrality. And at the grassroots activist level – not just here amongst the D.C. Chattering Class. And that’s a very good thing.

Unless you’re on the Left. In which case this is devastating news. They are supposed to be the populists – all of this TEA Party opposition to their “public interest” agenda is tremendously damaging.

So the Left is doing what the Left does – demonizing their opposition. They are targeting the TEA Partiers in an attempt to discredit their opposition to this High-Tech takeover.

On Monday, the Liberal TalkingPointsMemo (TPM) gave us “Tea Partiers Say Net Neutrality Hurts Freedom.” In which they repeatedly assailed the TEA Partiers as too stupid to understand how much they need Network Neutrality.

“Like many, many grassroots tea party groups across the country, Fountain Hills (Arizona TEA Party) has a Ning social networking site, as well as a more traditional homepage, both key to communicating with members. Supporters of net neutrality often suggest that it’s smaller sites like these that would suffer the most under the tiered Internet plan ISPs are expected to establish if no government rules require them to treat all Internet traffic equally.

“Much like the Netroots movement, the tea party’s communication and information dissemination is fueled by online tools. In addition to Ning, tea partiers are avid tweeters, skypers, YouTubers and Facebookers. Yet their seeming embrace of an Internet divvied up and defined by corporate deals puts them at odds with their Internet-savvy colleagues on the left, who have clamored for net neutrality for years.”

These dolts just don’t know what’s good for them.

Of course it is TPM that fails to grasp just how well these TEA Partiers (and the Leftist Netroots) have done – in the absence of Network Neutrality.

And no matter how uninformed TPM and the Left think these TEA Partiers are, they can’t possibly be as clueless on the issues as are pro-Network Neutrality organizations like Operation Catnip – a spay and neuter clinic – and the Dr. Pepper Museum.

On Tuesday, Leftist Slate magazine gave us “This is liberty? Tea Party takes on net neutrality.” They were even less kind than was TPM.

“Say what you will about the Tea Party platform, at least it’s concise. Rick Barber, the self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate whose failed run at the GOP nomination in a House race in Alabama produced the strangest ad of this election cycle, put it best: “Whenever the government grows, individual liberty withers.” Or, to condense it yet further: “Liberty, good. Government, bad.”

This is the logic that compelled 35 Tea Party organizations to sign a letter condemning FCC efforts to institute net neutrality safeguards that would keep Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to some content and applications. Doing so, in the Tea Party’s view, would mean asserting the government’s power to regulate something that it previously considered outside its jurisdiction.”

Again, it appears to be the Leftists who are a bit slow on the uptake. The TEA Party Movement sprang into life in part to fend off the government as it asserted alleged powers to regulate things that had been previously outside its jurisdiction. Including the Internet.

Not exactly a hard concept to grasp. Except apparently for the likes of those at Slate.

And it is the Left that fails to grasp the utter inconsistency of demanding we maintain the Internet status quo – by fundamentally changing it with reclassification and Network Neutrality.

So exactly who is it that’s dim?