Why the battle to preserve "net neutrality" has nothing to do with fighting censorship

The sacred world wide web is positively aflame with screeds denouncing the imminent collapse of a "free internet."

Hey, don't get me wrong; I too am 100% aboard for a "free internet." I'd be 200% aboard if the Farm Manager wasn't paying the equivalent of three cases of beer to access this "free" service every month. That ain't "free" where I come from.

But what's interesting is how much of this outpouring of concern conflates "net neutrality" with censorship. Check out this article at Salon, or check out the previous post about Sarah Kendzior.

The purveyors of this misconception want you to believe that the fate of the First Amendment hinges on a FCC vote that will be held on December 14.

It doesn't.

Big Tech are already censoring what you see by tweaking their search algorithms in such a way that you are far less likely to have your patriotic eyeballs alight on offensive and subversive anti-American propaganda.

It's entirely possible to preserve the "net neutrality" at stake in the FCC decision while expunging every trace of critical anti-Empire opinion from that neutral net.

We are being bamboozled yet again.

Why banning the Confederate flag is stupid

So far, we've got a lot of "voluntary" bans; Walmart and Amazon and so forth putting a finger to the wind and responding accordingly.

That's kosher, I guess. They are market-driven companies responding to the demands of the market.

I think we have to respect their freedom to do what they do in terms of what they stock on their shelves.

What we should be all over them about is wages and working conditions.

But that's another discussion.

Sadly, it's not hard to see where politicians are going to start cashing in on the issue-du-jour and try to legislate the Confederate flag into oblivion.

That would be a massive mistake.

In the first place, that's a move that would run face-first into the first amendment.  Secondly, that would motivate a lot of your second amendment stalwarts to notice the first.

Bingo!

Every public square in America will be overtaken by flag-waving open-carry aficionados, and you know what flag they'll be waving!

Deport Piers Morgan?

Maybe it takes an outsider to put America's gun culture in the spotlight.

A petition to have Morgan deported back to his native England has by now more than 50,000 signatures. Those are folks who want to deport Piers because he has been using the old Larry King slot to lobby for tighter gun control legislation in America.

They see his lobbying as a threat to the Second Amendment.

Aren't they forgetting the First Amendment?

Frankly, while I don't necessarily agree with him across the board, he's one of the highest profile media personalities making an issue of what unfettered access to military hardware is doing to America. That's a debate that's long overdue.

It's easy enough to endlessly regurgitate the truism that it's not guns killing people, it's people.

Yet it's also beyond debate that people with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns.

One of the tragedies about this entire non-debate is how little serious discussion there is about the underlying factors that are behind so many of the headlines.

After all, there are plenty of societies around the world where guns are common but mass killings are virtually unheard of. Maybe it's time to look at a couple of the other contributing factors.

The rampant over-prescription of psycho-tropic drugs.

The almost complete absence of support systems for people with mental health issues.

If Joe Shmuck down the street has lost his job and his house and his family has deserted him and he's been gobbling down the anti-depressants, is it a good idea that he be able to buy, no questions asked, an arsenal of military grade hardware and thousands of rounds of ammo?

I think not.