Freedom of speech is one of our most valuable rights, but it's under increasing assault today by politicians who, according to this article, don't like that the internet makes it possible for you to know too much about them.
Currently, Senator Joe Lieberman is pushing a bill that would essentially give the president the ability to shut down the internet in the event of a national emergency. Of course, what constitutes a national emergency may well be in the eye of the beholder:
As we have repeatedly warned for years, the federal government is desperate to seize control of the Internet because the establishment is petrified at the fact that alternative and independent media outlets are now eclipsing corporate media outlets in terms of audience share, trust, and influence.
We witnessed another example of this on Monday when establishment Congressman Bob Etheridge was publicly shamed after he was shown on video assaulting two college students who asked him a question. Two kids with a flip cam and a You Tube account could very well have changed the course of a state election, another startling reminder of the power of the Internet and independent media, and why the establishment is desperate to take that power away.
The government has been searching for any avenue possible through which to regulate free speech on the Internet and strangle alternative media outlets, with the FTC recently proposing a "Drudge Tax" that would force independent media organizations to pay fees that would be used to fund mainstream newspapers.
Similar legislation aimed at imposing Chinese-style censorship of the Internet and giving the state the power to shut down networks has already been passed globally, including in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
We have extensively covered efforts to scrap the internet as we know it and move toward a greatly restricted "internet 2″ system. Handing government the power to control the Internet would only be the first step towards this system, whereby individual ID's and government permission would be required simply to operate a website.
In the last five years politicians accustomed to working in relative secrecy have found themselves and their questionable behavior broadcast across the world by vehicles such as the Drudge Report, blogs, and You Tube. The internet has in many ways been a political blessing to the common folk because it facilitates the rapid dissemination of knowledge and allows for instant communication. Moreover, the internet frees the public from being held captive to the ideological predilections of the major media outlets. That liberal politicians want to control this resource is not surprising, but that's a power that they must never be given. They can't be trusted with it.
On the other hand, MSNBC's Ed Schultz is happy to give them all the power they want:
It's hard to believe that it would ever cross the lips of an American that the president should act like a dictator, but I guess freedom isn't as important to liberals as it used to be back when Bush was president.
RLC