DEJA SCREW: Now Big Government Wants to Gobble Up the Internet

After conquering the country’s healthcare problems with the smoothly efficient Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration decided it needed to “fix” something else. Let’s see, what area of American society is full of people freely expressing their ideas, conducting commerce, and doing it largely outside the death grip of the government? The Internet! Naturally, the Alinsky-trained community organizers in the West Wing have set their targets on the freewheeling World Wide Web (is it still called that?) and sought to turn it into just another dreary, overpriced, government-run utility service.

Democrats have proven that, to paraphrase a line from the great coach Bobby Knight, they couldn’t lead a whore to bed, but they are experts at taking a big, obscenely expensive, freedom-killing government program and selling it to the masses as a populist panacea for everything that is missing in their lives. LBJ’s Great Society? An end to grinding poverty! The Obama stimulus? Shovel-ready jobs for all! Obamacare? Insuring millions of uninsured! That none of those programs had their official intended effect, and in many cases made things worse, is swept away by our ADD-riddled national attention span. But it sure made us feel good at the time that we were “doing something” about those problems, didn’t it?

So now they are coming for our Internet access. A critical part of this sell job is to manufacture a faux crisis narrative with villains to hate and victims to avenge. With Obamacare it was the evil insurance companies and greedy doctors performing unnecessary procedures just so they could buy a second yacht. And don’t forget all the homeless people dying in the streets for lack of quality healthcare!

With net neutrality (the names all sound so fair, don’t they?) it is the contemptible Internet service providers (ISPs) screwing the hoi polloi who are paying too much for slow Internet. Now does anyone over 15 years old really believe that getting Big Government heavily involved in regulation of the Internet will result in lower service fees, faster download speeds and a better overall experience? By the time they are done celebrating how their politicians have stuck it to those sinister corporate ISPs, the Occupy Wall Street/Elizabeth Warren for President crowd will give a bewildered look at their Internet provider bill and wonder why it has skyrocketed and their service is worse.

In a way, many Americans deserve this kind of sticker shock. We should know better by now. How many times have the ruling class promised manna and delivered misery? The lies of Obamacare are just now being realized, and far too many Americans are ready to go along with another government takeover narrative–that Big Government is here to help the little guy and squash the big corporate bullies.

Don’t fall for it.