Texas Eagle Forum’s home page today links to this post on the Eagle Forum blog, which claims that net neutrality is a “big liberal cause.” The post seems to argue that government should not bar companies that provide Internet service from favoring or disfavoring certain content available on the web.
The right’s assault on net neutrality appears to be picking up steam. As this Eagle Forum post notes, a Scripps Howard article explains that Tea Party activists have been critical of government acting to prevent Internet companies from blocking or slowing content web traffic for their own competitive advantage. Supporters of net neutrality fear that companies will undermine competition and innovation by walling off (or limiting) certain content from their Internet subscribers.
The Texas Freedom Network doesn’t work on the issue of net neutrality. But it seems odd to us that far-right groups like Eagle Forum now see the concept as simply a “big liberal cause.”
UPDATE: Good heavens. As we continue to check out the Texas Eagle Forum website, we just ran across this post on the TEF’s own blog: “Be Informed: Well Planned Strategy to End Capitalism.” The post includes two long articles about how the Obama administration and its supporters are promoting “Marxist goals being implemented to force the downfall of capitalism, completing the fundamental transformation of America and the loss of our freedom, including right to free speech and freedom of religion.” It’s silly enough when some people apply the “Marxist” label to just about any policy a Democratic administration seeks to implement. But that they seem to believe that the administration has a deliberate strategy to overthrow capitalism in America is a truly classic example of whacked-out right-wing paranoia.
Actually net neutrality is fundamental to fundamentalism which in extreme form is and has been used to plan and execute terrorist operations. Perhaps a religious filter would screen out the nuts from the nuts.
This net neutrality issue has the aura of behind the scenes support from large business organizations using the ultra right wing as “values voter” sock puppets for their agenda.
The whole Tea Party movement has that aura, actually.
If the trend continues, they gleefully get their right to life laws and creationism in the schools while the jobs continue to leave, the middle class disappears and the infrastructure crumbles.
One example: http://www.prwatch.org/node/9396