While enjoying some dalliances with Rational Objectivism in my “youth,” I haven’t found myself particularly drawn to it of late. However, I am a proponent of basic civil libertarianism: the idea that individual rights should be, where possible, placed over the interests of government.
As a result, I found this article to be spot on. Specifically:

“Since no ISP can compete with free, omnipresent Internet access, this plan means that virtually all online users will be herded into the government-controlled Internet. And as the history of radio and television has shown, once the government guarantees ‘free’ access to a communications medium, it will inevitably exercise control over its content–i.e., censorship.

“In fact, this plan already comes with censorship strings attached; the FCC has declared that this ‘free’ Internet must filter out pornography and other material deemed unsuitable for children. Not only will this prevent vast numbers of Americans from accessing content the government regards as inappropriate, but it will unavoidably lead to massive self-censorship by websites struggling to avoid government sanitization.

I have no illusions of privacy in today’s society as a simple google search on me will probably confirm; however, this development makes me wonder…