According to this article, just as the defining crusade of Congressman and Presidential candidate [[Ron Paul]] is auditing the [[Federal Reserve]], his son, Congressman [[Rand Paul]] is waving the flag of Internet freedom.

However, there appears to be two disparate views about ensuring such, and his manifesto is a deliberate counterpoint to the “Declaration of Internet Freedom“, which is on a website whose slogan spuriously and scarily includes the phrase “reform media”.  Perhaps oversimplified but more true than not, the “progressive”  view is that companies are the threat, and Rand’s view is that government is the threat, accusing the Left of using words like neutrality and openness as euphemisms for control and spying.  They are more worried about a business collecting data that might result in sending you highly targeted coupons, and less worried about truly Orwellian surveillance for the “common good” of which we are already in the midst.

I never would have connected these dots so strongly, but here I must reiterate the highlights of the article …

 “Today, the road to tyranny is being paved by a collectivist-Industrial complex — a dangerous brew of wealthy, international NGO’s, progressive do-gooders, corporate cronies and sympathetic political elites.”

Wow, this is the first time I’ve heard the term “collectivist-Industrial complex”.  It seems so contradictory to my liberal instincts yet hints of great unrealized truth to my conservative senses.

I thought Internet Freedom would be an obvious, simple thing, but like all things is mired in conflicting complexities even when we sound like we’re all on the same side.  I’ll have to give this more thought.