WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

So declared the Party in George Orwell’s classic novel  1984. The corruption of language with a constant theme of Orwell’s work, most notably his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” So Orwell would not have been surprised to see the term “Internet Freedom” captured by those who advocate an increased role for government (i.e., Big Brother) online. Nor would Orwell had been surprised to see these advocates claim Orwell for themselves, insisting that opponents of government regulation are the ones corrupting language. There is perhaps no better example of this than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s comments in an interview with Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin about the divisive issue of “Net Neutrality” regulations:

Rachel Maddow [dripping with sarcasm]:  Sen. McCain’s bill, as you mentioned, is actually called the  “Internet Freedom Act of 2009,” and he’s deriding the government effort to keep telecoms from walling off the Internet as “government intrusion” and “trying to regulate the Internet.” What that means is that he’s picked better branding, he’s picked better names.  It doesn’t really relate the facts of what he’s doing. I’m wondering if it’s too late for a rebranding of the other side here. We need to get better about talking about this, because the language seems sort of corrupt at this point.

What makes Maddow’s comments so stunning is not her view that corporate America, rather than government, is the real enemy of freedom. That view is simply part of the long-regnant political orthodoxy. No, what’s stunning is that she actually thinks that her side is losing the “war of words” just because Sen. McCain had the gall to use the term “Internet Freedom” as a rallying-cry for the outdated, bourgeois notion that “freedom” means the absence of coercion by the one entity that can enforce its commands at the point of a gun and call it “justice”: that coldest of all cold monsters, the State. That’s precisely what “liberalism” used to be about until people like Rachel appropriated that word and words like “liberty” and “freedom” as slogans for control. Xeni Jardin picks up where Rachel left off by appropriating the concept of rights, too:

Xeni Jardin: the Internet really is a basic right, it’s a necessity,such a fundamental way for communicating and accessing information now.  Telecoms shouldn’t be able to throttle, to block, to slow down our access to something that might not be in their corporate interests.

This is pure, unadulterated cyber-socialism: Rights become not the sacred defense of the individual, but a positive assertion of entitlement to a vaguely defined principle of access: by guaranteeing this access through ever-expanding “neutrality regulation”, government gains unlimited control over the Internet itself.

As Adam Thierer and I have warned, that way lies madness: Inviting the government to regulate online content and services in the name of “neutrality” (or “privacy” or any of the many “glittering generalities” ending in “-y” Orwell would have denounced) would be the death of real Internet Freedom, which requires a strict “Separation of Web and State.”

If you want to see this bastardization of the language of “freedom” in action, watch the video. Just as nauseating is the way that McCain and is “disdainfully dismissed” as a corporate whore because he’s—GASP!—received donations from the telecom industry. Obviously, he must only be committing these thought crimes because evil enemies of the People’s Revolution paid him to do so! (Of course, donations may to politicians that support increased regulation of the Internet don’t corrupt them because their intentions are pure! Anyone can support any cause they like with donations so long as the cause is the right one, as determined by the People’s Revolutionary Guard.)

I remark briefly on the commentary “how smart is Palin,” noting her mispronunciation of “verbiage” and “pundit.” I’d suggest that observers be wary of assessing qualifications based on this kind of thing. Example: one very well-educated person I know, whose IQ is high enough to qualify enough for Mensa, mispronounces several words because he was socially isolated for his formative years and formed the habit of saying them before he had the chance to hear others pronounce them correctly. I don’t mean he was shut in a closet, which wouldn’t be relevant as Palin clearly hasn’t been, but just that he lived in a rural area where most of his peers were relatively uneducated.

In any case, it is curious that the anxious analysis of Palin, stemming from the fact that she is relatively unknown, seems to turn on characteristics of social class rather than on information about her decision-making as an executive. What significant choices about things like taxes, education policy, resources, and so on was she faced with as governor? What did she do in those situations? Why? What were the alternatives? Many voters probably do elect candidates based on how someone talks or looks, but mightn’t it be nice for a change for the talking classes to assess a candidate on policy? Would she make a better political candidate if some professor had had a couple months to drill her on vocabulary and delivery, like the hapless flower seller Eliza whats-her-name?

A second curiousity is the very common assumption that IQ is relevant to the ability to be a decent President. I’ll have to explain what I mean by this at some length, as I’m aware this is heresy of sorts for intelligentsia. There seems to be some sort of hankering after rule by some of Plato’s philosopher-kings, natural or otherwise.

I have met a good many intelligent, educated people who would make spectacularly bad Presidents. An alarming number of them in fact make quite bad whatever it is that they are supposed to be, professors, for example, or parents. Some have marked neuroses–they are paranoid, dishonest, depressive, addicted, passive-aggressive, and so on. A good number are too immature or insecure to admit or identify other’s strong points as complements to their own weaknesses, or admit their own errors. Others can’t shut up to listen to someone else talk for two minutes together, and if they do happen to fall silent are busy thinking up what they are going to say next, rather than actually taking in new information. Then there are others who lack the moral courage to actually follow a line of reasoning or argument, if it would mean the disapproval of their peers or, worse, their students. Others are so accustomed to being praised for the cleverness and quickness of their reasoning that they do not stop to check the facts upon which that reasoning is based. A significant number are hide-bound-incapable of exercising their judgment to make an exception to a general rule, even when that means disaster.

Scholars whose work makes a real contribution (Bob Summers of Cornell is one example known to me; Richard Epstein is another) are as a general rule smart, but cleverness is not the most marked characteristic of their personalities. One characteristic is boundless curiousity that drives them to question their own views as well as others in order to get to the bottom of things, not minding that they might discover themselves to be wrong; their views as a result may shift over the course of a lifetime. Ego and impressing others is less important to them than knowing the answer. Another characteristic is an appetite for facts–historical, scientific, economic, and so on. Another is a sort of in-grained disinterest in attacking straw men–their response to a poorly worded challenge is not to take the opportunity to mock the challenger, it would be to rephrase the challenge cogently, giving the challenger the benefit of the doubt, and then to respond to that. I could go on, but I won’t. The point is just that even in an area where intelligence supposedly matters so much, academics, it isn’t everything and indeed all too often turns out to be not much of anything, with the brilliant head of this or that class whipping off an article or two, or dozens, that are frankly unreadable and that twenty years from now will be entirely forgotten.

Leadership, likewise, seems linked to qualities other than intelligence. One is confidence and maturity. Another is the ability to attract, tolerate, and mediate among advisors of differing opinions–including some dissenters and eccentrics. Being surrounded by yes-men or opportunists, consistently placing loyalty above ability, is a disaster for a leader. This has, however, little to do with intelligence. Personal charisma does play a role, associated with the ability of a leader to empathize with individuals or to appear to–a noted Bill Clinton trait. So does being good judge of character. So does guts.

Last but not least, it strikes me that the apparently endless analysis of Palin’s more superficial characteristics is likely to miss the mark because it misses an obvious clue. Palin’s political trajectory is rather out of the ordinary. There is, therefore, quite possibly some striking quality that she possesses that helps to explain this–one candidate quality being raw moral courage. For that matter, analysis of Barack Obama and his similarly unusual trajectory might benefit from a similar examination; what has he got that people want? I am skeptical that at the end of day intelligence matters to followers as much as other marks of character.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Manifesto for Media Freedom, which I co-authored with Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute. Brian serves as editor of Manhattan Institute’s excellent City Journal and he is the author of best-selling books like South Park Conservatives and Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents.

In this little manifesto, we highlight one of the central ironies of the Information Age.  Namely, that despite “the breathtaking abundance of new and old media outlets for obtaining news, information, and entertainment…”

many people hate this profusion, and never more than when it involves political speech. The current media market, they charge, doesn’t represent true diversity, or isn’t fair, or is subject to manipulation by a small and shrinking group of media barons. They want the government to regulate it into better shape, which just happens to be a shape that benefits them. Doing so… would be a disaster, a kind of soft or not-so-soft tyranny that would wipe out whole sectors of media, curtailing free speech and impoverishing our democracy.

In other words, instead of celebrating the unprecedented cornucopia of media choices at our collective disposal, many policymakers and media critics are calling for just as much media regulation as ever. We itemize these threats in our chapters and they include: efforts to revive the “Fairness Doctrine”, media ownership regulations, “localism” requirements, Net neutrality mandates, a la carte regulations, cable and satellite censorship, video game censorship, regulation of social networking sites, campaign finance-related speech restrictions, and so on.

In each case, we advance a pro-freedom paradigm to counter the advocates of media control. What do we mean by the “media freedom” that we advocate as the alternative to these new regulatory crusades? Here’s how we put it in the book:

For media consumers, it’s the freedom to consume whatever information or entertainment we want from whatever sources we choose, without government restricting our choices. For media creators and distributors, it’s the freedom to structure their business affairs as they wish in seeking to offer the public an expanding array of media options, for both news and entertainment. And for both consumers and creators,media freedom is being able to speak one’s mind without restraint and without the threat of FCC or FEC bureaucrats telling us what is “fair.”

It doesn’t seem like much to ask until you realize how many people in Washington and academia today are calling for these various flavors of media regulation.  Of course, it doesn’t help that media-bashing has always been a bipartisan sport.  Indeed, depsite the fact that most of these efforts are lead by the Left, our book highlights how some folks on the Right are still guilty of joining some of these misguided regulatory crusades.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, for example, has sponsored “a la carte” mandates for cable and satellite operators and sponsored the draconian campaign finance law that will forever bear his name, McCain-Feingold. He has also proposed a follow-up law: McCain-Feingold II. Although it did not pass, McCain’s measure would have required broadcasters to run 12 hours of “candidate-centered and issue-centered programming” in the six weeks prior to primary and general elections — without giving broadcasters any control over those 12 hours (half of which would have had to run during prime time). The bill would have created a voucher system for the purchase of airtime for political advertisements, financed by an annual spectrum-use fee on all broadcast license holders. In sum, the legislation would have forced broadcast stations to pay a tax to the federal government that would in turn finance a pool of funds that politicians could turn around and spend to run ads on those very stations!

Others on the Right have favored the Fairness Doctrine in the past, and more recently, some have joined the Net neutrality effort. And many conservatives have long been in favor of various forms of media censorship.

That being said, the most serious threats to media freedom today arise from the Left and our book serves primarily as a response to the many Leftist efforts to regulate media today. As we argue in the introduction:

The left seems certain that a media problem ails our society; it just can’t decide what that problem is. Some contend that real media choices are as limited or biased as ever, while others argue that our democracy is imperiled by too many media choices, making it hard to share common thoughts or feelings. What unites these two types of critics is their elitist presumption that they know what’s best for the rest of us. They would love to rewrite regulations to tilt the media in the direction they prefer; and if they are allowed to do so, what is shaping up to be America’s Golden Age of media could come to a sudden end.

The Left’s obsession with reinstating the Fairness Doctrine is particularly telling in this regard. [You can read our history of the Fairness Doctrine here] But, as we go on to note:

Some liberals suggest that even a new Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t be enough to correct a “structural imbalance” in the media marketplace. They want tightened ownership regulations, mandates ensuring “greater local accountability” over radio and TV broadcasters, and a significant ramping up of subsidies for public radio and TV stations. One leading leftist proposal would even force private broadcasters to fund public broadcasters! These proposals expose the left’s true goal: to regulate private media outlets comprehensively and drive out those owners who dare to offer right-leaning alternatives.

This movement is being driven by a wide variety of Left-leaning think tanks and advocacy groups, especially Free Press, Media Access Project, and the New America Foundation. These organizations will likely have a strong voice in an Obama administration regarding media law and Internet policy issues. And we fear that means that new regulatory shackles will be placed on the media and free speech as a result. That’s why we penned this manifesto at this time. As we conclude in our book:

Motivated by the naked desire for political control, a reactionary fear of the new, or genuine if misguided views on equality and fairness in the media, [these liberal media activists] threaten to enact regulations that will strangle or at least cripple this social development before it can begin to reach its potential. Those on the right are not free from these impulses, either. But they, as the prime beneficiaries of media abundance — of all the conservative and libertarian talk shows and websites that would suffer in a media landscape remade by the Democratic Party and liberal activists — should embrace, defend, and expand the freedom that made it possible.

Anyway, if you care about free speech and media freedom, I do you hope you will consider giving the book a look. The main page for our book is here. And you can find it on Amazon here.

Writing at Slate, Tim Wu tries to make Obama out to be the real Big Government candidate on media policy, who will deliver “if not a chicken in every pot, a fiber-optic cable in every home.” By contrast, Wu implies that McCain is just another pro-big business lackey who doesn’t understand “that the media and information industries are special—that like the transportation, energy, or financial industries, they are deeply entwined with the public interest.” Wu goes on to say:

Ultimately, most of the difference in Obama’s and McCain’s media policies boils down to questions about whether the media is special and a dispute over how much to trust the private sector. Camp McCain would tend to leave the private sector alone, with faith that it will deliver to most Americans what they want and deserve. The Obama camp would probably administer a more frequent kick in the pants, in the belief that good behavior just isn’t always natural.

First, as a factual matter, Wu is just wrong about McCain being some sort of a radical hands-off, pro-market liberalizer on media policy issues. Oh, if only that were true! But for those of us who have been in DC covering telecom and media policy for many years, it is widely understood there is no nailing down John McCain on any tech, telecom or media policy issue. He’s been all over the board. While he has sponsored or supported some deregulatory initiatives on the telecom front in the past, he’s also been a supporter of other regulatory causes. His battles with broadcasters and cable, for example, are well-known. Most recently, McCain has been leading the effort to impose a la carte mandates on cable and satellite operators. And if you’re all about Big Government credentials, then don’t forget McCain-Feingold, a law that made it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups, and labor unions to run ads that criticize–or even name or show–members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election. And then there was the far more troubling McCain-Feingold II. Although it did not pass, McCain’s measure would have required broadcasters to run 12 hours of “candidate-centered and issue-centered programming” in the six weeks prior to primary and general elections—without giving broadcasters any control over those 12 hours (half of which would have had to run during prime time). The bill would have created a voucher system for the purchase of airtime for political advertisements, financed by an annual spectrum-use fee on all broadcast license holders. In sum, the legislation would have forced broadcast stations to pay a tax to the federal government that would in turn finance a pool of funds that politicians could turn around and spend to run ads on those very stations!

This sounds like the sort of Big Government Media Agenda that should make Tim Wu happy, but he doesn’t mention any of it in his essay.

But let me address the more fundamental, and quite mistaken, premise that underlies Wu’s essay — namely, that increased government activism in the media and broadband marketplace will somehow lead us to techno-nirvana. When Wu states that “the difference in Obama’s and McCain’s media policies boils down to questions about whether the media is special and a dispute over how much to trust the private sector,” he conveniently ignores the flip-side of that statement. That is, shouldn’t the real question here be: “How much do we trust the public sector”? Wu apparently assumes that “public interest” regulation will be all wine and roses. Enlightened, benevolent lawmakers and regulators who understand that media is “special” will concoct just the right mix of regulatory policies that will be pro-consumer, pro-democracy, and pro-free speech.

Sorry, but I’m not buying it. One would need to ignore 100 years worth of experience to believe such fanciful notions, and Wu seemingly does. Somehow, all will be different now. Regulators won’t be captured by special interests. Command-and-control regulation will suddenly become far more efficient and not deter innovation. And policymakers will resist the urge to censor speech.

Do you believe that story? If you’ve read your economic history, you’re probably just as skeptical as I am. It is revisionist history to say that the era of regulated monopoly and “public interest” media regulation was some sort of pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-free speech paradise. In reality, a “chicken in every pot” means a regulator on every cyber-corner. And I just don’t understand how someone as smart as Tim Wu thinks the entire process won’t once again come to be captured by the very interests he hopes to “kick in the pants.” They will be wearing the pants before it is over!

I invite Tim Wu and all his activist-minded friends on the Left to take another look at the definitive 2-volume Economics of Regulation by a more enlightened and experienced Democrat, Professor Alfred E. Kahn. In that masterwork, they will find the following words of wisdom (and caution):

When a commission is responsible for the performance of an industry, it is under never completely escapable pressure to protect the health of the companies it regulates, to assure a desirable performance by relying on those monopolistic chosen instruments and its own controls rather than on the unplanned and unplannable forces of competition. […] Responsible for the continued provision and improvement of service, [the regulatory commission] comes increasingly and understandably to identify the interest of the public with that of the existing companies on whom it must rely to deliver goods.

Braden has noted the release of John McCain’s tech policy–rightly decrying McCain’s socialistic community broadband concept.  But far more outrageous, in my view is this bit of doublethink.  First, the good part we should all applaud:

John McCain Has Fought to Keep the Internet Free From Government Regulation The role of government in the Innovation Age should be focused on creating opportunities for all Americans and maintaining the vibrancy of the Internet economy. Given the enormous benefits we have seen from a lightly regulated Internet and software market, our government should refrain from imposing burdensome regulation. John McCain understands that unnecessary government intrusion can harm the innovative genius of the Internet. Government should have to prove regulation is needed, rather than have entrepreneurs prove it is not.

Amen!  Even a hardened Ron Paul/Bob Taft/Grover Cleveland/Jack Randolph-survivalist/libertarian-crank like me can rally behind that banner.  But then this self-styled champion of deregulation pulls a really fast one:

John McCain Will Preserve Consumer Freedoms. John McCain will focus on policies that leave consumers free to access the content they choose; free to use the applications and services they choose; free to attach devices they choose, if they do not harm the network; and free to chose among broadband service providers.

That sure sounds nice, but it’s all Wu-vian code for re-regulation, not de-regulation.  You might recognize that McCain is talking obliquely here about the FCC’s 1968 Carterfone doctrine, which has consumed much attention on the TLF (see this piece in particular).

McCain then insists that he will be a bold leader for “good” regulations:

When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts. John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like “net-neutrality,” but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices…

What would you call requiring “openness” but “prescriptive regulation” against business models that require closed networks?  McCain deserves credit for rejecting, at least on a rhetorical level, “net neutrality” mandates, but what is Skype/Carterfone but “Wireless Net Neutrality?”  Whatever fine distinctions one may draw between these two ideas (both spawned from the hyperactive brain of Tim Wu), one finds no such nuance here–just the intellectually contradictory acceptance of a very politically popular position (“openness” for network devices) with the rejection of a closely related, if not inseparable, concept.  Indeed, if McCain weren’t such a saintly model of philosophical and political consistency, one might wonder whether his campaign was simply trying have the best of both worlds by appealing to the tech-policy center-left while paying lip-service to the free market community by denouncing the loathsomely anti-free market concept of “net neutrality.”

John McCain has always believed the government’s role must be rooted in protecting consumers. He championed laws that penalized fraudulent marketing practice…

Indeed, where would we be today without John McCain championing the FTC’s ability to punish unfair and deceptive trade practices–which dates back to 1914?  Still, it’s certainly a good sign that McCain at least listed is this second (after his idea of requiring openness through regulation as a way of decreasing the need for other forms of regulation).  Show me the tech policy issue that can’t be adequately addressed by simple enforcement of privacy policies and we can have a real tech policy debate!

…protected kids from harmful Internet content…

Really?  Did McCain help right all the software tools that let parents control what their kids can access online?  If not, I’m not sure what he’s referring to here other than Internet censorship.

… secured consumer privacy, and sought to minimize spam.

Ah yes, if it weren’t for the CAN-SPAM Act, we’d all be getting deluged with spam.  Oh, wait, it’s spam-filters and not legislation that have actually “minimized” this problem.”

When businesses struggled to assess the legal role of electronic signatures, John McCain led legislative efforts to ensure that these Innovation Age signatures were legally sufficient so that e-commerce could thrive. His record reflects the careful balance between protecting the essential elements of the Internet and securing the Internet as a safe tool of commerce, education and entertainment for our citizens. Offering simple common sense solutions to real problems is at the core of the McCain’s innovation agenda.

It’s hard to argue with “balance” and “common sense.”  Both would be a welcome change of pace from the the current chicken-little-ism by which so many Internet policy debates are driven by vague, unsubstantiated fears and shameless scare-tactics by the advocates of regulation.

But what’s ominous about McCain’s Internet policy is that he doesn’t even mention “free speech” or the “first amendment.”  This omission from the man who so famously said (about his relentless efforts to restrict political speech in the name of “campaign finance reform”):

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.

I, for one, find it pretty troubling that McCain’s idea of “balance” when it comes to the Internet is all about “safety” and (mandatory) “openness” without so much as a mention of freedom of expression.

McCain deserves credit for opposing Internet taxation and “net neutrality” (among other things), and Obama’s alternative isn’t exactly Mises 2.0 either.  But you don’t have to be much of a libertarian to scan down the list of the government programs and regulations he supports–especially “Internet Access For All Americans”–and realize that he is, at best, a fair-weather free-marketeer.  If free-marketeers have learned anything from Kevin Martin’s reign of terror at the FCC, it’s that a “free-market” Republican president can appoint regulators who pay lip-service to free market ideas while selling them out at (almost) every turn–especially when it comes to content Republican voters don’t like.

I won’t hold my breath for a de-regulatory tech policy agenda under a McCain presidency, but “hope springs eternal in the human breast.”  Should McCain win, we can only hope that the current vagaries of his tech policy ( e.g., “openness” and “protecting children”) will be resolved in favor of McCain’s de-regulatory talk, and that his current re-regulatory positions will either “evolve” for the better or at least not becomes priorities of his administration.  As for the good aspects of his policies, let us all remember Regan’s dictum:  “Trust, but verify.”