I’m sure that it was simply an oversight on the part of the Framers’, but it’s time to add another amendment to the Constitution: the right to broadband Internet access. This shortcoming of American liberty has been sharply pointed out by Finland, which has just bestowed a legal right to high-speed to its own citizens. Of course, standing in the way of such an enlightened entitlement is our antiquated understanding of individual freedom.
I know I’m a bit of an anachronism in a world where one group’s alleged “need” for any good entitles them to demand others to provide it to them as a right, but I still believe rights are inherently individualistic and negative in nature. No person is entitled to some thing as a right, but rights are meant to protect us from others, by inalienable guarantees of freedom of action and due process to protect from legal oppressions.
Even given such a view on individual rights, I can at least understand where people might try to speak of people’s rights to certain objects that are fundamental to the existence of man—like food and shelter. But to make the leap from that to guaranteed high speed Internet makes a mockery of millions of people worldwide suffering from genuine government brutality and material poverty.
Imagine the absurdity of claiming the right to daily newspaper delivery, telephones, laptop computers, or color television. Like the Internet, these are very valuable and, in their own way, have been revolutionary in communications and the progress of our civilization. But they are still only conveniences that are not necessary to the human condition.
Governments do grant benefits to their citizens other than their basic freedoms—and that is what Finland is actually doing here—but calling them “rights” is a sad misnomer adopted by our modern legal framework. Their leaders are wrapping their policy in language that no good Western liberal can protest. Who is willing to stand up and deny any group of people their “rights,” even to the Internet?
Doing it this way may seem like a benign sleight-of-hand to win support for a particular policy, but it has serious conceptual ramifications domestically and foreign policy implications abroad.
It’s an embarrassment for the Western world to continually call upon foreign nations to provide their citizenry basic individual rights when it’s clear our governments don’t even understand what we mean by it. Worse than that, it’s beginning to look like our populations would sooner rise up to demand quality cell phone service than assert our freedom of speech.
Why should any developing or repressive nation take us seriously? We shouldn’t be surprised that states like China and Iran respond to international condemnation by releasing propaganda outlining their advancements in technology and growing Internet-usage rates, as though it is a substitute for their human rights obligations.
We’ve given the world the impression that material success and personal comforts, not individual freedom, is the end of Western civilization. More and more, it’s starting to seem like they’re right.
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October 26th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
What’s with the intro paragraph to this piece?
I’m on board with saying that casting broadband internet access as a fundamental right is a bit silly, but it seems like you’re picking a fight where none is really called for. My impression is that the Finns didn’t do this in order to shove it in our faces.
Any national news is pretty much fair game for either side to slant and score points, but let’s leave the Scandinavians out of it. Finnish domestic internet policy isn’t a leftist attack on American freedom.
By turning what could have been a legitimate criticism of policy into a retort against a wholly imagined slight against Jefferson, you’re demonstrating the needless hostility that makes it far more difficult to calmly discuss the issues.
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