I don’t know about you, but I like making the decisions what I’m going to read, the music I care to listen to, the movies I’m going to view, the people and organizations I’m going to communicate with and who may contact me and the medium over which they can do it. See, if — as an adult — I’m going to be held responsible for the consequences of my decisions, actions, and behaviors I want to have full freedom to make those choices in my life. I don’t want others making, or even presuming they might have the first scent of an authority or the wisdom to superimpose their preferences over any aspect of my life; any aspect! PERIOD!

While I’m reasonably well versed in history, I have yet to hear of anyone who has ever breathed Earth’s air who knew better than I what is best for me. (I can guarantee all that I’ve not a clue what might be best for anyone else. That’s why I don’t engage an effort that extends beyond the challenge of getting things right for me.)   Nonetheless, for some perverse and inexplicable reason, history is replete with examples of individuals and organizations certain they have it so together they have the knowledge and hence the moral obligation to hold sway over others, run even the most intimate aspects of the lives of others.

In 325 CE (Current Era), the male attendees at the Council of Nicea decided that all future generations would be spared the confusing suggestions that epistles and letters and gospels by women provided that gender any element of authority in spiritual and Church matters. The Council decided that only writings and teachings by men would find a place in the New Testament.

In the first half of the 17^th century, the infallible Church hierarchy decided that, all cosmological evidence to the contrary, the Earth was the center of the universe, and that scientific inquiry on the subject was a venal attack on both God and their divine authority, and was therefore to be most severely punished.

In the early years of my life we had national and local committees of the most moral decent citizens with the legal authority to proscribe what American adults could read and what could appear on the nation’s television screens. “Banned in Boston” prevented tens of millions of adults from judging the merits of Ulysses and Tropic of Cancer for themselves. And Lucy and Desi, and Ozzie and Harriet slept in separate beds.

More recently we saw Clear Channel — the San Antonio based media conglomerate, holder of exclusive broadcasting rights over the continental US, owner of more than 1,200 full-power AM, FM and shortwave radio stations, 11 satellite radio stations on XM Satellite Radio, and more than 30 US television stations — wield its market dominance (the only radio outlet in several markets) to ban from its stations music by the Dixie Chicks because Natalie Maines commented that “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

We also watched as the nationwide movie theater moguls stood on principle and refused to permit Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 to be shown on their screens until the block-long lines at the art theaters brought home the notion that the opportunity to make money ought never to be held hostage to principle.  TODAY the assault on your adult decision-making burden continues.

Quite legally, Verizon, by forbidding to carry Naral Pro-choice America texting, has made the corporate decision that only those political entities that it adjudges do not have “an agenda” the corporation holds does not offend its subscribers may transmit text messages over its system. Ignored are complications that derive from the fact that subscribers must punch in a 5-digit number (“short code”) indicating they want to receive news and text-messaged alerts from sources Verizon politically disagrees with.

University of Michigan law professor Susan Crawford has said “The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling.” Ya think?  

Subletting your right and personal obligation to decide for yourself what you bring into your life is not being an adult. It is willfully electing to return to the supposed halcyon moments of responsibility-free early childhood.

Over the course of more than four decades of post-21 adulthood I’ve committed errors of judgment that have cost me dearly, errors I wish to hell I had not made and would if I could unmake them. But you know what? I made them. And it was only because I could that I could and yet can claim to be an adult human being with dignity. Remove my capacity to really screw up and I lose every right to make that assertion.

Verizon . . .. It matters not a whit that your private-company actions may rest on a legal premise of private ownership. Damn you! Damn you! Damn you for even contemplating that you’ve any right whatsoever to screen anything anyone may want to transmit or receive.  But that’s the Republican, private enterprise as the Holy Grail philosophy, and it’s dangerous as hell.  

— Ed Tubbs