Egypt’s going one way while the United States is at risk of going the other.

There’s much debate about how much the Internet and social networking were responsible for the uprising and revolution in Egypt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.  Many who examine global trends and cultural history will tell you the result of persecution is inevitably resistance, and that technology was just the vehicle that came along at the right time.   

But from nothing to an exiled leader in less than three weeks? C’mon – access to instant communication may not be a replacement for the seething and force of will that ultimately led to Mubarak’s flight, but it certainly sped it from a loping marathon to a virtual sprint.

Yet the freedom that enabled protest organizers to create rapid and peaceful assembly is at risk here at home, in a battle that seems to garner nothing but yawns and apathy from many of  the most fervent  civil libertarians.

As President Barack Obama brought forward his wireless initiative last week, his excitement at how widespread service can ignite economic development was palpable. What he didn’t include in the proposal, however, were protections that ensure equal access to wireless networks, regardless of content.

The battle looming is over something known as net neutrality, and the outcome threatens to wreak havoc on freedoms that played a major role in the Egyptian fight for social justice.

Net neutrality is a concept ensconced in Federal Communication Commission rules pertaining to landline web services.  It prevents providers from limiting access to lawful websites or web services.

Simply put, net neutrality is not currently imposed on wireless carriers.  So if they believe there’s a service competing with theirs, for instance, they could ban it, or perhaps more insidiously, slow it down. For instance, if a carrier provides on-demand movies, it could cause Netflix’s stream to move more slowly.

The commercial concerns of this outcome are bad enough.  But there could be more far-reaching issues, ones that point beyond financial concerns to those of a political or free speech nature.

As tech writer Amy Gahran put it recently on www.cnn.com:

If the only way to get the level of mobile net access you need in order to make a living, understand your world or improve your life or community is to fork over extra money to your wireless carrier, then people or organizations of limited means will probably fall further behind.

When the potential for net neutrality being broken in a medium such as wireless, that President Obama says is critical to our nation’s economic infrastructure, it’s easy to understand how this situation is fraught with peril. When the net neutrality issue is examined in tandem with the Citizens United case – the landmark 2010 United States Supreme Court decision holding that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment – the potential for restrictive effects on unmonied voices becomes significant.

The trend suggested by the wireless and Citizens United case is one of access via prosperity.  As monied interests control the wireless airwaves, the inability to send messages in a comparably speedy, economical way will hamper small business, nonprofits, political voices with limited resources, and those promoting social justice concerns.

Is this who we are as a society? Is this what we want? This is not a result that should warm the heart cockles of anyone who believes that the Internet, like the village green of yore, has become a preferred place for dialogue and debate.  

To some economic conservatives, insisting on net neutrality might sound a tad like restraint of trade.  But the freedom to dissent politically doesn’t choose sides.  Maybe it was Howard Dean’s vanguard Internet campaign fundraising in 2004, or President Obama’s refinements in the 2008 presidential election, that has fueled Democratic interests.  But the Tea Party, hardly a bastion of the left, also accelerated its growth through web presence over the past two years, leading to a major Republican victory in the 2010 Congressional battleground.

The less access anyone has to generally accepted and utilized means of public discourse, the less able we are to fend off challenges to our rights to freely speak and associate.  A loss of net neutrality, Citizens United, etc. – restrictions on speech will further erode the  slippery slope. If we’re not careful,  someday instead of proudly defending our democracy from on high, we’ll be looking up at plutocrats  from the morass of a mud wrestling pit.  Which will be rather amusing – to the plutocrats.