“Broadband is becoming a basic necessity,” civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks added. And earlier this month, fellow FCC panelist Mignon Clyburn, daughter of Congressional Black Caucus leader and Number Three House Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina, declared that free (read: taxpayer-subsidized) access to the Internet is not only a civil right for every “nappy-headed child” in America, but is essential to their self-esteem. Every minority child, she said, “deserves to be not only connected, but to be proud of who he or she is.”

Calling them “nappy-headed” is a rather questionable way of boosting their pride, but never mind that.

Face it: A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads. Once again, Democrats are using children as human shields to provide useful cover for not so noble political goals.

The “net neutrality” mob—funded by billionaire George Soros and other left-wing think tanks and nonprofits—has openly advertised its radical, speech-squelching agenda in its crusade for “media justice.” Social justice is the redistribution of wealth and economic “rights.” Media justice is the redistribution of free speech and other First Amendment rights.

The meetings of the universal broadband set are littered with Marxist-tinged rants about “disenfranchisement” and “empowerment.” They’ve targeted conservative opponents on talk radio, cable TV and the Internet as purveyors of “hate” who need to be managed or censored. Democratic FCC panelists have dutifully echoed their concerns about concentration of corporate media power.

As the Ford Foundation-funded Media Justice Fund, which lobbied for universal broadband, put it: This is a movement “grounded in the belief that social and economic justice will not be realized without the equitable redistribution and control of media and communication technologies.”

For progressives who cloak their ambitions in the mantle of “fairness,” it’s all about control. It’s always about control.