> Help me to understand how freedom of speech was attenuated, prior to Net Neutral, or how was it ACTUALLY threatened? Why couldn't I have published my own blog or editorial site, now or in the future?

You can publish your blog all you like, but you need people to be able to route to it and have bandwidth to download from your server. If you don't have an agreement with every ISP (not just the ones you already pay access to) then they could simply say, no sorry we're not going to route to your content or say "OK, we'' route to your content but you get 2kbps on our network".

> Why wouldn't other Internet services step into the void, to fulfill a demand? Perfect example: As in China, the Great Firewall has caused a boom in VPN / tunneling technology, to fulfill a consumer demand for government-free access to information.

Many ISPs have total monopolies enforced by law in the US. You cannot create a competing ISP.

> Any honest person would refute the assertion that "investment in innovation would dry up." There will always be wild-cat investors seeking huge multiple returns and willing to dump stupid cash on a bunch of white dudes in hoodies.

To get funding you need users, if users can't access your site to begin with you don't get any users.

> I do, however, think that revenue-sharing concepts that include the transmission companies, modeled after the cable monopolies of olde (cable cutting is killing that model) could be a suitable alternative to todays two-tier model (transmission vs. content).

These already exist, these are the companies you peer with.