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Category Archives: freedom of speech
how not to lose your country and your freedom – stop apologising
Could even Labour be worse than David Cameron?
With “conservative” Prime Minister David Cameron planning sweeping crackdowns on what’s left of freedom of speech in Britain it’s surely time to ask – can even Labour be worse than this? The argument that even a lousy Conservative government is better than having a Labour government is now looking rather threadbare. Trying to scare potential UKIP voters by telling them that they may be helping Labour gain office now seems beside the point. The only possible hope for Britain is for the Cameron Conservatives to be utterly smashed. Then it may be possible to build an actual conservative party out of the ruins.
I’ve been saying for some time that traitorous so-called conservatives like Cameron are more dangerous than avowed leftists. This would seem to prove my point. In David Cameron’s Britain this is what the Justice and Security Act means – ” It prevents those accused by the government from seeing the evidence against them, or the witness testimony against them. The individual concerned would also be unable to submit evidence – or even enter the courtroom, if it is deemed to be in the court’s interests. In fact, the court will not even have to inform the person concerned of why they have been taken to court, or even that a trial is taking place. It could mean that the first a person hears of a case against them, is when the police turn up to take them to jail to begin their sentence.”
1984 has well and truly arrived.
the liberal jihad
freedom of speech and dangerous ideas
Uthman Badar, a spokesman for Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, was to given a lecture at the Sydney Opera House as part of the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas. The subject of his lecture was to be “Honour killings are morally justified” – certainly a provocative enough title. After predictable howls of outrage the lecture has been cancelled.
It’s quite likely that, given the opportunity to hear his arguments, I would find myself disagreeing very strongly indeed with Mr Badar. No having been given the opportunity, I can’t say for certain. No matter how strongly I might disagree with him I still believe he has the right to be heard.
It seems that freedom of speech is still the most dangerous idea of them all.
a very unsurprising betrayal
first they came for the bloggers…
The Thought Police in Britain are now pursuing bloggers who do outrageous things like expressing support for heterosexual marriage, which ironically happens to be the law of the land. It’s another attack on what little remains of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has aleady gone by the board in Australia as evidenced by the persecution of Andrew Bolt. Now it seems that Britain is going down the same slippery slope.
the thin end of the PC wedge
What’s worrying about the The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s recent action against Sydney shock jock Kyle Sandilands is not just that it’s yet another attack on freedom of speech. It’s the vagueness of the ruling, and the secretiveness of it. He’s been ordered “not to say anything that could be regarded as offensive or demeaning to women or girls.” Now what on earth does that mean? It sounds suspiciously like offensive or demeaning can mean anything this particular totally unnecessary bureaucratic waste of time wants it to mean.
The fact that The Australian Communications and Media Authority won’t reveal what it means adds to the suspicions.
Whatever this guy said is not worth yet more restriction on Australians’ freedom of speech. He might be an ignorant arrogant yobbo. But if we won’t defend his freedom to speak we will all lose. Freedom of speech must include the right to offend, otherwise it’s meaningless.
And it’s yet another yard of lost ground for defenders of freedom of speech. For defenders of freedom of speech everywhere, not just in Australia. The Thought Police operate internationally. If they get away with restricting freedom in one place they will use it to attack freedom somewhere else. Even the US with its constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech is not immune. If freedom of speech disappears in other countries the Thought Police will argue that the US is “out of step with the international community” and that Americans must accept limitations on this right as well. That “out of step with the international community” line is one of their favourite arguments to extend the global reach of Political Correctness.
It’s also one of their favourite arguments to extend other aspects of their political agenda. If they get abortion on demand or gay marriage in some places they then tell other people that they are now “out of step with the international community” if they don’t allow such things.
With the PC lobby you always have to beware of the thin end of the wedge.
symbolic victories, and hesitation as censorship
One of the reasons the Leftists are winning the culture wars is that they understand the importance of symbolic victories. They know that symbols matter. That’s why they’ll fight so hard for things that initially appear not to matter very much. Because they do matter. Words and symbols are important, and making us feel hesitant about using certain words or performing certain symbolic acts matters very much. They also understand the importance on instilling fear. Not physical fear, but the fear of offending, the fear of being labelled as racist, sexist, etc.
The flag is a good example when it comes to symbols. When President Obama’s political mentor Bill Ayers gets away with literally trampling the American flag (and gets to keep his well-paid job at an American university) a significant symbolic victory has been won for the Left. It’s not a flag that is being trampled, it’s a set of beliefs. Beliefs about loyalty, honour, duty, sacrifice.
Similarly when a leftist Australian academic tells us that it’s racist to fly an Australian flag the same beliefs are being attacked.
Words matter even more. Back in the 70s when feminists started to demand than manhole covers should be renamed personhole covers we laughed. We were wrong. It was part of the long-term strategy of the Cultural Left – to put certain words and certain ideas out of bounds. To make us hesitate before expressing our thoughts, our opinions.
They have succeeded. Can there be any conservative blogger (or conservative journalist or conservative politician or even just conservative citizen) who has not at some time caught themselves in the act of self-censorship? You’re about to write something, or say something, but then you ask yourself – am I going to be accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, cultural insensitivity, fascism, neocolonialism, ableism or any other forbidden act if I say that?
Once that happens our right to freedom of speech is in grave jeopardy. Indeed all our rights as free citizens are in grave danger.
As Peter Hitchens puts it in a slightly different context, the boundaries of public discussion are being steadily narrowed.
Recently we’ve seen moves by feminazis and other politically correct types to add terms such as feminazi and political correctness to the index of forbidden expressions. If there’s one thing Leftists hate it’s having their own weapons turned against them. For years they’ve tried to stifle debate by throwing out words such as racist, sexist and fascist as soon as the start to lose an argument. When conservatives hit back by using words like ecofascist and feminazi it turn out that Leftists have a glass jaw.
The ideal censorship is the censorship we impose on ourselves. That was the objective of the Party in Orwell’s 1984, the reasoning behind Newspeak – that eventually the Thought Police would be unnecessary because people would no longer be capable of Thought Crime. They would no longer have the words to express dissent and everyone would have inside their own heads their own internal Thought Police.
the end of freedom of speech in Australia?
If the current Australian government implements the recommendations of the Finkelstein Report it will effectively spell the end of freedom of speech in Australia. And given this government’s track record there is every reason to believe they will do so.