Free Speech Go To Hell

Yet another EU Directive:

[The Equal Treatment Directive] is common hate crime legislation, which will turn disapproval for Islamic practices or homosexual lifestyles into crimes. Europe’s Christian churches are trying to stop the plan of the European political establishment, but it is unclear whether they will be successful. The media are silent on the topic.

The directive applies to social protection and health care, social benefits, education and access to goods and services, including housing. American citizens and companies doing business in Europe are also required to adhere to it.  The directive’s definition of discriminatory harassment is so broad that every objection to Muslim or homosexual practices will be considered unlawful.

We Brits are such an offensive lot aren't we and the peace-loving minority must be protected from our 'propensity to violence & aggression'?  TM Jack Straw.  'We must be mad, truly mad.' TM Enoch Powell.

Is their really any point in all this?  I seem to remember a saying about a wise General knowing when to withdraw from the battle.

Free Speech Go To Hell

The Love Police On Duty

I have just watched these over on The Libertarian Alliance (yes, I am aware it is Friday night, I am going to the off licence imminently!) 

Definately worth a watch.

The Love Police On Duty

BNP On Question Time

I am a supporter of Freedom of Speech, and I happen to think that it is essential to a free society that people be allowed to express themselves freely.  With curbs at law allowing compensation for such things as slander, on the whole we, in principle at least, have a reasonable and decent set up.  Yes, the walls have been closing in quite a bit in the last few years, but I think this has been broadly acknowledged, and as soon as this particular Government is ousted I believe on this issue under the Conservatives we can return to a normal debate and square some of those issues away.

As Newton pointed out, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Though this is a law of physics, it can sometimes be applied to situations in our lives.  To allow for Freedom of Speech there is a cost or in this analogy opposite reaction, which is that we don't just then hear what we want to hear.  We have to allow for the fact that people are going to have opinions vastly different to yours and mine and that those opinions may well cause offence.

The equal reaction is that The BNP, and in this case Nick Griffin is also subject to this and he will have to hear what those of us who do not support the BNP have to say.  I think it is right that the BNP have their say, as much as I disagree with them it is the price of free speech and one I am glad to pay.  And on this score the BBC are right to have allowed Mr Griffin onto their flagship politics show.

If you cannot allow for this, even broadly, then I do not think you can really be a advocate for free speech.

I hope that the fellow panel members take the full opportunity to debate Griffin on TV.  Over one million people voted BNP at the EU elections, and I wonder how many of them have actually heard Nick Griffin speak on TV or Radio?  I would wager not that many; certainly a low percentage considering he is a party political leader.  The concerns expressed by those who do not want the BNP on TV are that he will be "recruiting" - as if National Socialism and Racism were some unstoppable irresistible force that must not be allowed into people's ears.  I just do not understand this rationale.  Informed debate and giving people ALL of the facts is what is needed, and the mainstream political parties need to get better at doing that, even if it means we learn more about them than they don't like.  Let people hear what he has to say, it may turn out that instead of recruiting new people those that did vote BNP may now not do so again in the future.

I know Jack Straw and Chris Huhne are due to appear, and they will need to up their game for this.  I am not sure who the other two panellists will be*, I hope someone from the conservatives and someone from the centre-right press.  Question Time does tend to swing four lefties to one centre-right panellist many weeks, so tonight may well be no different on that score.

I happen to think that if the panel spend an hour screeming "raaaacist!" in Nick Griffins direction, they will themselves not come off too well.  In my opinion, they should try to draw out some opinions and policies that go beyond what will have been rehearsed off screen prior to an apperance, and then look for an opportunity to explain how poor those policies and opinions are, and how they would adversly affect the country and the people that live here if widely implemented.

I also just want to say that despite my absence from the B-BBC live blog in recent weeks (due to the unseemly time I have to get up these days, QT is on when I am usually in bed) and though I will be annoying the wife, I am going to make the extra effort to be there tonight so we can deliver our own collectively unique commentary on events.  I would urge others who would like to join to be there early, as the unmoderated slots will go quickly.

Cross-posted

* Baroness Warsi and Germaine Greer are the other guests.

BNP On Question Time

Keeping The Masses Silent

[Cross-posted from my blog]

Instapundit has a cartoon from the Washington Examiner, which in that one piece of satire justifies the title of the publication.

The left has always tried to silence dissent. That is one aspect of their desire not to listen to anything that does not agree with them, or to learn which has been a bit of a theme on my blog recently, but it is also an aspect of the natural authoritarianism of the left.

If tyranny needs the silence of people of good conscience, how does tyranny gain that foothold? It does so by persuading people that speaking out is not an act of good conscience, it does so by shutting them up. It does so by crying ‘racism’ at every mention of immigration, at every criticism of or satire on a black person, at every arrest of Islamic suspects, or simply as a smear of an opponent. It does so by telling us to think of the children (in that link I am not commenting on the case, but the NSPCC reaction). It does so by saying ‘poverty’, and defining that word as broadly as possible. It does so by talking about workers’ rights, but never allowing rights to employers or customers (even when they are the same people). It does so by accusing opponents of its own flaws (astroturfing in the debate over Obama’s programme of legislation, financial interest in the climate debate).

The left has always tried to silence debate. It has had to more and more because it lost the rational debate; objective evidence of the 20th century is that socialism does not work, and never has.

All Tyranny needs to gain a foothold is that men of good conscience remain silent, so the left has to make sure such men remain silent, or are redefined as not having good conscience.

Keeping The Masses Silent

A Poor Concept of Freedom

I am a libertarian. I believe that unless there is a good reason we should be free. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown fundamentally disagrees with me.

What is freedom of speech? In her piece Alibhai-Brown tries to say that “Freedom of speech is a precious right, fought for in Europe over many centuries … ” yet also that underpinning the laws that prevent direct harm from exercising freedom of speech (libel, official secrets and so on) she claims “… is a general understanding of what would be inappropriate and hateful if expressed in public”. At no time does she say that this has any legal basis, or provide any reason why it should, although the strong implication of the piece is that some people should shut up, and if necessary be made to shut up. The standard left-wing response, shut up!

The true irony is that it appears that one of the first pieces of speech Alibhai-Brown would silence is the bloggers who are criticising her (and this really goes beyond all parody) for writing a hateful message. She wrote of Iraq “… there have been times when I have wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson …”, and obviously felt she should have the freedom to write that, yet wishes to curtail others’ freedom to criticise those very nasty words.

As for Peter Tatchell and Poly Toynbee, I suspect the former would be horrified at the idea of restricting free speech and after taking on Mugabe and Putin he can probably be fairly sanguine about a few internet nutters (Tatchell has gradually gained my respect, although I still disagree with him on many things) and Polly Toynbee really does deserve fury. She was lucky Robert Fisk got there first, or she’d be an internet verb.

Finally how can an opinion writer even think the words in her final paragraph “We don't yet have a really effective way of restraining material promoting racism, sexism, violence (except against children), homophobia, and other group hatreds”? Two points, Ms Alibhai-Brown. First that all of those are opinions and beliefs, and all you ever write is opinions and beliefs. Why should others not be allowed to write there own? Second is, what on Earth use is an opinion writer, if not someone who involves herself in debate? Just the kind of debate which is the best way of restraining such material. Any other method simply plays to the strengths of those that hate.

Freedom of speech does not just include the freedom to say what we don’t want to hear. It is that freedom. The freedom to say nice and fluffy things is trivial. It is only when there are people who don’t want something said that such freedom becomes relevant in any way. I don’t think Yasmin Alibhai-Brown can conceive of that freedom.

Hat tip Harry’s Place. A slightly different angle on my blog.

A Poor Concept of Freedom