A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Monday, April 11, 2011

Yasmin Alibhai Brown misses the freedom point

"I'm speaking my mind!"
In an article in the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai Brown calls for a democracy where free speech is limited. Limited no doubt by her fellow thinkers and not by those who disagree. She mentions Oliver Wendell Holmes but then pushes that point further. Incitement to racial or religious hatred is whipping the crowd up to create a clear and present danger. Burning a Koran in a privately owned garage, as the BNP candidate did, is absolutely not the same thing. There was no danger created.

In a democracy free speech does upset people. I am upset by attacks on the traditional integrity of Anglicans by liberal Anglicans, but I don't want them silenced. Monty Python was accused of blasphemy, but like the curate's egg, I liked the show in parts. The parts I didn't like I didn't watch. Frankie Boyle is sometimes plainly outrageous and offensive but I can see that the man has a comic talent and can be genuinely funny. His critics should be the ones to tell him he's off limits, not the state.

There are so many words that offend. However, it is not the role of the police to try to stamp out the BNP by suppressing free speech. The way a democracy works is to debate the issues and use the ballot box.

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