British Liberty Pt. I

I couldn't have said it better myself. Andrew Sullivan writes*:

"Tony Blair has never seen a free act he doesn't want to constrain, subsidize, tax, regulate or inspire."

*(I have been in violent disagreement with Andrew on many occasions, particularly because of his single-minded support of the Iraq war, but this apology really restored my respect for him.)

I would take this further, and say it applies to most of modern British life and politics.

From a North American's perspective, coming to grips with civil liberties in Britain can be a tough task. Most of us agree with free speech as an overriding principle, and with perhaps a few extreme exceptions, believe that free speech must be absolute: if you have too many "buts", it's a slippery slope, and then the question is -- as with any form of censorship -- "who gets to make the decision?". That's why the U.S. has a constitution that guarantees free speech by default. Canada at least tries to follow along the same lines, with varying degrees of success.

Contrast this with free speech in Britain. Free speech exists here only insofar as the current government hasn't deemed particular speech illegal. People here will tend to pooh-pooh this hypothetical, but in theory the current majority government could vote a law tomorrow making it illegal to criticize Tony Blair. And henceforth, until such law was repealed by some theoretical future government, criticizing Tony Blair would be illegal (I'm not sure why Labour hasn't tried this yet).

For example, in conversation you can ask a British person whether they believe in free speech, and of course they will answer in the affirmative. However if you then ask them, hypothetically, whether it should be okay for you to say publicly "I hate Japanese people" (I choose Japanese people randomly here, sorry) they will tend to be taken aback and answer something like "of course not", as if it's common sense. You see, racism and bigotry of various sorts are technically illegal in Britain. Saying things like that could get you in trouble. "Political correctness" has actually become law here. The problem is that what's politically correct changes all the time.

I contend that with free speech, as with several other areas of civil liberties, the British have progressed so far down the proverbial slippery slope that they don't recognize it any more.

If you believe in civil liberties and free speech, you have to defend the principle even when you don't agree with someone else's politics (even if they aren't nice). Unfortunately the British pay lip service to principles they don't faithfully believe in.