The Gray Monk

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January 11, 2004

Freedom of speech?

I am not alone in expressing my concerns on this latest debacle, check out the item on All Agitprop; All the time. A post on An Englishman's Castle under the title of "He should blog instead" is also informative.

The current hoo-hah over the Kilroy-Silk article and talk show and his comments about certain ethnic communities rather neatly highlights the manner in which freedom of speech and thought is being steadily eroded by this present government and its politically correct Thought Police cohorts. We either have the freedom to say what we think or we don’t. And in this country – as, I suspect, in other Western states – we find that this is a proscribed activity.

To test this statement, simply make a contentious statement in a public environment. The measure of how contentious it was will be the speed with which you are suspended from your job, visited by the police and labeled by the press as a racist/neo-nazi or some other similar “enemy of the people” label.

While I do not, and probably never will find much in Mr Kilroy-Silk’s views or political philosophy that I would agree with, the very heart of a free and democratic society is that he has the right, as I do, to express his views without fear or prejudice. This is no longer the case. We now have laws which make any statement that may be considered top cause offence to any member of any other group in society, a more serious offence than it is to have your property destroyed or your security threatened by a member of any of those groups.

In this brave new world, with its disturbing echoes of George Orwell’s “1984”, no one dares to criticize the growth of minority communities in some of our cities who now regard the transit, however innocently, of a member or members of another ethnic group through “their” territory an offence they are free to “punish” even to death. Nor is there any criticism of the community that refuses to turn in the murderers – providing alibis and relying on silence to frustrate the police. So we now have “no-go” areas in our cities where any member of a group seen as “not one of us” by these self appointed patrols, is risking life and limb at the very least. Yet let any member of the so-called majority express a view that might offend one of the members of the same community that can shelter its murderous gangs, and the full weight of the law is likely to be brought to bear. All you hear from the PC lobby is the sanctimonious tut-tut and more hand wringing over the injustices that have lead to these “young people feeling alienated.” It seems to have escaped them that the majority of people now feel alienated within their own country, our cherished freedoms slowly eroded one by one to redress these perceived “injustices”. The greatest injustice is ignored, that of the high jacking of the moral arguments to pervert them to this twisted and warped view that everything must be suborned to placate the vicious and vociferous minorities that have taken full advantage.

I find myself, as a member of a uniformed organization for the last 30+ years, now being told that I must not wear that uniform as it is a symbol of oppression to some of our minority communities or a symbol of male machismo to the feminists who want to now take over the senior posts and don’t like the thought that they don’t actually know anything useful about how the job is done or what it demands of those of us who put our lives on the line. The fact that this insult to my integrity and intelligence cannot be challenged - because it shows that I am “institutionally racist/sexist” and simply resistant to change – is a measure of just how far the balance has swung away from reason and rational debate. If your position is indefensible and totally unsupported by hard evidence, you simply resort to slandering the opposition and then hiding behind the laws brought, quite properly, to limit the excesses of the extreme wings of both schools of politics. The problem is, that these are now being exploited to advantage by a group every bit as dangerous as the neo-fascist and neo-marxist movements.

Society has allowed itself to be highjacked by the politically correct chattering classes of the Islington coffee morning round and their cousins in all Western countries. These are not the people who have any real experience of the world, the have all the answers but no appreciation of the realities that drive the people they seek to “improve”. It is all very well prattling on about fairness and justice when you live in an address that has a six or seven figure price tag, life takes on a totally different perspective when you earn just enough to pay the bills each month and the Islington chatterers are the ones who decide if you have a job in a month or a year.

What this latest debacle has highlighted for me is the fundamental dishonesty of the people making all the noise. On the one hand they proclaim the glories of our “free” society, on the other, they seek to place limits on those freedoms, restricting them to those things that they find acceptable.

Please do not misunderstand me, I do not agree with a great deal that is said by a wide variety of people and I have no time at all for racists or sexists or, for that matter, ageists! But I will defend to the death their right to hold a view at odds with mine. That is what a free society is all about. That is what two World Wars were fought over. This current trend will ultimately lead to a society such as that created by Lenin and Stalin, by Hitler and Mussolini in which individuals are thrown in jail or sent to labour camps for disagreeing with the party line. It is already not safe to express your opinions publicly at work if it is not “on message”. Already it is necessary to think twice before sharing a joke with a colleague, lest they take offence. This is not a “free” society, it is a society in which fear already rules our actions.

The Kilroy-Silk saga is not the beginning, nor is it an end. Unlike the famous Battle of Britain statement by Churchill, nor is it the end of the beginning. It will get much, much worse before it improves. It will be a long siege, stock up and check your defenses, there but for the grace of God goes any of us.

Posted by The Gray Monk at January 11, 2004 10:17 PM

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Tracked on January 12, 2004 10:23 PM

Comments

Posted by: Paul Jané at January 12, 2004 02:18 AM