How Britain invented freedom – and why we need to save it now

The single most common reaction I get from Americans when they learn that we’re placing our newspapers under our politicians is: ‘Y’all need a Bill of Rights’. You can see their point. Absolute freedom of expression used to distinguish the English-speaking peoples from the run of nations. The restrictions which even other western democracies applied — prohibitions on Nazi symbols, for example — were inconceivable in the Anglosphere.

Over the past quarter of a century, that has changed. Anglophone democracies now regularly prosecute people for saying the wrong thing, usually on grounds of putative insult to some minority group. We have become accustomed, in Britain, to people being arrested for handing out Bible verses that might upset gay people, or for saying things that are presumed to offend Muslims. Australia recently prosecuted a columnist for writing that many Aboriginal activists were not in any meaningful sense of indigenous descent. Canada appears to have whole government agencies dedicated to persecuting Mark Steyn.