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Publius is at it again, this time calling into question the newly announced "anit-fringe" laws in the UK. The highlight:

There is surely a spectrum between legitimate grievances and radical extremism. Let’s say a speaker in a mosque is criticizing British policy in the Middle East. Do we have enough trust that the government will only criminalize speech that is dangerous and won’t chill or limit legitimate dissent that is the lifeblood of a democracy? I don’t – for the same reasons I don’t trust Bush to decide who is or isn’t an “enemy combatant” to whom the Constitution doesn’t apply. And for the same reason I don’t trust America to be sole arbiter of whether its use of military force is justified. That’s what law and process are for – to check power and encourage deliberation and legitimacy. If it were possible to draw the line just right, I might be ok with it. But laws are administered by men, and these laws will inevitably be used for other purposes. When a line gets drawn, people (especially Muslims) will be less likely to express dissent for fear of being seen as approaching that line. It’s just a bad idea all the way around. If people are funding or supporting terrorism, then charge them individually based on the facts and lock ‘em up and throw away the key. But preemptive measures that include chilling speech and targeting people because of religion and ethnicity have no place in Western society.

History clearly shows that the power to decide "good" vs. "bad" speech cannot be safely left in the hands of the government. Even in this country, despite the protections of the First Amendment, our government has on numerous occasions attempted to limit legitimate speech. Even the framers of the Constitution, the very same men who proposed and passed the First Amendment itself, were guilty of passing the ridiculous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

As I've said time and time again, under democratic rule, the nation belongs to the people and not vice versa. But unless the people are vigilant, their rights can never be truly be guaranteed. In a war supposedly designed to protect freedom, how ironic is it that we're willing to compromise freedom for safety? After 9/11, a common refrain was "if we change our way of life, the terrorists have already won." Why so many freely apply that logic to shopping and consumption but not to liberty itself is just completely beyond me.

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