From The Liberty Wall – Free Speech: How Do We Protect It? – March Of The Thought Police (Part 1) » National Liberal Party | LIBERTY: INDEPENDENCE: DEMOCRACY: ECOLOGY

From The Liberty Wall – Free Speech: How Do We Protect It? – March Of The Thought Police (Part 1)

‘We believe that Britain should have a formal constitution and bill of rights, based on the concept of civil and religious liberties for all. We also feel that a civil rights watchdog should be established to protect the people’s ability to make use of these rights.

We believe in absolute free speech with very few exceptions to this rule – say for those who promote violence. Either we all have rights – or none of has rights. We support civil and religious liberties for all.’

• Taken from the Facebook site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1607711629485795/ – of Free Speech: How Do We Defend It?

FREE SPEECH is particularly interested in – and deeply concerned about – attempts by elements of the States to try to curtail free speech. To some extent this is our raison d’être.

With this in mind, or attention has been drawn to an article – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4612720/Tim-Farron-s-ousting-Lib-Dem-leader-left-victory.html – which appeared much earlier this year. It concerns former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron. Freedom lovers may recall that he was effectively forced to quit because of his Christian beliefs.

The following article was written by Dominic Sandbrook, a former history lecturer, freelance writer and newspaper columnist. Please note that we don’t agree with everything Sandbrook says. We feel that he focusses solely on ‘Leftist’ attempts to curb free speech. To us, both ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are mirror images of each other – and there are illiberal liberals and totalitarians on both sides! Despite this, we feel that supporters of free speech will find his article of interest.

We feel that the best way to stimulate debate on the issue of free speech is to reproduce his article in four sections. It goes without saying that there are no official links between Free Speech, Dominic Sandbrook or the Daily Mail.

Tim Farron’s ousting as Lib Dem leader is another victory for the Left which gags free speech and imposes its own warped views

Tim Farron, former leader of the Liberal Democrats. Did his Christian views bring him into conflict with illiberal liberals?

ONE OF the great myths of our age is that we live in a time of unparalleled tolerance, a paradise of liberalism, conscience and free speech.

You can think what you like, say what you like and do as you please, and nobody will ever tell you otherwise.

That is the theory. The reality, alas, is rather different. For this week came yet another worrying sign that the prejudices of our liberal cultural elite are no less stifling and no less repressive than the taboos they pride themselves on having banished.

At the heart of this is the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who resigned on Wednesday after less than two years in the job.

I hold no torch for Mr Farron, who never struck me as an international statesman in waiting. But when I heard him say he could not reconcile his heartfelt Christian principles with his leadership of an avowedly liberal party, I wondered what had happened to our traditions of tolerance and democracy.

At the heart of his dilemma were his views on gay sex, which on several occasions he had failed to say outright was not sinful, as well as his disapproval of abortion (he later claimed to have changed his mind on the issue). But he never tried to impose those views on others. Nor did he propose to outlaw homosexuality, or to recriminalise abortion.

For his liberal critics, however, this was not good enough. As they saw it, he was guilty of what George Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’. Only a full recantation — and presumably the renunciation of his Christian faith — would have been enough to save him.

‘I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in,’ Mr Farron said on Wednesday, ‘in which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.’

Alas, this is not merely an issue for the Lib Dems, for the sickness of liberal intolerance is far more widespread. Seeping out of our schools and universities, the culture of hysterical outrage is now in real danger of polluting our public life, stifling debate and silencing dissent.

Just look, for example, at the absurdly strident way the Left has reacted to the prospect of a deal between the Conservatives and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists. As staunch social conservatives, rooted in the Presbyterian churches, the DUP are opposed not just to gay marriage but to the extension of abortion rights to Northern Ireland — views clearly too much for the metropolitan dinner-party elite.

Never mind that the DUP are the single biggest party in one of the four nations of our kingdom. Never mind that their views are shared by the vast majority of ordinary people in Northern Ireland, who are understandably sick of being caricatured as reactionary primitives.

To the Left, such people are thought criminals. There is no place for dissent in the modern liberal imagination, no room for those who question the new orthodoxies of the chattering classes.

So racism must always be treated as the ultimate evil.

The equality of the sexes can never be questioned; indeed, the very idea of gender itself is deeply suspect. Immigration is always good. Welfare is wonderful; capitalism is monstrous. America is corrupt; Israel is worse. Patriotism is always bad, especially British patriotism. And so on.