Freedom—An Endangered Species

Freedom is not the natural state of man. There’s always somebody looking to take it away. This is going on all over the world today; and no freedom is more at risk than that of free speech. Our country’s founders enacted the First Amendment to protect it, along with freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

But our mother country, the United Kingdom, has no First Amendment. As you read this, British police are “investigating” a Catholic journalist for the newfangled pseudo-crime of “misgendering.” For calling a man a man, despite his delusional claim to be a woman.

Just for the record, there is no such thing as a “transgender woman” who used to be a man. That person is still a man. No amount of surgery or hormones can make him a woman. But journalist Caroline Farrow, appearing on a TV talk show, made the mistake of referring to such a mythical creature as a man: she committed the crime of not saying something she knew wasn’t true. So now the police say they’ll arrest her unless she shows up at the station house for a “taped interview.” And of course her whole family has been harassed and threatened since her story made the news.

The UK has a “law”—I find it necessary to put the word in quotes—called the Malicious Communications Act, and you can be tossed into prison for two years for breaking it. This asinine statute makes it a criminal offense to say or write or tweet “a message which is indecent or grossly offensive… a threat… information which is false or known or believed to be false by the sender.”

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

“Indecent or grossly offensive.” How is it indecent to call a biological male a man, just because he insists he’s a woman? And grossly offensive to whom—besides the “transgender” Kool-Aid drinkers? “A threat.” Well, she certainly didn’t threaten anybody. “Information which is false.” Good grief. The only thing that’s false here is this man’s claim to be a woman. What Mrs. Farrow did was speak the truth. As for reading the sender’s mind, to determine what she believed or didn’t believe, I simply don’t know how they do that.

How come none of the British TV cop shows ever gets involved with cases of “misgendering”? Because if they ever tried to present such a case as a drama, the audience would mistake it for a comedy? Is this what anyone becomes a police officer for—so he or she can lock up someone who calls a man a man? Have they so little real crime to contend with, that they have time “investigate” such twaddle? How they can still respect themselves is beyond me.

How far back does this go—this campaign to wipe out freedom? How deep is the rot?

I think back to 1969, and a biology course I took at Rutgers. During the last two weeks of the semester, the faculty tried to convince us that the way to get paradise on earth was to give them and their political playmates absolute power to re-design human society into some kind of totalitarian ant-hill. They seemed dumbfounded when the students didn’t buy it.

One student was moved to ask, “But what about our freedom and identity?” Ah—but the instructor was ready with an answer.

“Those,” she declared, “are outmoded concepts that must be engineered out of the system.”

My whole class flunked the final exam. We would have been ashamed to pass it. The faculty upgraded all our F’s to C’s and moved us on, got us out of their hair: try again next semester, they decided.

Well, heck, what’s the point of being a member of the ruling class if you’re not going to rule people? Our rulers want to rule us. Tell us what to say and what not to say, tell us what to think and what not to think. Back it up with cops and prison sentences. And they call themselves “progressives.”

That kind of progress, we don’t need.

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Stop in for a visit; a single click will take you there. You can also find my articles at http://www.chalcedon.edu/.

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net