It’s Not the Police’s Job to Shut Down Political Debate. They Should Stick to Solving Crime

THE OBSERVER – OPINION: The appeals court has rightly upheld Harry Miller’s freedom to express his views

Aman gets a call from a police officer. He is told that, while he has done nothing criminal, his social media posts have offended someone, so the police have recorded them as a non-crime hate incident that may show up on criminal record checks. The officer warns that if he continues to “escalate” matters, the police may take criminal action against him, a message later reinforced by his superiors.

It may sound like something out of a police state. But this happened in Britain in 2019, in a case that led the high court judge who later ruled the actions of Humberside police force unlawful to warn them, “in this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”. Despite there being no evidence that Harry Miller, the man in question, might ever stray into unlawful speech, the police took action that reasonably led him to believe that he was being warned not to exercise his right to freedom of expression on pain of potential criminal prosecution; they also opined to the press that Miller’s tweets were “transphobic”.

And just before Christmas, in a landmark judgment that has attracted surprisingly little commentary from human rights lawyers given its profound implications, the court of appeal went further in ruling that the College of Policing’s guidance that the police should record all non-crime hate incidents, as perceived by those taking offence at them, is an unlawful incursion on citizens’ freedom of expression. » | Sonia Sodha | Sunday, January 2, 2022

Sarkozy's Debate Targets Muslims
THE GUARDIAN: A week before the burqa ban, French Muslims find themselves accused of violating republican values

Claude Guéant, France's interior minister, was in typically conciliatory mood when he described the growing number of Muslims in his country as a "problem". Pointing to the fact that this community had grown from "very few" when the republic became a secular one in 1905, to 5-10 million today, Guéant highlighted the sight of many of them "praying in the street" as particularly undesirable. Guéant's government has chosen a period of unprecedented tension and volatility in the Arab world to launch a debate about the negative influence of Islam on French society. As his own pilots attack Libya with a ferocity so far not displayed by other coalition members, President Nicolas Sarkozy will settle down on Tuesday to watch the epic discussion unfold at a Paris hotel. Continue reading and comment » | Nabila Ramdani | Tuesday, April 05, 2011

My comment:

I have full sympathy for Sarkozy and for what he is trying to achieve. The man has courage indeed. That’s more than can be said for the wimps that govern us.

It must be remembered that France takes its secularism very seriously. They didn’t have a revolution for nothing! The revolution stood for liberté, egalité, and fraternité. Those three concepts are precisely what Islam does not stand for. Islam does not stand for liberty (unless one is talking about the liberty to worship Allah); Islam does not stand for equality (unless one is a member of the faith and referring to the equality of Muslim brothers and sisters); and Islam does not stand for farternity (unless one is talking of the fraternity of the ummah).

So it is very understandable that Sarkozy and his colleagues want to launch this debate on Islam, secularism, and la République. Were I to be he, I should wish to do the same; moreover, I wish that our politicians had the courage to stand up for what we believe in too. Alas, they are far too cowardly. – Mark

This comment also appears here

Words, Words, Words: The Decline of American Eloquence
TOWNHALL.COM: It was sad, watching the two remaining contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination engage in a civil little sparring match Thursday night. Because it was hard not to note, once again, the long slow decline of political debate in this country since Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas thought out and fought out the great issues of their day. Those were real debates rather than a joint press conference.

I would rather have heard less from my colleagues in the ever-intrusive media and more from the candidates themselves. It would be a step up if the press weren't involved in these productions at all except to report and comment on them. Matters were better arranged in the series of seven great debates between Mr. Lincoln and Judge Douglas in 1858.

But it is useless to dream of returning to that style of political engagement. Man, homo faber, doesn't just shape his tools, they in turn shape his mind. And our technology, in this case, television, long ago turned presidential debates into a contest between competing applause lines. Result: Instead of thought, we get sound bites. Words, Words, Words: The Decline of American Eloquence >>> By Paul Greenberg

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)