This Is the Gentle Tyranny
There’s a perfect word for this system, a system that reaches into every corner of your existence, from your speech to how you spend your private life, and justifies itself all as being ‘for your own good’.
Free Speech
Freedoms Exist to Be Exercised
My contribution to a recent legal symposium on religious freedom and belief, at BYU university in Utah.
Damien Grant Nails the BSA’s Overreach: Time to Pull the Plug on These Broadcasting Busybodies
Let the market sort it out: bad content dies a natural death when punters switch off. Time for the government to listen to their own minister’s old words and give the BSA the boot.
How the FSU Turned the Tide
The Telegraph has run a feature on the Free Speech Union, crediting its years of campaigning against non-crime hate incidents.
‘Broadcasting’ Too Wide a Net
The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) attempted overreach is just another example of bureaucratic and judicial hubris, and it is time for parliament to reassert its sovereignty.
Tikanga Blasphemy and Free Speech in NZ
New Zealand repealed its blasphemy law in 2019. Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 – “blasphemous libel” was formally removed by parliament. Yet here we are, 60 years later, watching an unelected regulatory body attempt to recreate the same offence through the back door.
Why Do They Keep Cancelling Each Other?
They invited anyone who agreed with them to add their names to the letter – and 2,000 academics duly obliged. Who do those witch-hunters remind you of? It’s inconceivable that they genuinely believed that scientific knowledge has no greater claim to being true than Māori mythology.
You Have a Right to Silence – Use It
The sad fact is that citizens can no longer trust the police.
Is This Right-Wing Critical Race Theory?
Critical Race Theory is an example of a left-wing movement that aims to take over institutions and use them to advance a left-wing agenda. (And Critical Race Theorists might make the very same argument in reverse.)
The Real Jan 6th Coup
The lesson for all of us is that if we do not regularly but peacefully exercise our First Amendment guarantees we will definitely lose them, regardless of who is in power.
We Must Take the High Ground When It Comes to Free Speech
‘Your greatest ever prime minister proved more than equal to the task of defeating his political enemies through ‘more speech’ rather than ‘enforced silence’. Trump and the other leaders of insurgent, populist parties would do well to follow the same path.’
Words, Not Witch Hunts
Censorship is narrow-minded. It’s shortsighted. Yes, it’s a natural impulse to ideas we find abhorrent. But it’s through calling them out that progress is made, not by cancelling them.
Lying Through Both of Their Faces
The AHRC wants censorship so they can save ‘free expression’.