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A slight problem with this blog\’s Guardian filters

Apologies, the force field that usually manages to maintain reality around here, even when quoting from The Guardian, seems to have failed for a few minutes this morning.

The reaction to this story should be appended to the facts of this one and vice versa. If you\’re the traditional sort of right wing authoritarian that is.

The facts and reactions are fine as they are if you\’re the traditional sort of left wing authoritarian.

If you\’re actually that rare breed, an actual civil libertarian then of course both governments are a bunch of cunts. Free speech is indeed free speech and whether you call an elected authoritarian shithead or a non-elected authoritarian shithead an authoritarian shithead it\’s all part of that civil liberty.

Not that the governors of any society are all that happy with that version of civil liberty mind. Which is why that civil liberty has to be supported as indivisible: I get to call Cameron/May/Balls/Miliband a cunt so that you too get to call any one of them you don\’t like the same. It doesn\’t just apply to those you don\’t like: it applies to others saying it about those you do too.

Good manners might prevent you doing so (although my lack of them obviously does not prevent me) but that law should not.

6 thoughts on “A slight problem with this blog\’s Guardian filters”

  1. There was a survey of MP’s views of Section 5 of the Public Order Act (which makes it illegal to insult anyone). Survey was commissioned by reformsection5.org and it found twice as many Labour MPs wanted to retain Section 5 (i.e. the right of the authorities to arbitrarily arrest anyone) as Tory or Lib Dem MPS.

    No surprises there. The real fascists are on the political left, not the political right.

  2. Yep, the real fascists are on the left as shown by the example of the anti-fascist league of Unite Against Fascism who are actually extremely fascist in their campaign for everyone to only follow their one and true path.

  3. Admiral Collingwood, the Napoleonic War one, was reputed to have said that the men could say what they liked as long as they did what he wanted. A little more of a similar pragmatism amongst the gilded ones of Westminster would be of benefit to society in general.

  4. Of Frederick the Great, something of an authoritarian, it was noted: –

    “No monarch was less particular in maintaining his royal dignity. He commanded his attendants to take down from a high wall a scurrilous placard upon himself, which a crowd was trying to read, and put it where they could see it better. “My subjects and I,” Frederick said, “have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please…”

  5. Also from the annals of apocrypha is the one about Freddie the Great encountering a peasant in the street who shrank from him. Enquiring why the peasant tried to hide from him, and the peasant replying that he was afraid of him, FtG proceeded to belabour the unfortunate peasant with his cane whilst shouting ‘You should love me, scum, not fear me!’.

  6. Admiral Collingwood, the Napoleonic War one, was reputed to have said that the men could say what they liked as long as they did what he wanted.

    The mantra at Dartmouth was “you can always tell when Jack is upset, he stops moaning …”

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