Via Power Line

James Paterson writes from Australia’s Institute for Public Affairs with news that Andrew Bolt, Australia’s most prominent conservative columnist, is currently being prosecuted under appallingly restrictive racial tolerance laws. Mark Steyn recorded this special message for an event held by the IPA in Australia to defend free speech.

“I’m phobia phobic. I don’t want the state regulating a hierarchy of phobias between different interest groups. The lights are going out on core western liberties one light at a time. One cartoonist at a time. One novelist at a time. One filmmaker at a time. And one newspaper columnist at a time.”

“But the minute you demand the intervention of state power to criminalize my opinion. The issue is not my opinions, but yours.”

“The onus is on you the accuser to justify your demand that state can have the power to strain, shrivel and ultimately shut down opinions of which it does not approve.”

“But if you’re not in favor of free speech you find offensive, repellent and loathsome. You’re not in favor of free speech at all and you’re on the side of creeping totalitarianism.”

As long as Mark Steyn is out there fighting for liberty with his wit injected wisdom, there will always be hope…

Also see: United We Stand: First Transatlantic Anti-Islamization Conference Coming to France July 2

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