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Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing

Paul Jacob on free speech in Britain.

Twelve years ago, Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame took a stand against a law that criminalizes “insulting” speech. He was participating in a campaign to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986.

In his remarks launching the campaign, recently resurrected on Twitter, Atkinson said that his concern was less for himself as a person with a high public profile than “for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”

And what about the thousands of cases that “weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention? Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released.… That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind.…”

And he said more than this. Luckily it’s recorded.

This effectively delivered argument, forceful and often funny, by a well-​known personality, had its effect. The Reform Section 5 campaign succeeded. The law was amended.

But the victory, though important, was narrow. And, since that win, sweeping assaults on speech that offends somebody or other continue in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries where people should know better than to emulate the censorship of authoritarian governments to which we aspire to provide an alternative. We’re going to need a lot more funny speeches.

Because this threat to freedom is so serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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3 replies on “Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing”

Western leaders aspire to globalism, not to freedom. Individual rights and freedom are anathema to globalists. The nation-​state will be eviscerated. It has been a slow process but the end of human freedom will come quickly. The arc of history bends toward tyranny.

I would propose the issues of free speech are becoming more and more important as the government, in our case the federal government, continues to impinge upon what should have been the private life its citizens. 

The ever increasing incursions, by law and regulation, while generally motivated as being done for “your own good” or “the common good” they are, each and every, a reduction of personal freedom. Therefore, it has become common that complaints voiced are actually criticisms of laws or regulations and their application. The government does not easily tolerate persons advocating ignoring or violation of such.
The bigger and more intrusive government, which is always growing, must by its nature be ever more authoritarian as it become totalitarian.
The US Constitution was written to as an attempt to limit the federal government, a purpose which has been lost and forgotten causing the erosion or disappearance of the “inalienable” rights it sought to guarantee.

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