Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
Publilius Syrus, from the Sententiae. Image from the movie “Being There” (1979), from the novel by Jerzy Kosinski.
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Publilius Syrus
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Locke & Shays
August 29 marks the 1632 birthday of British philosopher John Locke, author of Two Treatises of Government, and one of the strongest intellectual influences on America’s 18th century independence movement and subsequent constitutional thinking. Locke died on October 28, 1704.
On August 29, 1786, Shays’ Rebellion began. The rebellion was an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers reacting very negatively against the high debt and tax burdens enacted to pay off the Revolutionary War. This rebellion scared American leaders into revising the Articles of Confederation, a process that led not to a mere handful of changes but to the adoption of a whole new Constitution.
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 Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released.… That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind.…”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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George Santayana
The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
George Santayana, “Dickens,” Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922).
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Slavery Abolished
On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, formally abolishing slavery throughout most the British Empire.
Sandro Gozi, European Union parliament member, wants Elon Musk’s Twitter operation gone. Out of the European Union.
Not no matter what. Only if Twitter — “X” — keeps flouting the EU’s censorship rules.
Gozi says: “If Elon Musk does not comply with the European rules on digital services, the EU Commission will ask the continental operators to block X or, in the most extreme case, force them to completely dismantle the platform in the territory of the Union.”
Oh dear.
This threat comes right after EU official Thierry Breton’s threatening letter to Musk about his impending Twitter interview with Donald Trump. Musk told Breton to “[obscenity deleted]” and proceeded with the interview. Other EU arbiters of speech quickly dissociated themselves from Breton’s threat.
So maybe Gozi’s confidence about what fellow EU commissars will do if Musk does not play ball is misplaced. Perhaps the others will think about how Twitter users throughout Europe would react if their X accounts became “ex-” accounts.
Various Italian officials, Gozi’s countrymen, roundly repudiated his gabble.
“Silencing the voice of millions of people in order to strike out at those who think differently from them?” challenged Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. “Unacceptable and disturbing.”
The political party of Giorgia Meloni issued a statement saying that the “contemporary left [are] allergic to opinions that are not aligned with their mainstream, and inquisitors of anyone who does not submit to their suffocating cloak of conformism.”
Elon Musk likely sees the truth: this fight is winnable.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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