Originally published via Armageddon Prose:

As I’ve noted elsewhere, while we in the West have been trained to reflexively fear goosestepping despots in pressed Hugo Boss uniforms, today’s authoritarians look a lot more like this Irish lady, Green Party Senator Pauline O’Reilly – young, female, and obsessed with the “safety” of “marginalized communities.”

Consider her remarks in the context of an Orwellian anti-free speech bill before the Irish parliament, Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022.

“We are restricting freedom for the common good”: Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O’Reilly says that her government’s hate speech bill is about “restricting freedom,” and censoring views on gender identity if those views create “discomfort.”#gript pic.twitter.com/H7QIT0QHmf

— gript (@griptmedia) June 15, 2023

“When one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good.

If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

You will be made to understand that suppression of free expression by self-appointed arbiters of morality — the birthright of anyone born in the West post-Enlightenment — is loving, and liberal.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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