How freedom dies

"Freedom is an expensive thing. It is also extremely fragile. For all tyranny does not come with tanks and jackboots. Tyranny also creeps in, like the fog, on little cat feet. Softly, soothingly. Tyranny carries a nicely lettered sign on which it says, "This is being done for the public good." Tyranny is sly. It whispers to you and says, "You and I know what the best thing is to do. But those poor people over there are not as fortunate as you and I. They do not have the wisdom to know that what we want is really for their own good."... But watch out for tyranny's trick. Watch for the trick when tyranny shifts to rules that will prevent a man from advocating a point of view. For all those rules that the founders of the Republic tried so hard to rivet into the Constitution were to protect that right of advocacy."

Or, if they can't outright ban the advocacy, the "powers that be" will at least make life difficult for their outspoken enemies. Ask Joe the Plumber. Or this British Member of Parliament:

...one of the most egregious violations of political freedom in a Western democracy has, at least on this side of the Atlantic, gone almost without comment. I mean the sudden arrest in London last week of of Damian Green, a conservative MP and Shadow Minister for Immigration, who was seized by anti-terrorist personnel from the Metropolitan police, held for questioning for 9 hours, and whose private papers and computer files in his home and office in the House of Commons were confiscated. The Honorable Member’s offense? Embarrassing Gordon Brown’s government. How did he do this? By revealing in debate on the floor of the House of Commons various lapses, failures, and dirty-little-secrets about the government’s immigration policy...

Make of all this what you will. Just be careful who you discuss it with... Big Brother's probably listening...