Please, sir, they demand examples...

The recent George Jonas article on the growth of the state and the shrinking freedoms of the west brought a challenge to Mr. Jonas from his readers, resulting in another bit of excellence:

The world had a one-night stand with freedom. She came in the late 19th century and went in the early 20th. Even the citizens of semi-constitutional monarchies, such as Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, were freer in the pre-World War I era than the income-and consumption-taxed inhabitants of the European Union are today. They were certainly freer in terms of individual expression, enterprise, and mobility than the photoID'd, hate-crime-muzzled, gun-registered, dog-tail-length-regulated, smoke-freed, and body-searched citizens of the interventionist democracies are in our times, Canada included.

Examples? How many do you want? In the narcosis of "progress," the liberal state clings to its dogmas, sacrileges, holy things, and taboos. It guards them as jealously and enforces them as rigidly as the Taliban guards and enforces its version of Islam. Maybe it doesn't enforce them as cruelly -- maybe.

Exaggeration? You decide. In the year 1300, a period we call the Dark Ages, a pig was tried for blasphemy in France. In the year 2000, 200 years into the Age of Enlightenment, on the threshold of the 21st century, in the United States of America, the authorities charged a six-year-old boy with sexual harassment for kissing a six-year-old girl.

True, in the Dark Ages few were scandalized; in the Age of Enlightenment, there were many. The pig faced the death penalty if convicted, while the six-year-old didn't -- perhaps I should say "probably didn't" because who'd predict what people who charge six-year-olds with sexual harassment may do. Nor was this a unique event. Some years later in Brockton, Mass., another six-year-old was suspended for touching a classmate's skin in violation of the school's sexual harassment policy. No charges were laid, but the school principal notified the police, the Department of Social Services, and the District Attorney's office. No, he didn't contact the United Nations for some reason. Later the boy's parents sued and the school district settled for an undisclosed sum.

While this is a happier ending than registering six-year-olds as dangerous sex offenders, it illustrates the neo-medieval ambiance of the liberal-fascist state. No doubt the expression will offend some who have no trouble practicing liberal-fascism, but are too sensitive for the word. In democracy-exporting countries there's usually a berth for them in the sheltered workshops of human rights commissions that continue to offer safe environments for the fragile psyches of liberalism's Gestapo.

Who-woo, hulla-balloo! That Jonas guy is getting a little exercised over this one, and well he should. It's excellent. Read the whole thing here.