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PETER HITCHENS: Paradise? No, but the Britain of my youth was FREE
UK Daily Mail ^ | February 20, 2021 | Peter Hitchens

Posted on 02/21/2021 3:31:26 AM PST by C19fan

When I spoke out in favour of free speech last week on Channel 4 News, I was unpleasantly surprised to find just how unpopular this view now is with the fashionable people who watch that programme.

My great sin was to suggest that the Britain of my youth had been much more free than it is now.

Oh, yes, they sneered, free for people like you – white, heterosexual males. They suggested that, for anyone else, the country was a seething pit of racial and sexual bigotry.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: History; Society
KEYWORDS: freedom; freespeech; peterhitchens; uk
One can say the same thing about the United States. We live in an age where one has the freedom to be a complete peacock but true freedom of thought is being stifled more and more.
1 posted on 02/21/2021 3:31:26 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan
When I was a kid in the '50s in California, I grew up in a large family and we were allowed to roam around far and wide. At age 6, I was given a list of the groceries my mom wanted, towed my wagon to the grocery story, got everything, paid for it and towed it back. Our doors were always unlocked, our windows open and crime never touched us.

There were problems, of course - segregation was real and evil - but we went through the upheaval of the '60s and I joined a relatively newly integrated Marine Corps and found that the other races of our country were as courageous and generous as everyone else.

Yet we also lost something, that spirit of innocence, of community, of safety, because despite all of the efforts to unify, there were still holdouts and malcontents and criminals mixed in and now we are where we are today.

I judge everyone by how they perform and how they relate to each other. And lock my doors and set the alarms every evening.

2 posted on 02/21/2021 5:33:52 AM PST by Chainmail (Remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence)
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To: C19fan
We governed ourselves and disciplined ourselves, and by doing so we obtained a freedom far greater than any available now. I miss it, and am not ashamed to do so.

Truly spoken.

Interesting that they are not accepting comments to this article. They never do when they know people are going to support a non-PC view.

3 posted on 02/21/2021 5:58:06 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: C19fan

“They suggested that, for anyone else, the country was a seething pit of racial and sexual bigotry.”

Actually, that is also free speech. In fact, it’s not possible to have free speech without it.


4 posted on 02/21/2021 6:30:53 AM PST by BobL
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To: C19fan

“It was not paradise – though by comparison with now, the liberty of children to live free-range lives was so astonishing that many find it difficult to believe it happened at all.”

Virtually everyone here, me included, understand the above. We all grew up where we simply wandered outside, wherever we wanted to go, when school let out, every day. Parents had NO CLUE where we were and the rule was to come home for dinner. If they didn’t hear from us, they called other parents, until they found us.

And the thing was, we ALL came home, every night - I doubt anyone here personally knows of a kid who was abused or abducted, even with all of this freedom - I sure don’t. We all knew who the ‘creeps’ were, even without them having to march in parades back then, and we stayed away. The dangerous ones were locked up - back then, even Democrats had no problem locking up violent and dangerous people, regardless of whether they supported Kennedy or Nixon, didn’t matter...they were held to the same societal standard.

Now we can’t even leave our kids at a school bus stop for 5 minutes without being there. As we tell our grandchildren the stories about the freedoms we had growing up, it gets more difficult even for us to believe them, let alone today’s kids.

(I do realize that there are still tiny pockets of America where kids have freedom, but 99% of kids will never see that)


5 posted on 02/21/2021 6:44:41 AM PST by BobL
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To: C19fan

“What lies behind this destructive intolerant frenzy, now more than 200 years old? It is a very interesting question, yet it is the opponents of these changes who are always derided as obsessives, not those who demand them. Why?”

The above applies to EVERYTHING, not just bananas. Ben Carson opposed same-sex marriage in 2016. Obama opposed the same in 2008. No one said anything negative about Obama, but Ben was labeled as a hate-filled extremist.

Easy answer to this: THEY set the rules, because WE let them. We might as well get used to it - far more is coming since WE listened to Lin Wood and GAVE THEM two more Senate seats (in Georgia) without even making them cheat.


6 posted on 02/21/2021 6:52:39 AM PST by BobL
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To: C19fan

As far as speech goes, we had a great balance - if you advocated violence in any way, you paid a price - if not, no one cared.

Then two things happened simultaneously in starting in the 1960s, BOTH were bad, and NEITHER was opposed by those in charge, the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’.

LESS FREEDOM OF SPEECH
It started with banning the easy stuff, like the n-word and similar. It was ‘hate speech’. But who was setting the rules? We never asked. Now, even pointing out CLEAR EVIDENCE of Election Fraud, or refusing to be lectured at (at work) by BLM is considered ‘hate speech’.

MORE FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Most people don’t think about it, be we also stopped opposing people who called for the violent overthrow of our government (at least regarding the Left doing it), I know, I was there. And we now even protect groups who call for killing police in cold blood.

The so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ was a DISASTER, they didn’t protect the country, and now it is too late to take it back. I guess they figured that people doing the above in the 1960s and 1970s were ‘just kids’ and would grow out of it. They never did, and now they rule over us, and the best we can hope for a non-violent dissolution...but it’s also hard to see that happening.


7 posted on 02/21/2021 7:12:20 AM PST by BobL
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