How would you like to be made to PROVE your innocence in court because a lawyer for the state doesn’t appreciate the memes you’ve got stored in your phone? Because that’s the future Ireland’s government has in store for its citizens.
The left doesn’t notice any problem its authoritarian streak. Because they are convinced it is always ‘in service of the greater good’.
These are the precise people of whom CS Lewis warned us about when he said:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis “God In The Dock”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Ireland is pressing legislation that, supposedly crafted in opposition to ‘hate’ speech will make it all but impossible to have the sorts of robust disagreement about sensitive topics that have, in the past, been necessary to correct social ills.
It curbs the sorts of hard conversations that have been required in the past to outlaw slavery, child labor, and the abuses of power of religions or regimes that hold power. The silencing of such dissent has been one of the universal characteristics of a brutal authoritarian government that runs roughshod over the rights of its citizens.
It looks like Ireland is getting ready to pass just such bill into law. For the public good, of course. Just like there were certain necessary ‘precautions’ that had to take place after that Reichstag fire in 1930’s Germany. Don’t worry. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Ireland’s Green Party Sen. Pauline O'Reilly: “We are restricting freedom but we’re doing it for the common good…Yes you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good.”pic.twitter.com/A1JN1yMyVv
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 27, 2023
The language for such a bill passed the lower house last year. It has not yet been ratified. The Brownstone Institute gave a very good summary of what’s going on, for anyone looking into the details.
They highlight four key areas of the proposed legislation that would give Ireland the most draconian speech laws in the Western world.
First, “protected characteristics” are race, colour, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and disability.
Second, according to this bill it shall be an offence to— (i) “communicate material to the public or a section of the public,” or (ii) “behave in a public place in a manner, that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics,” provided “the person does so with intent to incite violence or hatred against such a person or group of persons on account of those characteristics…or being reckless as to whether such violence or hatred is thereby incited.”
Third, the bill defines an offence of “possession of material likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or group of persons on account of their protected characteristics with a view to the material being communicated to the public.”
Fourth, the bill stipulates that if it is “reasonable to assume that the material was not intended for…personal use,” then “the person shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have been in possession of the material (with a view to the material being communicated to the public).” —Brownstone
The Irish Times, in reporting the bill’s progress toward ratification made reference to concerns raised by the opposition, which included the following:
Concerns were raised by some Senators about the potential for the legislation to have a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech and at the lack of a definition for hatred in the proposed law.
[…] It will criminalise any intentional or reckless communication or behaviour that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a “protected characteristic”.
[…] Independent Senator Sharon Keogan argued that the proposed law is “so broad in its scope and casts a prosecutorial net so wide that upon its passing no citizen will ever be entirely sure what they are free to say”.
She suggested the goal of the legislation is to have a “chilling effect on freedom of speech”.She also said the legislation “reverses the burden of proof” highlighting parts that criminalise the possession or material likely to incite violence or hatred.
She said a section of the Bill says that it in instances where it is reasonable to assume that the material was not intended for personal use, the individual “would be considered to be guilty unless they can prove their innocence.”
Ms Keogan said “This really is dreadful law and I do genuinely think that you’re pushing it too far minister.”
To her enduring shame, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee acknowledged these objections and doubled down in defending them.
She defended the vague definition of hatred on purpose because she was concerned about guilty people being caught in ‘loopholes’.
Like so many zealots for their various causes, she was more concerned about the failure to punish guilty people than she was about innocent people being wrongly maligned by a state with a near-absolute power to destroy the life, reputation, and livelihood of the accused.
McEntee also defended her legislation’s reversal of the burden of proof… of assuming nefarious purposes for the ownership of supposed ‘hateful’ material.
When they start coming for our rights ‘for our own good’, we’d best have the steel we need in our spine BEFORE the state puts its boot on our neck.
Cross-posted with Clash Daily
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