One Man's Meat Is Another Man's Murder

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (now there's a political heavyweight) says she intends to "work closer" with--ie bully--internet providers to ban extremist websites, which are shouldering a lot of the blame for people being recruited to terrorist causes.

Uh-oh.

Now, before the spirit of Senator McCarthy rises indignantly in you, let me state (though it sickens me that I should have to), that I loathe Islamism (as opposed to Islam), with a passion. I hate any philosophy that's anti-intellectual, anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-alcohol, sexually puritanical and prone to enforce its agenda with violence. That's why I have a problem with the contemporary version of Christianity as well, though other than at the State level Christianity tends not to be violent.

Put barriers onto websites so that those under sixteen can't see them, by all means. But after sixteen isn't a person presumed to be an adult, and capable of making his or her own decisions? These Islamists will find ways of circulating their pernicious material anyway. Why do we want to help their cause by making political martyrs of their leaders and organisers?

And once legislation of the sort Smith is proposing (I presume they're going to legislate and not just act freely, this--let us remember--unelected government of ours), where are they going to stop? How, after all, do you define extremism?

Edward Abbey's fine novel "The Monkey-Wrench Gang" is, I understand, regarded in some quarters in the United States as advocating terrorism. It's about a disorganised band of environmentalists destroying machinery and blowing up bridges that are spoiling the beauty of the free spaces of the American West. Naughty, I'll grant you, and highly expensive for whoever has to foot the bill. But terrorism? What would you call businessmen working hand in hand with corrupt politicians to wreck the natural habitat of thousands of wild creatures, and steal from our beleaguered spirits the last few places a human being can go to escape the concrete and steel that are strangling him?

The society we live in is supposed to be a free one, with the exchange of opinion and the resulting vigorous debate between opposing views the engine that powers it.

If you start hacking away at that principle, Ms Smith, the whole social tree will fall down.