Americans who are fearful that they will soon lose some of their freedoms should look no farther than Canada and Britain to see the shape of things to come. “Freedom”, for the left, appears to have become something that ends at the bathhouse door (that is, if you’re not a member of a Designated Victim Group™). At the same time radical judges are courageously imposing the social mores of a French brothel upon the rest of the West, lawmakers and judges both are undermining other, more fundamental, freedoms.

Let us consider the case of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party. He was recently arrested for calling Islam a, “vicious, wicked faith.” Now, I’ll stipulate to the fact that Nick Griffin, by most accounts, appears to be an unsavoury character. I’ll further grant you that the British National Party is a hideous collection of low-life racists. But, I assert, even low-life racists ought to retain their freedom of speech. Especially when all Mr. Griffin said was something that millions of people without a hint of racial prejudice in their personal make up believe.

Scratch that: even if Mr. Griffin were to be caught on video screaming racist obscenities while dressed up in blackface, he should not be arrested. People should not be judicially punished simply for the things that they believe.

Now, some may say: how do you reconcile this with your calls for people who support or sympathize with terrorists to be punished? That, at least, is an easy matter.

I don’t believe that it’s a crime, punishable by law, to be pro-terrorist. I believe that it’s an act of war concert with our enemies. We’ve broken down the distinction between crimes and wars. Crimes need to be punished judicially. Acts of war need to be punished martially. I think we need to bear in mind a clear distinction between the two.

I don’t think that anyone should go to jail for being a member of al-Qaeda. I think that, in keeping with a proud tradition, anyone found to be a member or supporter of al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, including within the United States, ought to be treated as all combatants found out of uniform have traditionally been treated under the laws of war. In other words, anyone who is a member of al-Qaeda or takes any action to support them should be tried by a military commission and then summarily executed.

But, I’ve been diverted. The point I was getting at was that there are different standards for those advocating a domestic political position and those working for the enemies of one’s country. The freedoms of the former need to be protected. The freedoms of the latter need to be ended with rope.

We seem to have this backwards. Far too many in Western societies seem to be interested in protecting our enemies and punishing domestic political expression.

It only gets worse: in Britain, the Labour Government is preparing a law against “religious hatred” which would, in all probability, make even less statements of opposition to Islam a crime. One of the individuals working on the new law has gone so far as to say that it would, “make it illegal to say that Muslims are a threat to Britain.”

Well, let me say two things right now. First: I agree with Mr. Griffin that Islam is a, “wicked, vicious faith.” There can be, and are, good Moslems but that does not change the obvious and fundamental fact that Islam itself is, in general, a bad thing and that we’d all be better off had it never been created. Second: I agree that Moslems are a threat to Britain, to Canada, to America and to free people everywhere.

We have some evidence that Islam is compatible with democracy, but we have very little evidence that it’s compatible with pluralism. That, if we’re courageous enough to face the truth, is the real reason for the persecution of people like Mr. Griffin and for the whole concept of “religious hatred” laws.

If you make a play falsely slandering Jesus as a homosexual, you’ll be lauded for your courage and face, at the most, a few threatening letters.

If someone actually let you produce a play accurately depicting Mohammed as a pedophile (see: Aisha), the odds are fairly high that both you and your family will be murdered.

That is why, if everything goes according to plan, it will soon be a crime in Britain (and elsewhere!) to defame the character of Mohammed. The authorities have looked at their options, and decided that they’d rather not deal with future religious riots of the sort that we saw in Nigeria over the Miss World Pageant.

One reason I plan to emigrate at the earliest opportunity is that I have what I believe to be a well-founded fear that Canada is, at the most, a half-decade away from the point where political expression on the issues of Islam and other matters will be fully criminalized. Frankly, given the size of my mouth, I’ve very little doubt that, if I stay, someone will try and come at me for something.

Already, as a result of various e-mails I’ve received threatening me with attempts to press criminal “hate speech” charges against me (my favourite being one announcing that anyone expressing support for President Bush could be prosecuted under Canadian anti-genocide laws) that I’ve prepared plans to, if necessary, flee a political prosecution and seek asylum in the United States.

That sounds crazy, I know. But I’m not at all sure if it sounds as crazy as it once did. A few years ago, a man in Saskatoon was successfully prosecuted by a “human rights tribunal” for taking out an ad in a newspaper quoting certain Bible versus that denounce homosexuality. Under a new criminal law passed last year, it seems entirely possible that someone could end up in jail for doing the same thing today.

Defenders of that law claim that it contains a protection for religious expression. We’ll see. So did the law under which he was prosecuted a few years ago. The tribunal got around the exemption by claiming that any speech that is ”hateful” cannot be considered to have been made in “good faith”, an interpretation of the law which essentially nullified the exception.

In defense of our freedoms, we must stand up for the repugnant. For, if we do not defend those who we can agree, by mutual consent, to be “bad” it won’t be long before the state starts to come for all the lesser shades of “bad.”