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Western governments living in fear?

As I've reported in this column, a growing number of Western governments now seem to be increasingly preoccupied with passing legislation designed to quash dissent and criticism from the public they're supposedly serving.

The UK and Australia are perhaps the shining examples of this sort of nonsense and the governments of both nations are proposing to make it a crime to criticise them -- a crime that can be punished by prison sentences.

This surely has to be a huge worry to anyone who values their personal rights and freedoms, especially the right to free speech.

Here in New Zealand we saw the last government dealing with the issue of quashing criticism by simply paying off the media to remain silent on such issues through the Public Interest Journalism fund.

Over in old blighty, the public seem to have grown a bit of a backbone and are pushing back against Kier Starmer's dictatorial stance on free speech.

A petition has been launched on the parliamentary website that calls for a general election and in a little over 24 hours it's attracted more than three quarters of a million signatures, with 100,000 signatures being added in the last hour alone.

That's pretty impressive, by any metric.

According to the rules, it only takes 100,000 signatures to such a petition before the matter is considered for debate so the outcome could be extremely interesting, especially given the huge lack of support for Starmer and his government revealed by recent polls

I can only hope that this signals a growing awareness within the ranks of voters all across the Western world that they are losing valuable freedoms in a way that compromises the very integrity of the democratic system.

One can also only hope that it won't take another world war to remind us all just how important those freedoms are and why they're worth fighting for.

Unfortunately one only has to look to the history books to see that war is often the friend of those who seek to divert their citizens' attention from domestic problems. Nothing solidifies a ruling party's support like a declaration of war. "Friends in adversity" and all that.

With this in mind, I can see why Keir Starmer's military support for Ukraine is increasing, despite Putin's threats of escalation. The irony is that Britain barely has enough missiles and military-might to protect its own shores right now so handing that over to Ukraine further weakens their ability to defend themselves, should the shite hit the fan.

Looking at New Zealand's defensive capabilities, should a global conflict arise from the Ukrainian situation, I think it's pretty fair to say we're stuffed.

We don't have any combat aircraft, most of our military gear is outdated and woefully inadequate and the size of our armed forces is tiny when compared to other nations.

Even worse, if some of China's 370-strong fleet of navy vessels were to arrive on our doorstep, they could probably annex our nation in hours. We couldn't even mount a civilian resistance movement because our government took all the military-style and semi-automatic rifles from the public a few years ago. Broomsticks and kitchen-knives will not an effective militia make.

The great reset can't come quickly enough. Good governments do not fear free speech, they embrace and promote it. That so many are now legislating against it proves that things have gone badly wrong.

Carpe Diem folks!

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