In this day and age of "anything is a good excuse for limiting civil liberties," there are times when you can't help but look at other countries and think that it's still good to be an American. Take this lovely bit of legislation that is being proposed by Blair's government, that lovely cadre of fascists and thugs that rule Brittannia.
The proposed Serious Crime Prevention Order is intended to combat organised crime where the police do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. It would enable civil courts to impose the orders on individuals, even if they had not been convicted of a crime.
I don't want to spoil the rest of it, but suffice it to say that it's basically the closest thing they can get to a Minority Reportesqu "Department of Precrime" without getting ahold of some clairvoyant crack babies. It fits in well with Tony Blair's existing antipathy toward the rule of law and due process, which has been made quite clear in the past.
The good part in the article, though, is when they point out that this legislation would be thrown out on its face in the United States if it even made it out of committee in Congress. And the Brits wonder why we actually wrote down and organized our constitution in one document...
In all fairness, though, both our chief executives regard our constitutions, regardless of their form, as just "G$% damn pieces of paper." (Hey, even if they haven't been that profanely blunt, their actions cuss out our traditions and constitutions like drunken sailors.)
Exactly right. As much as I complain about our government, I would never want to live anywhere else, especially somewhere that didn't have a lot of guns around.
The scary thing is that a) everything Britain does we try to do here eventually, and b) gossamer legal designations like "enemy combatant," where we just throw citizens in a military brig for years without trial or charge, are pretty much the same thing.
They may cuss out our traditions, but I'm glad to live in a place where those traditions run pretty deep...
Oh, and the obvious answer to the title question -- what freedoms could they possibly hate?
All of 'em, of course. That's what slaves are.
Bear in mind, unlike a nation that once believed in "no king but King Jesus", that the British believe they are "subjects of the Crown", i.e., peons, serfs, chattel.
Those attitudes also run VERY deep.
oh ;)
I guess you just weren't clear whether they were elected terrorists or not...
(and by that I mean bureaucrats ;)