magine this: You have a group of friends over for dinner. You are sitting around the table having a nice conversation about current events. You mention that you don’t like it when immigrants take advantage of social welfare instead of getting a job; you explain that your taxes would be lower if immigrants weren’t so lazy.
Now imagine this: Your teenage daughter has found herself a boyfriend, and you sit her down to have a conversation about the potential consequences of being intimate with him. Your daughter dismisses your concerns by saying that she can always get an abortion, whereupon you reply that abortions are immoral.
Would you be surprised if, in either of these cases, the police came to your house and arrested you for illegal speech?
For those of us who live in a country where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, the very idea of being arrested for speaking your mind is absurd. Yet, the creeping expansion of free speech restrictions in many other countries is bringing the Western world closer to a point where—as the Swedish saying goes—speaking is silver, but silence is gold.
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