Even Goons Have the Right to Freedom of Speech. Especially Goons, in Fact.

If only Britain had something comparable to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution then we’d enjoy greater freedoms than is currently the case. Three cheers, then, to Bagehot for defending liberalism and liberty from the predations of the law and, naturally, the Sun newspaper.

The case? An easy one that might have been designed as a litmus or Rorshach test designed to discover who actually really believes in the “values” we like to congratulate ourselves for holding and those for whom such values and concerns are unimportant and may be abandoned at the first sign of trouble or the dreadful prospect that someone, somewhere is doing something of which you disapprove.

So, yes, Emdamur Choudhury should not have been prosecuted, far less convicted for his Remembrance Sunday “protest” during which he burned some poppies and chanted anti-British and anti-military slogans.