BBC News – Racist Tube rant woman Jacqueline Woodhouse jailed.
The freedoms of people you like; the rights to free expression of those who share your views, those are the easy ones to accept. And the least important. For freedom to mean anything, we need – like Voltaire – to defend to the death the rights of those with whom we disagree. This is why all laws based on people taking offence at each other are mistaken.
The public response to this case saddens me. It reveals that Voltaire's thinking is alien to most modern Brits. The 1970's student union nonsense of "no platform for fascists and racists" has become the law of our once free nation – and we are too stupid (as most students were then) to understand why that's wrong.
OK, so you don't agree with this silly woman. Neither do I (though in this context I feel ashamed to feel the need to say so). But the same forces that have made her silliness and rudeness an imprisonable offence are ready to do the same to you and me. You have views that offend the Left. British Leftists are characterised by their readiness to take offence. They will never rest until they have you in fear of this stupid woman's fate.
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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