Internet censorship, nanny state, police state!?

The attack on internet freedom like so many things this Rudd Govt does or wants to do, sounds plausible enough on a superficial level but digging deeper and understanding the ramifications or indeed the unintended consequences of actions is not their strong suite. What may start out as an attack on illegal sites will very likely end up with the Government telling us what to think. You reckon I'm joking....this is the Government that requires all MP's, not just their own, to have written matter vetted/approved by them before mailing out to constituents and all criticism of policies or individuals has a very hard time getting through. The seemingly inexorable slide towards a nanny state is the same slide as that towards a police state. Freedom of speech, as I have written before, needs to be just that, not a value judgment of some government official, elected or otherwise. Bad ideas are best defeated out in the open, resentment and fomenting of suspect ideas happen most often in the dark. The though police are on the march (read Janet Albrechtsen's piece in The Australian this week, )the do-gooders and the apologists are perversely crimping the freedoms of the majority. Certainly minorities need to be respected and protected but not at the expense of our general freedoms and it needs to be a level playing field. When did Western society, generally the van of freedom, become the whipping post of other cultures in our own midst? We have actually been victims of our own cherished freedoms but the solution is not control but nurturing the freedoms we retain and pushing back the creep of political correctness, cant and prejudice. When someone says something we don't like we should say so but at the same time defend their right to say it and fair do's, when we say something they don't like then they should argue against us but at the same time defend our right to say it. Some chance but we can but try. Best regards, Jonathan.