“…The nature of his arrest renders the contrast as clear as it could possibly be. Yesterday, Linehan was in the United States — living his life, sharing his opinions, enjoying his independence. Today, he is in England — under observation, subject to surveillance, at liberty only if he vows not to speak where people might hear. This is not, I’m afraid to say, one of those questions of taste: In this matter, America has got it right, and England has got it wrong. What was done to Graham Linehan was an act of calculated tyranny of the sort to which the British have become far too accustomed in recent decades. In other circumstances, they would be likely able to see this. Were an Englishman to fly to Russia and be arrested for making jokes or pointed comments, the contours would at once seem familiar. But with transgenderism as the topic, “hate” as the justification, and the United States as the foil, a myopia descends.
I cannot quite put my finger on why, but, all in all, it seems to me wholly appropriate that, immediately after Linehan was arrested for speaking, he was taken to an NHS-run hospital to recover. That, evidently, is the new British mode. In the year 2025, Britain has a parliament that can meet to help you kill yourself, but not to protect your speech; an exchequer that can pluck the population’s feathers from 9,000 different angles, but that has no interest in generating wealth; and a network of police forces that are incapable of solving the most sordid crimes imaginable, but that are sufficiently well-staffed to guarantee that if an outspoken Irish comedian steps off a plane from Arizona, he will be met by enough lawmen to fill a small office. During the worst days of Covid-19, the British government instructed the population to sacrifice every last human desire it had to ensure the survival and comfort of their state-provided nurses. Mercifully, that virus has mostly disappeared. Regrettably, it has been replaced by another one — and, this time, there is no antidote available but sustained mass revolt…”
