Reading a comment to my entry "UK press watchdog backs writer who won't read mail from Jews" (please read it yourself) got me thinking a bit about another danger of allowing the government to censor our information for us, and punishing those it believes have spoken, and merely spoken, wrongly. Now, this is still a relatively minor issue here in the US, baring college campuses and some over-zealousness on the part of the FCC, our First Ammendment protections are still relatively strong, but outside the US it's a different matter. (On further thought about how bad things are on the campuses, maybe I should withdraw the qualifyer altogether.)

We all worry that if you hand the reigns of speech regulation over to the government, over-zealous beauraucrats will begin their task of making the world a better place and the next thing you know you won't know what's OK, and what's not and the next thing after that the Government is writing your articles for you.

But what if the opposite is the case? In the article pointed to, an official body refused to take action. The language the Ha'Aretz item used was:

Well now, that's a problem isn't it? Because you know and I know (I hope!) that it was not "legitimate" and that we are capable of figuring that out for ourselves. In fact, it's our responsibility to do so. But there this commission has been set up to do it for us, and horror, they are not stifling speech, but instead, one could make a very good case for the fact that they have made the situation worse.

The job is theirs to make the decision, so not only does the public get lazy and not take the responsibility for making their own moral decisions, but now, both Ingrams and the Observer feel themselves justified. Will they alter their course or reconsider their approach? Not likely. It's been declared OK! And that's how many of their readers will take it - both those in favor of Ingrams's bigoted point of view, who's had themselves justified ("You see, these Jews will complain about anything...") as well as those who, left to their own devices and own moral choices would have far more to say about Ingrams and company but for the fact that they've been made lazy by a government that does their thinking for them. And thus bigotry like anti-semitism prospers and flourishes in an environment that, ironicly, was set up to discourage it.