Earlier this year, it appeared as if the United Kingdom would adopt a “two-tiered” sentencing law, in which members of some minority groups would receive lesser sentences than others for the same crimes. In practice, this would have meant that the more white, male, or Christian someone is, the tougher the judge is instructed to be. While the Sentencing Council, which provides guidance for courts in Britain and Wales, has withdrawn the ruling, Aayan Hirsi Ali is correct in saying that it amounted to “[n]ormalising racism” and was “[c]ompletely outrageous.”

The nations sometimes referred to as the Anglosphere–the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.–have traditionally been at the forefront of liberties of speech, conscience, assembly, and religion. However, in recent years, they seem more set on squandering or even abandoning that heritage.

For example, in Scotland, laws claiming to protect so-called abortion rights could easily be interpreted as to criminalize those praying silently in a private house if within 200 meters of an abortion facility. Praying outside near an abortion center is already functionally criminalized.

In Australia, “Billboard Chris” was arrested and fined $800 for holding a sign protesting puberty blockers for children. Brisbane police said he was violating rules against “obstructing or unreasonably disturbing any person lawfully using the mall,” even though it’s obvious from the video that he wasn’t. Given how differently protests for approved causes are treated, it’s clear that Billboard Chris’s real “crime” was opposing transgender ideology.

In the United States, there is the case of Jack Phillips, who’s been targeted by the state of Colorado for 13 years now for refusing to celebrate a “gay wedding” and a gender transition. He’s prevailed twice in court, but both times on legal technicalities.

Few societies have prized liberty, however imperfectly, more than those born from the British Isles. Over 800 years ago, the Magna Carta enshrined the foundations of limited government and individual rights. The revolutions, first in Britain in the seventeenth century, and then in America in the eighteenth century, secured the idea that the government had no right to decide who could speak or what could be said. The twentieth century opposition to Fascist and Communist totalitarianism came first and foremost from England and then the United States.

The mix of Christian history and political principle made liberty a cornerstone of Anglo culture, until the last few years. Though it would be easy to blame Covid lockdowns, the draconian policies of those years only made worse a pre-existing condition. Even the rise of “woke-ism” was more a symptom than a cause. We’ve now reached the place where those on the Left wish to limit liberties in the name of social justice and many on the Right for regaining cultural influence. Both miss the point of why liberty was prized in the first place.

At root, we are nations who have forgotten what freedom is for, choosing instead to define freedom by what we are free from, such as rules, constraint, or responsibilities. Freedom is always unsustainable for a morally malformed people. The freedom to do however we wish always leads to tyranny, either slavery to one’s own passion or slavery to a force aimed at curbing behavior.

The liberties of conscience, including of religion, the press, and association, reflect a belief in who people are and what they are for. They are not based on the notion that all ideas are equally true and deserve equal hearing. It certainly is not based on the assumption that all people are equally good and should therefore “live their truth.”

Rather, our freedoms are both protected by the government and from the government because of what is true about humans, especially their frailty. With our limited knowledge and our fractured moral natures, we are always tempted to impose our views and our wills on our neighbors. Such corruption is only magnified by unchecked power, especially absolute government power.

Put differently, freedom is only sustainable if it is understood as a means to what is good but not as a good in and of itself. Freedom is a necessary prerequisite for the many goods of life that can only flourish when freely pursued and offered to the wider world, in the context of critique, dissent, and even error.

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