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Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

How does a government eradicate civil liberties? By creating an evil and then pretending to solve it, if only people could give up a little of their freedom. Little by little, one imaginary evil after another, we suddenly find ourselves devoid of the freedoms we once enjoyed, and we have – each and every one of us – become the evil that the government targets.

The strawmen of today are internet criminals: scammers, identity thieves, child pornographers. With the permeance of the internet, they have become the dark, mysterious, scary monsters of our time: a readily available excuse for the government to curtail its population’s freedoms.

Self acclaimed liberals often claim that freedom and equality are the two most important values society can have. Indeed, this is evident in their moral systems, and as a liberal democracy (which is distinguished from the ideology) our society generally reflects those values, or at least the profession of them.

These values are supposed to protect the weak and vulnerable, or the unpopular from the majority, yet in modern western society it is exactly when the most unpopular ideas are expressed that the otherwise champions of freedom suspend these values to silence dissent. This, of course, happens with almost every controversial issue, and both conservatives and liberals (and everyone in between) are guilty of it. However, while they all nit-pick the circumstances under which to champion freedom, conservatives are not being hypocrites while doing so. Conservative ideology often places other values above that of freedom and equality, and it makes sense to sacrifice them in order to maintain higher values. Liberal ideology, however, places freedom and equality above all else, so to suppress them in favour of some other benefit, that is being hypocritical.