When the people fear employing their expressive liberties because of how the governmental targets they criticize might use the authority of the government to stifle them, we are no longer free.
Expressing ideas, no matter how forthright or unabashed, is the personal exercise of a natural right that the government in a free society is unable to affect, directly or indirectly. Yet, when the government is successful in reducing public dialog, be it written or spoken, so that it only contains words and ideas of which the government approves, it will have triumphed in establishing tyranny. This tyranny, if it comes, will not occur abruptly. It will begin gradually and triumph before we know it. The question to ask oneself is, has it already begun?
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