The freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental principles of any free and just society. Without it, ideas are confined to single minds; they cannot unite people and they cannot drive change.

Ideas are the most powerful tool of the human mind. They are an expression of consciousness and they are - so far - uniquely a human trait. The meme, as Dr. Dawkins so helpfully named this one unit of replication, can move entire nations; an idea can change everything.

In the state of Virginia there are public areas in which cursing has been banned; a fine is applicable if a police officer catches you using a four-letter word. There is fucking signage for this shit. This is an affront so dispicable, so utterly fascist that it is hard to imagine it happening in a place like the USA, where breathing the word gun-control too loud will land you in the middle of a decades long debate that is not nearing its end.

There is a common argument, a defense, used to justify this unbelievably wrong-headed approach to society. It states that while free speech is all well and good, curbing excessive cursing would hardly qualify as fascist.

My opinions on the use of so-called "curse words" for emphasis are well known and I shall dispense with them in this particular rant. It is more important to focus on the question of whether or not the protection of our sensibilities is truly worth the loss of the defining freedom of western culture.

There is a precedent set by the banning of any speech: cursing, hate-speech, political dissention, it does not matter! Because in a society ruled by majority - and in a nation as fucking polarized politically as the USA has become - it is not a stretch to imagine a swearing ban being extended to other distasteful speech. For example, statements supporting hezbollah or the palestinian authority or hamas or any other of these factions which are in opposition of the USA's favourite ally.

I do not claim to support either Israel or Hamas or any of the other squabbling factions in that hellish bowl of sand the world has come to covet not for its people or its beauty, but for the useful black goop burried beneath all of these. Whatever the outcome, it is not my decision to make, nor is it the USA's or Canada's or NATO's. It is important, however, that open discussion be allowed on all topics and that bans never be extended to language, lest we truly become as the governed and oppressed of such wonderful (historical) dictatorial havens as Nazi Germany, the Stalinist USSR or Maoist China.

I am a child of the west. I am a free individual who believes in liberty, happiness and self-determination. As such, I have the right to say fuck, ass, shit, piss, cunt, twat, gobshite and any other crass and vulgar term I choose to use.

Taking it away means the end of the free world as we know it. It is the death of the Glorious West.