Richard Littlejohn, in the Daily Mail, points out how Islamicists are successfully exploiting the liberal establishment’s Pavlovian cringe in the direction of any alleged victim group to step-by-step move back the limits of free speech.

Islam is just one of the New Establishment’s favoured client groups. Exciting ‘hate crime’ laws have been invented to grant them special privileges and punish their critics.

So mad mullahs in Midlands madrassas can call for homosexuals to be stoned to death. But a Christian preacher who objects to gay marriage can expect to be arrested and given a criminal record.

We have also created a ‘victim’ culture, which allows minority groups to justify any kind of bad behaviour on the grounds that they are being oppressed.

You didn’t have to look far yesterday to find allegedly ‘respected’ voices prepared to blame the staff of Charlie Hebdo for bringing the wrath of the Islamists down on themselves. They shouldn’t have been so ‘provocative’.

Sky News gave house-room to one of the Islamist apologists from central casting who — while condemning the Paris massacre, natch — then went on to claim that Muslims in Britain were treated like blacks in Thirties America.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

We’re celebrating 800 years of Magna Carta, which may not have mentioned free speech specifically but laid the foundations for the liberties we are supposed to enjoy today – the idea that no one is above the law and we should be spared the excesses of an overbearing state.

Yet free speech is being eroded in the name of ‘celebrating diversity’ and the overbearing state is on the march, often under the guise of keeping us ‘safe’.
Free speech is being eroded in the name of ‘celebrating diversity’

You may not like to hear this, but the Paris massacre is another victory for the terrorists. Ever since 9/11, the State has seized upon ‘security’ as an excuse to accrue more powers and impede our liberty.

This is much bigger than the current argument about free speech, even though in a truly democratic society the right to take offence must co-exist with the right to cause offence.

There’s talk about a ‘war on terror’ when really we should be discussing the war on Western civilisation being waged by medieval madmen in the name of Islam.

The politicians posture and say the men of violence can’t win. But they are winning – in Africa, in the Middle East, in Pakistan.

They have set their sights on extending their bloodthirsty caliphate throughout Europe and even though they have no prospect of immediate triumph, they’re in it for the long run.

In return, the West wrings its hands and offers knee-jerk assurances that this butchery is nothing to do with Islam.

Every time there’s another atrocity, the authorities cede more ground to the terrorists. After 9/11 it was by criminalising airline passengers. After the recent Toronto parliament killings, it was relocating guardsmen behind the gates.

In the Seventies, the State responded to IRA bombings by removing all the litter bins from railway stations. Most of them have never been put back.

After Paris, who knows what they’ll come up with. But, rest assured, they’ll think of something. This is how freedom dies. Little by little, piece by piece.

Today, there’s outrage and introspection, just as there has been in the wake of every other major terrorist incident.

After a week or two, it will all be forgotten and we can get back to squabbling about Ched Evans or which party is to blame for Mr Bert Jones’s lumbago operation being cancelled.

Meanwhile, our enemies bide their time and another notch of the ratchet moves inexorably in their favour.