Rara Temporum

Dicere licet*

Quite rare are the times

when you may think what you like
and speak as you think—

so Tacitus† said,

and I, for one, will attempt
to maintain that link

between thought, speech and
the right of free expression
lest all freedoms shrink.

*  written in response to a post at Watts Up With That—and posted thereto—on Lord Monckton’s being too extreme when he associated the vile, deceitful, meretricious, authoritarian, intolerant, anti-democratic, totalitarian Prof. Ross Garnaut with the Nazis.  I also posted an earlier comment:

If the loons who try to order every aspect of my life would have their way, I shan’t even be allowed to call Mussolini a Fascist or Hitler a Nazi.  When newspaper columnists intimate that I should be tattooed, or imprisoned or gassed because I heretically oppose their fraudulent, pseudo-scientific conjecture, then calling them merely wrong-headed is not quite strong enough.  Sometimes, totalitarians, authoritarians, and all sorts of would-be-aryans have to be called by the right name—and Godwin’s Law, surely, does not apply when discussing real, murderous, send-opponents-to-concentration-camps Fascists or Nazis.
I’d liefer that Lord Monckton not display the svastika [when quoting Prof. Garnaut] but I shall defend to a small degree of inconvenience his right to do so.

I posted similarly at Australian Climate Madness:

Godwin’s Law refers to the almost certain probability that any internet discussion will, at some point, feature an inappropriate comparison to Hitler, Nazis or fascism.  Godwin’s Law does not refer to a public speech wherein a person of undoubted authoritarian bent (such as the arrogant Ross Garnaut) is legitimately compared with other totalitarians.  Godwin’s Law does not refer to a comment (such as this) which mentions fascists in proper context.
I defend Lord Monckton’s right to make comparisons, even odious ones, and I defend his right to refer to the contemptible Garnaut with appropriate invective, even if it upset people.

†  P. Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae, I. 1:  Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet.  [Rare the felicity of the times when to think what you wish and to say what you think is permitted.]

UPDATE I (26 June):  see also “Die Grüne Bierhalle”, by Prof. Bunyip, whereto I commented:

People must give up
their normal expectations
of modern science;

the directing State,
as contract guarantor, shall
insure compliance.

UPDATE II (16 July):  see Merv Bendle’s “Eco-fascism & the Greens” at Quadrant Online.  See also the comments on my post, “Gore Redefines Reality”, at Impact of Climate Change.

UPDATE II (27 June, 2014):  see Sen. Dean Smith speaking in the Senate on freedom of speech: