"The argument of tyrants ... the creed of slaves"

Mark Steyn comments on Dutch MP Geert Wilders being banned from entering the UK:

... the government decision to prevent Geert Wilders from entering the United Kingdom is the first time an elected legislator in a fellow European Union parliament has been banned from entering a member state. Minheer Wilders has not been convicted of any crime, and has to have 24-hour protection from people who openly express their desire to kill him. Now the dead husk of the multicultural state joins with his would-be murderers in restricting his freedom of movement.

On Monday, I testified before a parliamentary committee in Ontario. What was striking to me was that the default position of "liberal" members is that the citizenry are knuckledragging neanderthals whose worst instincts can only be restrained by ever more government regulation. I regret to say that, even in the land of the First Amendment, one detects the same barely veiled instincts under the fluffy paternalism of Commissar Barney Frank and others.

Some of the oldest, free-est constitutional societies are retreating into illiberal darkness. "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom," said Pitt the Younger. "It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Shame his heirs in Her Majesty's Government no longer get it.

Update: See also Rick Santorum and Atlas Shrugs (contribute to Wilders' legal defence).