Love or leave

"Love it or Leave It"

So said Australia's top Muslim cleric to its chief radical. It's a theme that seems to be increasingly common, and not just in Australia: we've seen governments in Europe looking at forced deportation for those who don't obviously "love" being there.

At this point, Australia's Muslim community seems to be doing some damage control, isolating their own radicals so that any deportations will not harm the larger Muslim community. The attorney general there, one Phillip Ruddock, has frequently made noises about the possibility of deportations since the London attacks of July. Nor is this aimed only at Muslim radicals. "Peace activists" are coming under scrutiny too:

A US peace activist and history teacher, Scott Parkin, has been arrested in Melbourne after his visa was revoked on grounds of character. He was deemed "a threat to national security" by the Australian Department of Immigration, according to a spokesperson from Anti-Deportation Alliance. The ABC has reported that the Federal police have confirmed an American man was arrested on the orders of the Immigration Department (DIMIA) and is in custody.

Mr Parkin participated in an anti-war profiteering protest outside Halliburton in Sydney on August 31, and was also reported to have attended the Forbes Global CEO Conference protest.

For now, Australia's movements are concentrated on foreigners -- some naturalized Australian citizens, but foreign-born -- who are making trouble for the current order. One can sympathize with the notion that foreign troublemakers should be sent home. Even ones, like Mr. Parkin, who haven't broken any actual laws? Perhaps.

On the other hand, we have predicated a lot of the War on Terror on the principle that democracy, including the right to protest and the freedom of speech, will dissipate radicalism. We've seen in London and elsewhere that this is not so -- that allowing a community of radicals to operate promotes terrorist recruitment, and permits terrorist groups to build networks capable of operations within Western countries.

Where is the middle ground between suppressing radicalism, and permitting the kind of free speech and democratic protest that avoids radicalism? If you can't have both, which one is more important? I'm going to side with free speech and liberty, even if it means more blood. That was always the choice for me and mine, as Patrick Henry put it long ago.

Yet if we make that choice, we ought to realize that it very well may mean more blood, and not only ours. There is a threat of seeing a community that is guaranteed democratic rights and freedoms, and uses those rights and freedoms to organize itself for the destruction the main society. In such a case, we may find ourselves supporting their right to speak and think freely, at the cost of having to kill them or imprison them, or watching them kill themselves in order to take some of us along. We end up defending their rights, but destroying their bodies.

That is better, I think, than not defending their rights. If we sacrifice their rights, we sacrifice our own as well -- and it is those rights that have always been the point of the American model, as the British model before us. I always heard it said, growing up, that we must expect to bleed and to sacrifice if that model was to be defended among the perils of the world. I always expected to, so it is no surprise to me to see that we may have to do so.

We shall see, however, if that line of thinking appeals broadly. Your chains are forged, Patrick Henry also said -- and so they are, fitted and ready for you. But the only other choice is blood.

Have we enough who will vote for more blood and more pain, that liberty be defended? Do we really mean that democracy and freedom are the cures to radicalism? Or shall we find ourselves not defending our principles and extending liberty to the world, but rather seeking a middle ground with tyranny -- so that Egypt is less tyrannical, but we ourselves far more so?

That may be the road to peace; it may be the only road there. If so, I will not vote to walk it.