Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember that Europe was the cradle of democracy.  For today Europe seems to be sliding inexorably into a culture of control that would have made Stalin proud.

Carol Thatcher, the daughter of the great Lady T, was recently banned from the BBC for referring to an unnamed tennis player’s hair as “reminding her of a golliwog.”  Carol said this in a private conversation but was overheard by a snitch who reported her pronto.  The BBC fired her on the spot.  It was a jokey remark by a nice woman who was punished by the powers that be for being, well, white and the daughter of an ex-prime minister.  Five years or so ago I was investigated by Scotland Yard for incitement when I called career black criminals in the United Kingdom sons and grandsons of career criminals.  I was let off with a warning that next time it would be curtains.

At least my offense was in print and public.  Poor Carol’s was a private affair, which means that no offense could be given to the tennis player or the public at large because only two people heard it.  Shades of 1984.

And it gets worse.  A British community nurse, Caroline Petrie, offered to pray for an elderly patient who was being treated at home.  A fellow nurse reported her, leading to suspension without pay while an inquiry took place.  Although the patient had declined the offer, she said she was not the slightest bit offended.  It was Caroline Petrie’s colleagues—many of them Muslim or black—who were offended by nurse Petrie’s transgressing codes of “equality and diversity,” which prohibit a helper from offering the Christian solace of prayer.

Such political correctness is now the governing characteristic of most European governments.  Ostensibly designed to protect disadvantaged groups, it is all about advertising the moral purity of those who enforce it.  The Brussels-based bureaucrooks, who are legislating as if there were no tomorrow, are zealots of a secular inquisition profoundly totalitarian in character.  People have to watch their tongues for fear of offending a politically correct public-sector ruling class.  Not even Prince Harry, younger son of Prince Charles and third in line to the British throne, is safe.  A serving soldier, Harry was heard in a three-year-old video calling a fellow officer a “Paki.”  The fellow officer did not mind at all, but the busybodies did.  Harry was made to apologize and eat humble pie, despite the fact that Paki refers to a nationality and not to a faith.

On one hand we have Muslim extremists preaching in mosques all over Europe how Christians and Jews are unclean and pig-like and how the infidel will one day be put to the sword, and on the other we have the crooks and cowards who govern us hiding behind the European Court of Human Rights, which rejects the removal from European shores of anybody to his own country if that country “lacks acceptable standards of justice and freedom.”  That means most of the world.

Twenty years ago, upon the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and the ensuing fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, many politicians and lawyers made brave noises about freedom of speech, but in reality most of our leaders acquiesced and expressed solidarity with those who felt offended.  I wrote at the time that I hoped they would kneecap Rushdie for being an opportunist, an ungrateful turd, and a very bad writer to boot.  Mind you, Margaret Thatcher, whom the grotesque Rushdie had pilloried nonstop, is the one who came to his rescue, at public expense.  Alas, Khomeini’s threats and Muslim rioting did the trick.  Ever since, any public discourse that might offend has been considered off-limits.  After the July 7, 2005, London terrorist attacks, laws were passed closing extremist websites, yet none of them has been enacted.  Not a single terrorist website in Britain has been shut down.  Political correctness reigns supreme.

Of course, nothing said or written or produced on stage, screen, or television against Christianity or the white race is off limits, especially where the Catholic Church is concerned.  Asian communities are permitted to use offensive terms like Kallu for blacks, and blacks are allowed to use any word they feel like about whites, but you won’t win a free trip to the Bahamas (lucky you) for guessing what race or creed is censored even in private conversations if within earshot of Big Brother.

Every interest group that can organize itself and make aggressive demands or threats to limit speech by white Europeans appears to succeed.  European laws are now designed to make it easier for one state to imprison citizens who live and work in another.  Bulgaria, for example, claims to have implemented “99 percent of EU regulations.”  In reality, none of the regulations has been complied with, and Bulgaria is recognized as being totally corrupt, with her police and judiciary being particularly rotten.  Yet a Frenchman can be handed over and judged by a Bulgarian court on the say-so of a corrupt Bulgarian official.  E.U. enthusiasts—crooks—pretend that variations in the standards of justice between nations within the community do not exist.  So, next time you’re in Europe, keep your mouth shut, your American passport safe in your deepest pocket, and your ticket home handy.