We must stop being tolerant of repression

This article was published in Spiked Online 12 November 2009

In a recent speech, the libertarian Wendy Kaminer argued that state intervention into everyday life is giving rise to ‘habits of submission’.

On 31 October Wendy Kaminer, spiked columnist and one of America’s leading civil libertarians, spoke at the debate ‘Rethinking Freedom in an Illiberal Age: Securing Rights or Celebrating Liberty?’ at the Battle of Ideas in London. Her opening comments are published below.

I have no intention of ‘rethinking freedom’. Rather I persist in maintaining a traditional notion of rights and freedom and a belief in traditionally liberal distinctions between the public and private realms.