On balance, I am persuaded that the dangers of empowering the state to determine the limitations of expression far outweigh the risk of small groups of extremists attempting to proselytise. The cost of freedom is that it is open to abuse by an unconscientious minority but, once liberty is relinquished, it is difficult to recover. To those who would trust the state to monitor our speech, I would remind them of Thomas Paine’s closing remark in his Dissertation on First-Principles of Government (1795): ‘He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if
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