Last month a Romanian, posting on Facebook, called the gendarmes guarding the National Anticorruption Department (DNA) "slaves", reports News.ro. He has been ordered to pay a fine of RON 900 (about EUR 195) for offensive language.
Calling the gendarmes slaves is against the law.
Eastern Europe is starting to become as authoritarian as Western Europe: in the 1980s I could not have imagined writing this sentence.
Things are even worse in England where a demonstrator was fine for calling his MP a coward. that only made the local paper.
Freedom is a concept that people increasingly no longer even understand.
Is it possible that this skirmishes over speech only come about as there are more and more people making an easy living and having the time to mull over such trivial issues. Judges, lawyers, journalists, chefs of course politicians are making too much money compared to the real replacement value of their work. They are making too much money because they appropriate this money from the redistribution pot. De Jouvenel was so right about the outcome of redistribution. Seems like Romanians broke a redistribution scheme only to replace it with another in a short 30 years. Pity.
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