Something wicked this way comes

Via samizdata's David Carr we have this excellent Nick Cohen article on the erosion of liberty. His message? Basically we are saying goodbye to our traditional freedoms and loving every minute of it.

My experience is that he is right. I have grown tired of trying to persuade dinner guests and drinking buddies that ID cards, curfews, stricter gun control laws and the like are bad ideas. Really, really tired. It's so hard to put up a constructive argument when the whole table is against you, throwing extreme and imagined examples of the possible successes of such measures at you quick fire style. It doesn't help that I have usually had a skin full at the time.

Since getting involved in this kind of thing, you know, blogging, political comment, thinking, I've noticed something peculiar. Hardly any of my close friends actually agree with my political and social points of view anymore. Some accuse me of growing more right wing with each passing year (when I know that the opposite, if anything is actually true) whilst others accuse me on being soft on criminals due to my opposition to draconian Home Office measures.

Just this weekend I had a real clash with a very old University friend of mine at a BBQ about Bush and America. Bush is evil. America is evil, was his basic line. Another old University friend nodded frantically in agreement. No says I, and those figures of America supplying arms to Iraq are factually inaccurate. I get a few nasty retorts along the lines of how I always fall for right wing propaganda, other groups of party goers gradually move away to talk about skiing and the like and I'm left feeling a little angry but, more to the point, sad. Sad like the last curlew might feel in late summer finally realising that there is no chance of a mate because there are no others curlews left. Utterly alone.

One of these days I am going to accept a samizdata invite. Find the time to get to one of their dinner parties or chats just to know what it feels like to have someone look at you and nod.

Man, that would be sweet.