Should Americans travel to Scotland? Well, it’s a beautiful country, but there’s a problem – their new hate speech law. If you say anything that offends a leftist, then you might get charged with hate speech. Maybe you said some controversial things online. If anyone on the left recognizes you in Scotland, they might file a complaint for your past hate speech. The penalty is up to 7 years in jail.

Here’s an article from Christian Today to explain:

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, [was] passed three years ago. It was the brainchild of the then justice secretary for the Scottish government, Humza Yousaf. Yousaf is now the Scottish First Minister and his bill is about to become law on April 1st.

[…]The problem with the bill is that it does not clearly define what ‘stirring up hatred’ means… the subjective feeling of a perceived victim, or of a policeman, could be enough to have you accused of a hate crime – one which carries a sentence of up to seven years. Take for example JK Rowling. If she tweets that a man cannot become a woman, she could be arrested for hate crime. Same for a Christian preacher who says that he does not believe that Muhammad is a prophet or a teacher who says they believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

The Scottish police have no time for real crimes, their priority is investigating you for hate speech:

The police in Scotland have said they will investigate every report of hate crime, despite having recently announced that they would not be investigating every case of ‘low level’ crime, including apparently some cases of theft!

The law will be used to target Christians and conservatives:

In an astonishing statement they give an example of the kind of people who commit hate crimes as those with “deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”.

[…]Now we have the State creating a two-tier justice system where some groups are afforded ‘protected’ status and others are attacked.

[…]This Act will pervade through all of Scottish society. Even children are to be targeted. School handbooks now explain that all hate crimes should be reported to the police. Journalist Jim Spence wrote in the Courier that Scotland is about to become a “two-tier society” where “some folk are given protection by the law from some kinds of hate crimes, while others will simply have to suck up abuse.” For example, “while it will be an offence to stir up hate against trans folk”, it “won’t break the law to stir up hate against women”, because astonishingly under this Act sex is not a protected characteristic.

Anyone can report you and get you into trouble:

The police are to set up Third Party Reporting Centres throughout Scotland where you can go and ‘clipe’ (a Scots word for snitch or tell-tale) on anyone.

[…]The Herald reported on police training which encouraged officers to go after anyone who produces material deemed ‘threatening and abusive’. You could be prosecuted for a negative portrayal of a trans person in a play, for example.

[…]If you repeat a joke on the internet which someone in the ‘protected’ characteristic finds offensive, you could be guilty of a hate crime.

And as if that were not extreme enough, you could be reported for expressing ‘hate’ in your own home.

This part is key – anything you say or write in other countries that can be read about in Scotland will be grounds for arrest and imprisonment for “hate speech”:

The law holds that anything that can be read in Scotland is to be considered as published in Scotland.

Let’s look at a couple of articles from earlier this year, that show who is likely to be targeted by the Scottish Police. Surprise! It’s Christians and conservatives.

An article from the ADF explains how free speech is regulated in Scotland:

The police force… issued a warning notice to [Christian leader, Dia Moodley, a Bristol-based pastor and father of four], who has engaged in occasional street evangelism for the past five years, which forbade him from, inter alia, “passing comments on any other religion or comparing them to Christianity” and “passing comments on beliefs held by Atheists or those who believe in evolution”.

[…]In addition to forbidding criticism of religions other than Christianity, the warning notice further encroached on Moodley’s right to freedom of expression by banning him from “delivering a sermon or religious address at a time or place that has not had prior consent and approval of Avon & Somerset Constabulary.”

Here’s another example of free speech that offended the secular left – except it wasn’t even speech at all:

The charitable volunteer who was arrested for praying silently in a controversial “buffer zones” case in Birmingham will today testify to Holyrood about her experience of being prosecuted for a “thoughtcrime”.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was seen being arrested on a viral video last winter when she said she “might be praying inside [her] head”. She was charged with “engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” within the buffer zone of an abortion clinic – despite the clinic having been closed.

For the secular left in Scotland, freedom of expression is not important at all. This legislation allows people to punish Christians and conservatives, if they just feel that our free speech is offensive. It’s not a safe place to visit.

If I had to boil down the wisdom of my years into one sentence, that sentence would be “you must not advocate for anything that will eventually harm you”. Sadly, we live in a world of virtue signaling. People want to advocate for things that feel good in the moment, even if it hurts them in the long run.

Let’s start with this story from New York Post:

A series of women have posted alarming TikTok reports about being randomly punched by a stranger while walking in New York, including at least two daylight attacks reported to cops this week.

Halley Kate… posted a video Monday after one attack being investigated by the NYPD, saying it caused her to fall to the ground and black out.

“You guys, I was literally just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,” Kate said through tears in a post on Monday morning.

And again:

A woman named Mikayla Toninato, whose bio said she attends Greenwich Village’s Parsons School of Design, tagged Kate in a post six hours later, where she recounted a similar story.

“I just got punched in the face, walking home,” the TikToker claimed.

And again:

Another woman named Oliva Brand took to the platform on March 17 to report the same experience, in a clip filmed on Mulberry Street in Nolita.

[…]The NYPD confirmed the narratives of Kate and Brand, saying that a 23-year-old woman reported an assault at West 16th Street and 7th Avenue at 10:20 a.m. Monday, as with Kate’s report.

[…]On March 17, a 25-year-old was walking her dog just before noon at Kenmare and Mulberry streets when an “unknown individual punched her in the head,” according to officials when asked about Brand’s video.

[…]The recent complaints echoed the purported plight of a fourth young female TikToker, Jill Burke, who said on Feb. 8 she was attacked near Union Square and that the suspect was arrested and released on his own recognizance.

Now, whenever I hear stories like this, I always wonder “what is the context of this story? Is the victim leaving out facts that make them less of a victim?” and also “was a police report filed?”. The police report is important, because although there are no consequences for making false accusations, there are consequences for filing a false police report. And the police will look for evidence to confirm or deny the victim’s story. In this case, we have police reports for all of these attacks, so they are likely to be true.

In response to all this violence, feminists are asking: “why don’t the good men save women from the bad men?” They want chivalry, even after killing chivalry by advocating for feminism. Chivalry is absolutely out of the question for good men today – it’s too risky.

Here’s a story from Fox News:

As Marine veteran Daniel Penny watched an erratic homeless man allegedly threaten to murder terrified passengers on a New York City subway — including women and children — he said he felt a moral obligation to act.

[…]Penny, 24, dragged Jordan Neely, 30, to the floor of a northbound F train on May 21, and put him in a chokehold that was caught on cellphone video. Neely ended up dead.

“If [Neely] had carried out his threats, he would have killed somebody,” said Penny, who remains so traumatized by the experience he has not boarded a subway train since.

He’s facing a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years, now.

More:

Neely’s death spurred widespread protests across the city with many demonstrators and even politicians calling Penny a “murderer” and a racist. Penny is White; Neely was Black.

“The majority of the people on that train that I was protecting were minorities, so it definitely hurts a lot to be called that,” Penny said. “It has obviously taken a toll.”

Celebrity civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton gave a eulogy at Neely’s funeral blasting the decision not to arrest Penny on the spot.

This shouldn’t be unfamiliar to us. Democrats love to criminalize gun ownership and self-defense by law-abiding people. They want criminals to have space to commit crimes with impunity. They don’t want the criminals to be interrupted by law-abiding people with legally-owned firearms.

I can tell you right now that I would not lift a finger to save people in New York City from the consequences of their actions. They vote for Democrats, they live in Democrat cities, and they have to live with the results of their actions. When I was doing my concealed carry permit, the instructor, a former police officer, warned us to never step in to defend anyone else but ourselves, and only from an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury”. The legal consequences could be extremely damaging, he said. In the old days, before criminals became the darlings of the secular left, good men would step in. But not any more.

It’s significant that young women are complaining about crime. Young women are voting for soft-on-crime policies these days – they are all in favor of open borders, soft-on-crime policies, Hamas terrorists, gun bans, and punishing Good Samaritans.

Financial Times reports: (archived)

In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up.

[…]The #MeToo movement was the key trigger, giving rise to fiercely feminist values among young women who felt empowered to speak out against long-running injustices.

[…]In the US, UK and Germany, young women now take far more liberal positions on immigration and racial justice than young men, while older age groups remain evenly matched. The trend in most countries has been one of women shifting left while men stand still.

They don’t seem to be able to see the long-term consequences of their voting. Being “compassionate” works “in the moment”, and that rush of good feelings and social approval is what they choose. Later on, they can complain about the results of their voting, and paint themselves as innocent victims. “The world is so unpredictable!”

I think that these young secular leftist women would benefit from reading C.S. Lewis’ essay “Men Without Chests”, and maybe ask their wise elders what long term consequences to actions will be.