I had to read this story twice and I still cannot quite bring myself to believe it. Apparently, a British judge sentenced a 21 year old biology student to 56 days in jail for making fun of a tragic near-death experience of a soccer player. As Fabrice Muamba, a Bolton Wanderers midfielder, collapsed in mid-play due to a heart-attack, Liam Stacey tweeted “LOL (laugh out loud). **** Muamba. He’s dead!!!’”

Disgusting and childish? Yes! But did the tweet warrant a prison sentence and branding of Stacey, who was drunk at the time of his tweeting, as an inciter of “racial hatred” (Muamba is black, while Stacey is white)? What’s next, flogging for making fun of fat people? Thank goodness that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects free speech—even thoroughly tasteless and deeply offensive speech. Otherwise there is no telling where our political elite would lead us.

There is, of course, a larger point here. Britain, like some other European countries, suffers from deep fissures along racial, religious, national, and class lines. The elite has attempted to fix those problems by increasingly regulating speech and criminalizing behavior at an astonishing rate of one new offense a day between 1997 and 2010. (The new Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition government has promised to do things differently, but no major repeal of law and regulation has yet taken place.) How can a society address problems that it cannot talk about? How can it remain free if so much is forbidden?