Dark Ages

“J’avais seize ans. Mon père rentre à la maison hors de lui; il appelle ses fils «que vous êtes digne d’envie, s’écrit-t-il; quels jours heureux et brilliants se lévent sur vous! Maintenant, si vous ne vous créez pas chacun une position indépendante, la faute n’en sera qu’a vous. Toutes les barriers de la naissance et de la pauvreté vont tomber...».
(...) Ce n’était pas seulement en France qu’une révolution commençait, c’était dans toute l’Europe (…)” (Henrik Steffens in A. Sorel, l’Europe et la revolution Française).

Translation:
“I was 16 years old. My father comes home exhilarated; he calls his children «how I envy you, he cried; fortunate days are ahead! If from this day onwards you don’t make something out of your lives, no one is to blame but yourselves. All the barriers of birth and squalor will crumble down…»
(…) France was not the only country where the revolution rised, it had spread throughout Europe (…)” (Henrik Steffens in A. Sorel, Europe and the French revolution).

During the 18th century Europe witnessed a series of revolutions: industrial, political and social.
The People was no longer willing to endure justice, opportunities, education, health and food just for some, and taxes only for the poor.
This lead to the creation of the democratic system, which ensured us our basic rights: freedom of speech and assembly, the right to vote, equality of rights, etc.

Nowadays, we have free access to any kind of information through newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television and Internet.
However our fundamental rights and freedoms are under threat.
Look around you today, what do you see? Vile, violent, irrational and uncivilised behaviours: youngsters shooting classmates and teachers in schools (only because they can’t deal with pressure); the revival of criminal ideologies, and people blowing themselves up in subways, buses, train stations, residential areas, business sights and airports in the name of God (who nodding says “I didn’t ask for this!”)…No one is safe anymore…
This kind of behaviour leads governments to act “immorally”. How?
1- By implementing censorship: artists are being brazenly silenced; journalistic expression is being gagged; certain cultures became so sensitive that one cannot make the slightest comment on them…
Bien sûre we have experienced censorship before when governments made use of it as a mean of perpetuating their power; but making use of it today is shameless and provocative, for they are intentionally shredding our intellect out of fear and lack of solutions.
2- By creating shocking rules: in the name of tackling terrorism, the police has been empowered to do house searches and tap phones without a warrant, to shoot-to-kill suspects, to ransack people’s private life if they greet the “wrong” ethnic citizen, to keep suspects under police custody without charges…

N.B: I strongly advocate severe treatment (i.e. to be stripped of all rights) to those who conspire to commit mass murder against innocent citizens. Terrorists and alike are void of reason, for instead of using bombs, guns etc, they should make use of the most powerful weapon of them all: the mouth (this way their claims would be more effective).

Excessively empowering the police without constant judicial supervision (for we all know that in every profession there are hungry wolves disguised as lambs) reveals that European governments are losing the point: how to fight against gratuitous violence.
If European citizens allow their governments to create appalling rules, which clash with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, they will be signing their “death sentence”.

Are governments trying to lead us back to the Dark Ages?