DISPATCHES FROM AIRSTRIP ONE: Vance is right — Britain really has ‘thoughts-and-prayers’ policing.
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” said Vice President J.D. Vance to an audience of world leaders at a security conference in Munich on Friday, with a rhetorical punch comparable to Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Vance pointed to various censorial “hate speech” policies spewed out from Brussels and across Europe, and to the troubling arrest of a Christian in Sweden who used his freedom of expression to burn a Qur’an. Building to a crescendo, Vance then highlighted the “most concerning” case of Adam Smith-Connor — the British army veteran and father of two who was convicted in November 2024 for praying silently, for a few minutes, on a public space across the road from an abortion facility.
Smith-Connor, who previously fought in Afghanistan, was given a criminal record and ordered to pay £9,000 ($11,300) in adverse costs for breaking the rules of a local “buffer zone” ordinance banning “expressions of approval or disapproval” of abortion on several streets in the area.
Judge Orla Austin ruled that even though he was only engaged in silent, prayerful thought, his presence within the buffer zone could still have a “detrimental effect” on people attending or working at the clinic. Authorities took over £100,000 ($126,000) from the public purse to ensure his prosecution. With support from ADF International, he’ll be appealing his conviction in July.
Adam is one of multiple Christian individuals in England to face trial for their prayers in such censorial zones. Christian preachers have frequently faced nights in cells for expressing their beliefs in public. Meanwhile, according to official inquiries, the British police has failed to prosecute Muslims involved in serious and violent “grooming gang” crimes for fear of appearing “Islamophobic”.
The concept of a “thought police” is, of course, Orwellian. Yet the British government has decided to nationalize these locally enforced “buffer zones” on October 31 ’ banning “influence” within 150 meters of every abortion facility in England and Wales. As a result, the United Kingdom actually has “thoughts-and-prayers” policing.
1984, a warning for the rest of us, a how-to guide for the left.
