MORE PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE FREE SPEECH: British Press Report Brings Out the Speech Nannies. You can bet that these people have something to hide — or anticipate having something to hide in the near future.

The “good” people, the “helping” people, the “nurturing” people and the idealists are usually the ones eager to punish people who say hurtful things. The left recognizes this when Andrew Sullivan’s dreaded “Christianists” try to stop the teaching of evolution on the grounds that it is false and destructive. But when the left’s most cherished ideas are rudely and nastily challenged, the hammer comes down.

“Nice” people who want to limit your freedom of speech so that only “nice” ideas will be expressed are some of the most horribly misguided and dangerous people around. They must be relentlessly mocked and resisted so that human freedom can survive.

They are not nice people, and they do not mean well. They are bad people, cynically trying to secure their own power against challenge. And, most of all, they are the very thing they affect to despise most: Hypocrites.

And may I say that the exaggerated outrage over the “phone hacking” scandal is particularly hypocritical given the culture of pervasive surveillance of citizens that the British government — ahead even of our own — has established over the past decade or two. Those criticizing the press here are in no position to complain about invasions of privacy.