Dangerous times for free speech

Two disturbing articles on the future of freedom of expression.  First, the Saudi government is proposing an international body for network censorship.   

The Washington Post has an OpEd on this topic with the following quote:

Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

Countries which we have assumed to be historically free either are not free, or are curtailing that freedom.  According to the Post piece, Ireland finds it self in good company with Russia in criminalizing speech that offends the religious.  

On political parties

John Adams on political parties:

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

A sentiment that George Washington shared in his farewell address:

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.