I am impressed

From the breaking news section on Yahoo:

NEW South Wales Premier Morris Iemma wants to know how books setting out how to conduct terrorist attacks do not breach sedition laws.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) have ruled that a number of controversial books found in bookstores in Lakemba and Auburn, in Sydney's west, late last year did not incite violence.

My answer to Mr Iemma is simply: It is because as a free nation, Australia has chosen to stand by its principles of free speech and not surrender to reactionary thinking and fear.

The sedition laws are prejudiced, reactionary, and driven by fear. They are contrary to the spirit and beliefs of a free nation. Based on those laws, anyone can be charged for simply complaining about the government or the state. In other words, the very basis of democracy is threatened by the very existance of those laws.

Yes, the content of those books insult the nation and people of Australia.
Yes, some of the books contain instructions on how to build a suicide bomb.
Yes, the people who wrote those books hate every free nation.

You might also notice that those authors live in Australia and America, not their homelands. If that fact doesn't give you some reason to smile wryly, Mr Iemma, then perhaps you should read again the documents which define a free nation. If not in the body of those texts, then in the words of their authors, you'll find declarations that freedom is not free; it does not come to those who surrender their principles and beliefs to fear.
Indeed, in the history surrounding all those documents are stories of those who have given their lives for the freedoms enshrined in those canons. It is those men and women we honor.

No law can protect you, Mr Iemma, from those who seek to destroy freedoms, rights, and the principles in those canons. You do not protect rights and freedoms by taking them away. The very concept is irrational on the face of it.
The word of law does not change beliefs, Mr Iemma, neither theirs -- nor should it change yours.

But you can look around you and see the uncertain courage of free people, reasonably as frightened as you are, who would rather have their freedoms unhindered than surrender to their fears.
Uncertain because there are no guarantees of safety. But that is the definition of courage, Mr Iemma.
Someday, those people will remember when their country stood proud, when all this is over.

I am impressed. (to use the aussie term)