His own wife had made a speech a week after the second London bombings loftily warning against restricting civil liberties. ``It is all too easy to respond in a way that undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilized nation,'' declared Cherie Blair. You need only read Tony Blair's 12-point program to appreciate how absurd was his wife's defense of Britain's pre-7/7 civil liberties status quo.
For example, point 3: ``Anyone who has participated in terrorism, or has anything to do with it anywhere will be automatically refused asylum in our country.'' What sane country grants asylum to terrorists in the first place?
Point 5, my favorite, declared ``unacceptable'' the remarkable fact that a man accused of the 1995 Paris metro bombing has successfully resisted extradition across the Channel for 10 years.
Blair's proposals are progress, albeit from a very low baseline -- so low a baseline that the mere announcement of his intent to crack down had immediate effect. Within three days, the notorious Sheikh Omar Bakri, a Syrian-born cleric who has been openly preaching jihad for 19 years, skipped the country and absconded to Beirut.
Not only had Bakri been allowed to run free the whole time, but he had collected more than 300,000 pounds in welfare, plus a 31,000-pound gift from the infidel taxpayers: a Ford Galaxy (because of a childhood leg injury).
It took 52 dead for at least the prime minister to adopt situational libertarianism. Or as Blair put it, ``The rules of the game are changing,'' declaring his readiness, finally, to alter the status quo in the name of elementary self-defense.
Before departing Britain, Bakri complained that it would be unfair to have him deported from the country he reviled: ``I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported.''
Wives, no less. Point 10 of Blair's plan would establish a commission to try to get immigrants to adopt more of the local mores.