Since free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted, as Henry Mencken quipped,

blessed indeed are the censors, for they shall inhibit the earth…..

In the lead-up to World Youth Day in July 2008 a young woman was arrested on a Sydney street

because the T'Shirt she was wearing could be considered offensive to catholics!

This catalogue/website is a free speech-zone. Free speech means so much more than the right to offend

others and to be offended. Theodore Roosevelt said that “Free speech, exercised both individually

and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free."

The (political) Bumper Sticker is as much part of the landscape of a free country as an unfettered

media. It is a tremendously important cause, but, like so many others, it is easily pushed aside in

favour of things that seem more vital at some given moment.

The so-called war on terror and the resurgence of the Christian Right with its reprehensible agenda

has made for a steady erosion of civil rights in this country.

Thomas Jefferson said: “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to

remain silent.”