Australian writer and teacher Harry Nicolaides was sentenced in Thailand to three years in prison for writing a novel containing 12 lines of text deemed insulting to the king.

It’s a nice reminder, even to us naive souls living in the Western comfort of Barackistan, that governments can and will use force to eliminate ideas that threaten power.

The Australian government has finally got up off their asses and asked for a pardon, allowing Nicolaides to sit in jail only for five months. Apparently Thailand’s high pardon rate for foreigners accused of this offense allowed them to play dumb. Which brings us to the other useful reminder: Western governments do not defend individual freedoms out of principle, even when the offending country is Thailand.

The only reason a story like this is not being screamed about throughout the world is that most people must think their own ideas are so boring and meaningless that no government would want to silence them. Well, to those people I say: think again. (Or perhaps for the first time.) The concept of “your ideas” is exactly what some people in government have a problem with.