You want to talk about tyrants trembling?

This is where Dangerous Laughter comes in. Humor is not merely entertainment. Humor is one of the oldest ways human beings test authority. You can tell a joke about the king because the joke asks the question the court does not want asked: What happens if we stop being afraid of him?

That is why free speech matters even when the speech is ugly, obnoxious, or wrong. Once people become afraid to speak, they stop arguing in public and start whispering in private. And once people start whispering in private, politics gets dangerous.

The Irish have historically been very good at refusing to whisper. That may be why I enjoyed this conversation so much. Dowson has a particular Northern Irish combination of religious conviction, historical memory, belligerence and humor. He is perfectly comfortable discussing theology one minute and telling me that the Irish are going to wake up and terrify Europe the next.

I laughed. But I also listened. Because beneath all the bluster is a serious question that Americans would be foolish to ignore.

What happens when people who spent centuries fighting each other finally look around and realize that the argument has changed?
The tyrant-wannabes and control freaks start trembling