Forced to Be Free: What Anti-Tv Crusades, The Campaign Against the "Ground Zero Mosque," and Ayn Rand's "Intellectual Heir" Have in Common with the Reform Movements of the Antebellum Era

ACROSS EUROPE, high-minded debates about terrorism, assimilation, and the social effects of Islam have been devolving into disputes over the clothes the government will let people wear, as countries from Switzerland to the U.K. ponder bans on burqas and head scarves. Curiously, legislators and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to justify such dress codes with the language of liberty. A Spanish politician, for example, denounced the veil as a "degrading prison." He was not referring merely to families that force women to cover themselves. In that case, the legislation would target the compulsion, not the clothes. The garments supposedly serve as prisons whether or not the wearer wants to don them. Removing them by force, it's implied, would be an act of liberation.