Of course, it will be free, in the sense of being unrestricted, uncontrolled, unconstrained. You and I will be able to say (or print, upload, broadcast...) anything we wish. Or nothing.

Why so? - because your tongue and vocal chords and fingers are yours, exclusively. You are your own self-owner, 100%; and I am mine. This is basic, hornbook liberty. Nobody else at all has any right to tell you how to use them; and in the coming zero government society that fact will take effect in practice. Free speech is a natural right, not a Constitutional one; the latter merely pretended to prohibit government from denying it. Fat chance.

Speech will not be free in the sense of being free of consequence, however. If you tell a lie, expect it to find you out; represent the product you're selling to be reliable, anticipate trouble if it falls apart at first use. If your words insult or hurt someone, nothing written here will protect you from a damage claim by the victim.

But prior restraint or censorship - absolutely not. Should you falsely shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, the only consequence may be a string of lawsuits from its owner and patrons; nobody will "charge you with a crime" for merely uttering the word; and in an otherwise excellent article this week Eric Margolis got it wrong at the end by implying that Felix Frankfurter had the proper power to amend the US Constitution. There will, in fact, be no Constitution, outside the Museum of the Age of Government; for there will be no government for it either to empower or to limit.

Once governments have evaporated worldwide, all the causes of conflict and war familiar to us today will have vanished with them, but there will be a period of transition, perhaps lasting several years; once re-educated Americans have all walked out on their government jobs it will disappear here, and that example will be followed swiftly in other English speaking countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, etc. Then will come others into whose languages the freedom schools will have been translated. Lastly there will be the theocracies, in which the minds of government victims are tightly controlled by religious as well as political leaders. During this transition, it could happen that some in a free society choose to speak ill of governments elsewhere. Nobody will stop them.

The hostility of Muslims will swiftly subside once the "Western" governments go out of existence and so stop meddling in their affairs, but if its momentum should persist for a while nobody will be inhibited from publishing a cartoon like this one. Nor will any censor prevent a response in the form of unsuppressed ISIS videos documenting Western aggression.

On January 9th David Brooks remarked on the PBS News Hour that if Charlie Hedbo were to open for business in the present US, "they would be shut down in 30 seconds. They would run afoul of every political correctness, every hate speech code, because they are offensive in some ways." Were they to open after the ZGS had begun, however, they would be free to offer barbed criticism of Muslim warriors - though after this brief transition period it's unlikely that any would be due.

They, or anyone else, would also be free to offer barbed criticism of the Israeli State, if for a while it continued to exist; and of blacks, homosexuals and others within the freed state who might continue to be the butt of twisted humor. There would (again) be no law whatever to prohibit such speech (whereas in France today, the law does prohibit anti semitic speech, at the very same time as it prohibits interference with anti Muslim speech!) but if somebody's feelings get hurt, expect a claim for compensation. Free market courts, in such cases, will have an interesting time settling damage awards; I anticipate that fairly often, they may find for the plaintiff and award him $1, or its equivalent in real money. Quite swiftly, the trivial will be culled out from the serious. The nightmare of political correctness will be over.

This delightful prospect - of freedom with responsibility - stands in the sharpest contrast with what prevails today. We are not only governed as to what we can and cannot say, we are instructed about who are our enemies. The historically large Paris demonstration on January 11th against the murders of journalists and others was hijacked by a lineup of European political leaders who announced that the war on Islam would be ratcheted up (instead of abandoned, as it should be) - to support which, we can expect even tighter controls on travel and even more government surveillance. It's a war they cannot win - but that doesn't bother them; to government, perpetual war is just the ticket. Little wonder, in times of hot war, that the first casualty is truth and the second, the freedom to speak it.