Anticipatory Obedience

The phrase means: obeying before being asked. A person — or a newspaper, or a nation — imagines what the powerful would want, and does it in advance, to avoid trouble that has not yet been threatened.

Follow the logic down. Punishment is costly for the powerful; they prefer that no punishment be needed. Fear is cheaper than force. And the cheapest fear of all is the kind people administer to themselves. The censor outside the head can retire once the censor inside reports for duty.

This is how freedoms are actually lost — rarely by dramatic seizure, usually by quiet, prudent, reasonable adjustments, each too small to resist, added together into a cage.

The defence is a question asked early: was I commanded, or did I command myself on their behalf? Prudence is a virtue. Anticipated obedience is prudence's counterfeit, and it spends just as well.