Among the real-life Norwegian phenomena made gentle fun of in the 2012-14 Netflix series Lilyhammer, starring Steven Van Zandt as a New York mobster who has moved to Norway under the Witness Protection Program, were natteravnene — the “night ravens,” groups of unarmed citizen volunteers, including little old ladies, who patrol the night streets to talk wayward youths out of breaking the law. The concept is a quaint one, originating in a time when virtually all crimes committed in the middle of the Norwegian night were petty misdemeanors and when the perpetrators were Norwegian kids who, if confronted on the verge of a transgression by somebody their parents’ or grandparents’ age, could be expected to hang their heads in shame and go home.

No more: last Saturday night, ato the Soviet era — President Reagan, in 1988, giving a pathbreaking address to students at Moscow State University in which he explained how freedom works; dissident Vladimir Bukovsky being interviewed by William F. Buckley on Firing Line shortly after his 1976 expulsion from the USSR. How poignant to see those glimpses of life during the Cold War, when the West — including Norway, a proud NATO member — stood foursquare for liberty and most of the poor souls trapped behind the Iron Curtain barely understood the meaning of the word.

Well, times have changed. In response to Islamization, Western Europe is trimming its freedoms (as demonstrated last Friday by Theresa May’s admission, during Question Time in the House of Commons, that free speech needs to be balanced out