Britain Is Now The Savage Nation (Guest Voice)
The news that conservative talker Michael Savage was on a list and banned from Great Britain brought somewhat predictable responses: conservatives were outraged and some liberals said it serves him right. But there were some on both sides who wondered if anything Savage said qualified him to be on a list with terrorists and others. In this Guest Voice, conservative writers Floyd and Mary Beth Brown argue that Savage didn’t deserve it and that it’s a free speech issue the Obama administration needs to take up with Great Britain.
Britain is now the Savage Nation
By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
American talk show host Michael Savage is banned from entering the United Kingdom. “You’ve got to be kidding!” was our first thought when we heard this news. But it’s no joke. Michael Savage has strong opinions, but he is certainly no terrorist. Yet his name is lumped together with leaders of a Russian skinhead gang who are serving jail time for murdering 20 people, Hezbollah, Kashmiri terrorists, assorted Muslim and Jewish extremists plus a neo Nazi.
On the air for the past 15 years any talk host will undoubtedly make a few comments that offend people, but Savage has certainly never incited anyone to violence. Savage is very successful, reaching an audience of 8.25 million listeners each week. But all Americans should be outraged that the British government has placed him on their ‘least wanted’ list, banning him from entering the country.
This is a blatant assault on freedom of speech.
Since 2005, the U.K. has been able to ban people who promote hatred, terrorist violence or serious criminal activity. On May 5, Britain’s Home Office released the names of 16 of the 22 individuals who have been placed on the list since October of 2008. The report describes Savage as: “Controversial daily radio host. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behavior by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence.”
“This is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country,” said Home Secretary Jaqui Smith about Savage.
To place a successful talk host like Michael Savage on the same list as radical Muslim clerics, convicted criminals, and Russian skinheads is beyond outrageous. Yet we hear not a peep being said by the U.S. government and mainstream media in defense of Savage against this outrage.
Instead of fighting this unjustified attack against an American citizen, the Obama administration is preparing to mimic the British. Reading the language of the Home Office’s release, we couldn’t help by see an uncanny resemblance to Janet Napolitano’s Homeland Security Report that classified conservatives as extremists. The liberal thought police are on the prowl in London, and the media and the Obama administration are silent and implicitly supporting the British.
Can you imagine the outcry and fervor that this travel ban would cause if it had included a leftist talk host such as Rachel Maddow? The media would be up in arms, and the Obama administration would immediately be on the phone with British diplomats to get an explanation. So why is that not happening in the case of Michael Savage?
Evidently in the U.K. it is OK to blacklist a white male conservative, if you so much as utter a word of opposition to illegal immigration, homosexuality, or Islamic terrorists. Michael Savage sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton asking her to plead his case; we doubt that she will listen. He is also suing the British government for defamation for grouping him with all the legitimate criminals and terrorists and “painting a target on my back.” Legal experts estimate he has a decent case.
In his defense on the air Savage said, “”I have never advocated violence. . . I’ve been on the air for fifteen years, three hours a day, five days a week — fifteen years. They [Savage's critics] take a few sound bites that amount to one, two, or three minutes and they try to redefine me by extracting sound bites out of context. I could do that with anyone in the public eye.”
The mainstream media and the Obama administration are neglecting their duties by not defending Mr. Savage. As much as they may be disagree with Savage’s opinions, this type of censorship and blacklisting is threatening everyone’s freedom of expression. As Roger Hedgecock says, “The British government action barring Michael Savage is a frightening preview of what we can expect in our own country as the PC police shut down the voices of dissent.”
If these attempts to intimidate and censor people for their viewpoints are not combated now, freedom of dissent may become a memory.
©2009 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. This column is copyrighted and licensed to appear in full on TMV.
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15 Responses to “Britain Is Now The Savage Nation (Guest Voice)”
DMF: You apparently have not read TMV over the past 5 years. We do run Guest Voices of differing viewpoints since our readership has people of differing viewpoints and independent voters and moderates are no monolithic if you look at polls. We do believe that reading a take on something that someone may disagree with doesn’t cause incurable brain cancer. So we have and will continue to offer a variety of views and people can choose to read the post or not and agree with it or not. I don’t agree with a lot of the posts written by others on TMV or some of the Guest Voice posts I put up. That isn’t the point to put up stuff that I already agree with. Also: not a week goes by when someone on the left or right doesn’t start in with the very tired mantra about “moderate” as if a moderate only fits one person’s definition of it. It’s interesting also over the years about how people who are truly far right or far left will email me angry that TMV isn’t moderate because a post isn’t what they believe. Bottom line: we will run posts that some people might not agree with, even the person who puts up the post. Then people can read the post, not read it, discuss it, take it into consideration or ignore it. But we will be running different perspectives and that is, in fact, what many moderates and independents enjoy reading.
I say we trade Savage for Yusuf Islam(Cat Stevens).
so i guess that whole racist “willie horton” campaign and lying about obama's voting record in illinois was just free speech then?
please. freedoms are only important to people like this when they think it's against their “team”.
In the first place this is not a “blatant assault on freedom of speech”, you have to have freedom of speech in order to have it assaulted. Great Britain, along with most of the rest of the world does not have a First Amendment. The United States is an outlier in that respect and as such is much more inclusive when we discuss speech.
also, i thought this was the *moderate* voice? wtf is a piece of sh*t like brown doing on here?
Don't worry, we have liberal pieces of sh*t here too.
Good Morning, Floyd and Mary Beth.
Please listen to Savage here and see if you think it constitutes hate speech:
http://nosavage.org/
If you don't, it's very sad that you would accept such vicious hatred as normal.
that does worry me. as does your apparent lack of understanding of the word “moderate”.
dmf if you look up at the top of the web page it says it includes material from across the political spectrum. It doesn't mean everything here will be a moderate viewpoint.
“Can you imagine the outcry and fervor that this travel ban would cause if it had included a leftist talk host such as Rachel Maddow?”
This and many arguments like it are what seem to drive most any discussion anymore. So, let's imagine that it did happen to someone like Maddow. I'm sure the Browns would be in the camp that say that it serves her right. So what's the point in imagining?
I've heard Savage on occasion and can say that he has some pretty strong views, and that's putting it mildly. However, I don't see him as someone who's inciting violence. The idea of this whole list is a bit puzzling though. Are there no dictators on it? Or perhaps leaders of the genocide that has been going on in Darfur?
I'm not that familiar with Savage and so I thank “joeaudio” for providing a link. Obviously I don't know whether this is “typical” Michael Savage or not.
But assuming it is and that Savage is serious when he said this…..
People believe that the First Amendment allows anyone to say anything they want, and I think the First Amendment does allow that up to, but not including, inciting attacks on others, which is clearly what Savage is asking people to do to Muslims. While he does not specifically call for a physical attack, he does call for a verbal attack and then for the deportation of Muslims. His statement about “taking your religion and shoving it up your behind” is an image we can all do without.
So yes, Savage DOES have a right to disagree with Muslims (no one is forcing him to be a Muslim, so why does he need to attack them?) and if they are illegal immigrants then he has a right to call for their deportation (though what I heard on the snippet did not mention illegal immigrants, he was calling for the deportation of all Muslims, including citizens of the US). But he does not have a right to incite violence against any group of people, which he is clearly doing here.
What I don't understand is why so many people don't get the basic concept that if you (especially someone who has an audience of 25 million) incite hate and violence against other people then people will commit crimes, including murder, against the targeted class of people.
Our country is based on the idea of “tolerance” and that is what the First Amendment is ultimately about. As an example (using this case) everyone has the ability to practice their religion without fear of persecution. The First Amendment does not give anyone the right to call for hate and violence against a group of people. The First Amendment would be self-canceling at that point. What I mean is that in this case it would give Savage the right to incite hate and violence against Muslims, however the First Amendment would not protect the rights of Muslims (or any other religion) for the freedom to practice their religion free from persecution.
I bet if you substituted the name “Michael Savage” with “Omar Muhammed” and replaced “Muslim” with “Christianity”, so that the effect would be a Muslim calling for acts of violence against US citizens who were Christian and the deportation of all Christians, including US citizens, to another country, that person would be labeled a terrorist and run out of town (all the way to Gitmo). Yet that is EXACTLY what Savage has done, except using “Muslims” as the targeted group.
So I would hope that everyone who **is** a supporter of this sort of speech coming from Michael Savage would also be equally supportive of Muslims who call for violence against Christians and/or the deportation of American citizens from America. That's all that Michael Savage has done, though with Muslims. Somehow I don't think it would happen. And it's certainly not my view since I'm against hate speech and the inciting of violence against others, particularly against citizens of my own country.
The British are right and it's about damn time for someone to stand up to those who hide behind the First Amendment in order to incite hate, violence and even the deportation of American citizens simply because they don't like a particular religion. We already (rightfully) investigate Muslims who incite violence against US citizens, so why can't we investigate Michael Savage for inciting the same violence against US citizens?
Floyd, Mary and Michael Weener/Savage. Peas in a putrid pod.
Who cares? The British government made this decision, and that's pretty much the end of it. Save your opinions for matters concerning the country in which you actually live.
I believe there is a substantial difference between speech that incites hate and speech that incites violence. Hatred is not illegal. We all have the right hate people (regardless of how illogical that hatred might be), but we do not have the right to commit violence against other people.
Thus, hate speech, however despicable it might be, ought to be allowed in a free society. The fact that Savage hates Muslims (and gays and liberals and certain ethnic minorities) and encourages his listeners to hate these people does not make him a terrorist and shouldn't be grounds for the government intervening in what he says or where he goes. It's whether he is actively encouraging others to commit violence that is the key here.
Thanks for the link, joeaudio.
What a piece this “man” is…