Savage’s Badge of Honor
by Ben Shapiro
The British government’s decision to ban Michael Savage from entering the UK based on his political viewpoint and opposition to the global domination of Islamic shariah law puts Savage in the same company as Winston Churchill, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the same company as Neville Chamberlain. Savage, the recipient of the Talkers Magazine 2007 Freedom of Speech Award (Al Franken is a former winner), is an ardent advocate for liberty and freedom and the leading opponent of global Islamofascism.
During the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement that brought Europe to its knees before Adolf Hitler. Even as Hitler planned his domination of the globe, the British Broadcasting Company banned Winston Churchill, Hitler’s leading political opponent, from the radio. Even after the beginning of World War II, the BBC censored Churchill, considering him too inflammatory in his description of the Germans.
Today, as Britain gradually kowtows to Islamofascism in the form of domestic acceptance of shariah law and radical Muslim rallies, they seek to censor Michael Savage in the same way they censored Churchill. By placing Savage on the same list as representatives of Islamic terrorists and Neo-Nazis, the Brown government has attempted to draw moral equivalence between those groups that speak out against Chamberlain-esque appeasement of Islamofascism, and the appeasers and Islamofascists themselves. This moral equivalence is utterly false, and worse, it is dangerous not only to free speech values but to the continued freedom of the West against those who would seek to enslave it. Brown will be listed in the history books alongside Chamberlain as an appeaser of tyranny and Savage will be listed alongside Churchill as an advocate of liberty.
Today’s Gordon Brown-led British government is as appeasement-oriented as its 1930s predecessor:
· According to the Telegraph, just last week the leader of the radical Islamofascist group Hizb ut-Tahrir held a rally in London in which he called on his followers to support “jihad” against Israel. Four years ago, Tony Blair promised to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir from Britain.
· According to the Telegraph, last month the British government, led by Brown, was forced under pressure to deny entry to Ibrahim Moussawi. Until Conservative opposition arose, the Brown government had been prepared to admit Moussawi to speak at the University of London. Moussawai describes suicide bombers as “martyrs” and calls Jews “a lesion on the forehead of history.”
· According to the The Sunday Times (September 14, 2008), “Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.”
“Considering the historical position of past liberal British administrations, radio personality Michael Savage finds himself in the best of historical company with Winston Churchill, based on the position that the Gordon Brown government has taken towards Savage today,” said a spokesman for Talk Radio Network. “Winston Churchill claimed that in the years leading up to World War II, he was banned from the BBC for a period of up to eight years. He was put into political exile where he was labeled ‘an extremist’ at a time his voice and free speech was needed most. This attempt at marginalizing Savage and Savage’s free speech is no less egregious than what Churchill experienced in the hands of Chamberlain’s government. It simply validates how history does repeat itself when history’s lessons are not learned by leaders of the modern age.
“The American way is sustained by the lynch pin of freedom of speech. TRN’s position towards all of its hosts is that of the classical liberal who says, ‘even though I might disagree with you completely, I will fight to the last breath to defend your right to speak freely.’ Sadly, the Brown government veers away from this, abandoning Britain’s principles and departing from the position of its own people.” |
