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Jewish World Review
May 21, 2009
/ 27 Iyar 5769
No Home for Savage
By
Debra J. Saunders
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Britain's Parliament has been mired in a political scandal so
damaging that Speaker Michael Martin resigned from office Tuesday. He's the
first House speaker to step down in more than 300 years. Prime Minister
Gordon Brown's Labour Party is dreading the next election which must be
held before June 2010 as members of Parliament have been snared in a
series of Daily Telegraph stories detailing how they filed bogus claims of
up to $40,000 to cover their expenses needed to maintain two homes.
Brown's home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has been particularly
embarrassed in the expenses scandal. The Daily Telegraph reported in March
that her husband, Richard Timney, who works for Smith, submitted an expense
bill to British taxpayers for some $15 to pay for his viewing of two adult
pay-per-view movies, "Raw Meat 3" and "By Special Request." Smith later
repaid the money.
As chickens know, when pecked, you peck another. Earlier this
month, the home secretary released a list of 16 individuals whom the United
Kingdom had banned from the country with six other names left unreleased.
One of the 16 was San Francisco-based beyond-conservative radio-talk-show
host Michael Savage. A press release announced, "Individuals banned from the
U.K. for stirring up hatred have been named and shamed for the first time."
"Named and shamed" Smith should know how that feels. Now, I
am no Michael Savage fan. Yes, he can be entertaining, but he is more of a
loudmouth than a conservative thinker. He has a genius for taking an honest
idea and barking it as if he had just been cut off in traffic. He talks in
labels, not paragraphs.
But he presents no threat to the British people. And when Smith
targeted Savage, she only made him stronger. Because there is nothing
stronger in America than a victim with a live microphone. At an editorial
board meeting Tuesday, British Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald defended the
Home Office policy. Unlike American law, he noted, British law strikes a
"balance" that takes into consideration free speech and the greater good. He
had read some of Savage's comments and considered them "extreme" and
"inflammatory."
As a diplomat, Sheinwald was too polite to point out that as a
sovereign nation, the United Kingdom is free to bar anyone from its borders.
Indeed, governments have an obligation to defend the homeland from outsiders
who advocate the overthrow of the government or violence against citizens.
The policy that spawned Smith's short list was announced in
August 2005 after the infamous 7/7 London terrorist bombings that left 52
dead. In that spirit, Smith was right to bar Samir Kantar, a Hezbollah
militant who served 30 years in prison for his part in the killing of an
Israeli man and his 4-year-old daughter, and other dangerous extremists.
Savage simply is not in that league. He may offend some folk,
but he does not draw blood. In 2008, the Brown government expanded the 2005
law to block the entry of those who would "stir up hatred within our
society." There is a problem there: If the Brown government wants to keep
out angry Americans, then the list isn't nearly long enough.
And there is no getting around the suspicion that a Labour pol
decided to use the big club of government to bully a conservative Yank just
because she could. Like the porn films, the act may have made the Smith
household feel aroused, but it wasn't particularly helpful to the British
public.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders' column by clicking here.
Debra J. Saunders Archives
© 2009, Creators Syndicate
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