The Rational Argumentator

A Journal for Western Man

Britannia Ruled by Knaves: Savage Banned to Fill White Man Quota

When I first heard that radio host Michael Savage had been banned from traveling to England along with an assortment of Moslem terrorists and other miscreants, my first thought was that the public relations arm of the politically correct thought police had struck again.  It only made sense.  Given how Britain is now bedeviled by Islamic jihadists, it had a legitimate reason to keep their most zealous fellows from the nation’s increasingly volatile Moslem masses.  Yet the spineless Neville Chamberlain bureaucrats charged with this task — whose credo seems to be “peace through capitulation” — would never want to be seen as singling out Moslems.  So they traded a man’s reputation for peace in our time. 

Now this analysis has been vindicated with the release, under a Freedom of Information law, of shocking documents showing that the U.K.’s Home Office did in fact ban Savage to “balance” the Moslem personae non gratae.  Writes the Daily Mail:

One message, sent by an unidentified Home Office official on November 27 last year, said that 'with Weiner [Savage’s birth name], I can understand that disclosure of the decision would help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases'.

The documents include a draft recommendation, marked 'Restricted', saying: 'We will want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists.'

And it appears the decision involved officials in the highest levels of government, perhaps even extending to Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself.

The documents also contain a rather explicit admission that banning Savage was unjust, with another unidentified official warning, “I think we could be accused of duplicity in naming him.”  This could be a smoking gun in a defamation lawsuit Savage has filed in which he is seeking £100,000 in damages from Jacqui Smith, the former secretary of the Home Office who recently resigned in disgrace.  At the helm of the bureaucracy when Savage was banned, Smith impugned him in a press release issued in defense of the action, saying that the host was “seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence.”  But with the newly-released documents, her claim that she truly viewed Savage as a threat seems like nothing but air.

However the case plays out in court, there is no doubt that Savage was sacrificed to fill a quota.  The host addressed this in his usual inimitable style, telling WorldNetDaily.com, “The name Dreyfus comes to mind.  They have attempted to destroy my reputation to avoid offending those Muslims who want to destroy them!  The Warsaw ghetto comes to mind, where some Jews threw other Jews into Gestapo hands to live another day.”

Yet every aspect of this case smacks of political correctness and expediency, starting even with the appointment of the villain in the story, Jacqui Smith, herself.  Just recently, in a development as shocking as the documents vindicating Savage, she admitted incompetence, saying, “When I became Home Secretary, I'd never run a major organization. I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of those skills.  . . . every single time that I was appointed to a ministerial job I thought that [I wasn’t up to the task]. I didn't sleep for a week in 1999 when I got my ministerial job.”

Ain’t political correctness grand?  Like Sonia Sotomayor, Joycelyn Elders, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and so many others, it’s obvious that Smith was an affirmative-action appointee.  She held her position because of chromosome configuration, not qualifications.  So you could say that the Savage story is one of a bureaucrat chosen by quota who then chose a victim by quota. 

This ought to give all of us pause.  You may rest secure in the knowledge that you’re not as controversial as Savage, but understand the implications of quota selection.  Whether you’re favoring a person or persecuting him, the standard is the same: you’re selecting him not based on what he has done but what he is.  And who will be chosen based on a profile next time?  Can you be sure that what you do and say will save you when what you are is precisely the sacrifice needed?

And, really, some would say it is this utilitarian approach of the Home Office that is most unsettling.  It reminds me of the old saying, “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.”  If Smith and her comrades had hated Savage, then, in a strange way, it perhaps would have been a bit more noble.  After all, in their own minds — twisted though they are — they just might have believed they were dispensing justice.  But the situation in question here was quite different, as it involved cold, detached calculation.  Of course, some of these bureaucrats may also harbor deep hatred, but of what we can be sure is that they certainly don’t love their fellow man enough to view him as anything but a pawn, a means to an end.  These are the kind of people who operate gas chambers by rote.

This is just one reason why I wish Michael Savage Godspeed with his lawsuit.  The hate-speech tyrants have spent years using the perpetual motion machine of bureaucracy to persecute those without the means or will to fight back.  And even when the Smiths of the world meet resistance — such as when Canadian journalist Ezra Levant was targeted after republishing controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in 2006 — the best their victims can usually hope for is Pyrrhic victory.  Levant won his case, for instance, but had to endure an emotionally draining, two-year investigation and spend $100,000 on legal fees.  As he said, the process is the punishment.  So let’s hope Savage can give the unthinking thought police a taste of their own medicine.

Most importantly, however, figures such as Savage and Levant stand in the vanguard.  The ultimate goal of the thought police’s minions in government, Hollywood, the media, academia and various Moslem advocacy groups is not to restrict us to our own borders.  It is to restrict us within them, and with every victory their iron burka descends ever lower over those who speak Truth.  And if the powerful in the media can be silenced, the rest of us won’t stand a chance.   

Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a regular guest on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative, and he writes regularly for The New American, and Christian Music Perspective.

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