Britain shuts out free speech — VOICES for REASON

British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith recently announced that sixteen foreigners have been banned from entering the UK. That list includes American right wing talk radio host Michael Savage. According to Smith, “I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards we have here.”

Apparently those values don’t include respect for free speech: Savage was included on the list because of his (admittedly obnoxious) ideas. According to Smith, “If you can’t live by the rules that we live by, the standards and values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country.” (Emphasis mine.) In other words, Smith and her fellow bureaucrats have the right to dictate the standards and values that people must hold in order to enter (and, by implication, live in) Britain.

But elsewhere Smith suggests that Savage has been targeted, not simply because his views are controversial, but because they fall “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.”

Smith seems to equate Savage’s controversial views with “incitement to violence,” the idea being that since the latter is legitimately a crime, the government thereby has carte blanche to ban the former. But if you take that idea seriously, then the government has free rein to silence any controversial view. After all, what contentious idea couldn’t be said to “foment hatred” or cause “inter-community tension” or “potentially” lead to violence?

Incitement means incitement. It means urging someone to act in an unlawful way. There’s a huge difference between the guy who tells an angry mob to beat liberals about the face and neck, and one who simply calls liberals names. To my knowledge, Savage is just a pugnacious name caller–he hasn’t urged his listeners to resort to blows. And a government certainly can’t preemptively punish or silence someone because it feels he might incite violence.

To define and defend freedom of speech, the crucial distinction that has to be held in mind is the distinction between ideas and actions–between speech, which should be left free, and force, which the government must bar. It’s a bad sign for the future of free speech that the leaders of one of the world’s freest nations are completely oblivious to–or contemptuous of–that distinction.