Britian Bans 16 "Least Wanted"

Originally posted at: 2BucksWorth.com

I have always been a Britophile. Not merely our mother country, the UK has also been the US's closest ally and best friend for a century. I am loathe to be critical of such a normally outstanding nation, but sometimes they do things that make me scratch my head.

This week, the British Home Office released the names of 16 very bad people that it doesn't want to come to their fair isles. Ever. Some of them are no-brainers...

Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky (Russian skin-head racist murderers)
A gaggle of various and sundry Muslim extremists and terrorists
Mike Guzovsky (a Kahanist/Jewish fundamentalist)
Erich Gliebe (neo-nazi)
Stephen Donald Black (former grand wizard of the KKK)
American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper (nutballs who protest soldiers' funerals because they were supposedly fighting for gay rights)
and Michael Savage (conservative talk-show host)

What? Michael Savage? WTH did he do? When is saying things you don't agree with the same as killing people or rasing money for terrorist front organizations? I don't agree with some of the things Savage says, but I'd never censor him or bar him from the country for speaking his mind.

Even the Phelps, who are twisted, disrespectful and generally disreputable, are only expressing their right to free speech. Yes they are annoying and embarrasing, but enemies of the state? Hardly.

IMHO, any country that starts banning spewers of vitriol and leaves Janeane Garafalo off the list calls their own good judgement into question at the very least.

This is starting to remind me of certain liberal groups in this country, those who will say that if you don't agree with them you are evil. If you don't support President Obama's policies you are a racist (per Garafalo), if you are pro-life you are a misogynist (or a religious zealot), if you support traditional marriage you are a homophobe (or a religious zealot). Or maybe, maybe we just disagree, in a country where that is still allowed. Nah, can't be that.

Yes, a few people are incurably violent or hateful. But for the rest of us, trying to win an argument by labeling someone as a hater is the coward's way to debate a point you can't defend otherwise. Debate and disagreement never hurt anyone, it's when debate is no longer tolerated that things get dicey.

Nolanbuck