Another brick in the wall

Britain has announced that certain people will not be allowed into the country because — at least in some cases — it doesn't like the way they think. From The Independent (tip of the hat: Lawrence Auster):

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.

The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host.

A country is not obliged to admit anyone who wants in. I'd like both the United States and Britain to see off more of the unsavory and dangerous than they do. But who does the Home Secretary consider mad, bad, and dangerous to know?

The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host. …

The list of the 16 "least wanted" includes radio talk show host Michael Savage, real name Michael Weiner.

"This is someone who has fallen into the category of Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe," Ms Smith told BBC Breakfast.

Michael Savage gets on my nerves. His shouting, his endless repetition of every point, his fingernails-on-a-blackboard New Yawk accent … ugh. As far as I know, however, he has never been accused of any crime, except anti-liberalism.

Also named are American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, who have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and claimed the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.

I've never heard of either, but if that is an accurate portrait of them — not an automatic assumption, given this is from the way-left Independent — they are contemptible wackos. But that, too, is not itself a crime.

So how is it that Savage, Phelps "Snr" (that means Senior, for Yanks unfamiliar with strange Brit abbreviations), and Phelps-Roper are in the same most-dangerous category as "Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky [a case of moral equivalence?], former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe"?

Namer-and-shamer Jacqui Smith explains it: "This is someone who has fallen 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."

Translated from Government Mafia jargon, that means something like: "This is someone who sees Islam and sharia law as threats to Western society. As if that wasn't bad enough, he says so — on the radio, my dear No-God! And since the United Kingdom has encouraged its colonisation by thousands of beheaders-in-training, screaming misfits, and jihad-supporting imams, some of our not yet dhimmified citizens might be encouraged to become a bit tense over the position, which could lead to violent demos by our Muslim community in righteous repugnance at unrestrained infidel behaviour. As we all know, Britain has defended through the centuries, since the very days of Richard the Chicken-Hearted, individuals' right never to have to hear a word challenging their belief system."