Mike Savage and his radio talk show have come under attack by the terrorist worshipping CAIR organization.
This is not the first time CAIR has attempted violating the first amendment rights of those who disagree with radical Islam. The CAIR organization also tried silencing author Robert Spencer when Spencer was scheduled to speak to the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) last summer. CAIR had threatened legal action against the YAF if Spencer spoke.
This epidemic threat to our free speech is also caused by CAIR’s counterparts on the Left. For example, Don Imus was a talk show host whose free speech came under attack by leftists at Rutgers University (it’s always a university) and Reverend Al Sharpton for making his “nappy-headed hoes” comment about the all-women’s’ basketball team.
In Savage’s case, he was commenting on Islamofacism in a way that showed he vehemently disagreed with it. CAIR falsely accused him of prejudice against Islamic peoples, and wants to remove the Savage Nation from the airwaves.
Rutgers College did the same to Don Imus, wrongly branding him a “racist” and “sexist”. In actuality, Imus was merely making a harmless sarcastic joke of the variety he’s always made for years on his talk show. Though Savage’s remarks were more important for their (justified) opposition to the serious threat of Islamofacism, both Imus and Savage have a right to free speech. No one can constitutionally penalize them for exercising this right not even their radio station’s owners. But notice this common unethical tactic the leftists and terrorist sympathizers use: demonizing viewpoints as some form of prejudice, then using that as the excuse for violating a speaker’s first amendment rights. The politically correct notion of “prejudice” accusations must not fool us.
One element that permits the problem of silencing people is conformity. Every female on the Rutgers basketball team stood by in support of their college when those who ran it were calling for Imus’s removal from radio. Not one female basketball player stepped forward to say, “I may not agree with Imus’s remark about us, but--damn it—it’s wrong to make him lose his job.” There was no Emily Dickinson on that team that can stand out from the crowd with independence and integrity and oppose the injustice towards Imus. Instead, the women’s’ basketball team players were immature enough to give in to a petty slight and retaliate maliciously out of a bruised ego. So each girl stood by silently and allowed others to use them as the excuse for making Imus lose his means of livelihood. It was pathetic. Likewise, CAIR’s members were all witting accomplices in a dishonest attack on Mike Savage’s free speech and an attempt to silence him. While conformity permits the problem of silencing people, passivity of the victims allows the censors to repeat their wrongful act.
Yet, Mike Savage is fighting back. He has filed a lawsuit against CAIR charging that they committed copyright infringement when they posted his quotes on the CAIR website next to the “Donate” icon for people to hear. CAIR wanted to use his quotes to raise financial support for their efforts to silence Savage. Fighting back is the right thing for Savage or anyone else to do when would-be censors oppose their first amendment rights. By fighting back, people prevent organizations like CAIR from censoring them and thereby protect their first amendment rights. Let’s hope Savage succeeds and that people follow his example.
Furthermore we must not underestimate the greater importance of Mike Savage’s case over others. That is because Savage is opposing CAIR, a group having radical Islamic leanings and which supports terrorists. In fact, CAIR was founded by the radical Muslim Brotherhood and has had a number of members convicted of illegal activity. For example, Randall Todd Royer, Senior CAIR worker, was convicted of being part of a militant Jihadist group in Virginia. He supported terrorists in Pakistan in training terror mongers to murder American troops in Afghanistan. This and other CAIR misdeeds are reported at the
website. In short, CAIR is disreputable and untrustworthy, Mike Savage is not.
Yet, CAIR’s misdeeds evidence a larger, more dangerous design. CAIR is the radical Islamist attempt to conquer our country ideologically. If successful in silencing all opposition to Islamofacism, their terrorist-supporting ideology (i.e. radical Islam) could install an Islamofacist dictatorship in place of a free society---something America’s Islamic terror cells want. History shows us many instances of a newly dominant ideology creating a different type of social system or government---for good or evil. For example, the American Revolutionaries’ conception of the Constitution is based on the “natural rights” philosophy of John Locke and others during the Enlightenment. By contrast, the Nazi regime was based on the collectivist and Thulist ideologies of Nazi socialism. So fighting CAIR’s attempts to rob us of free speech on a mass scale helps preserve our Constitutional Republic.
The way to protect our free speech rights is to support those radio talk show hosts whose first amendment rights are under assault. Also, in our own sphere, we must not conform to any corrupt, politically correct institution (whether Rutgers, CAIR or any other) when they violate our neighbor’s rights. If we do so conform, especially through “complicity by silence”, then our own free-speech rights will be targeted next. We must vigorously oppose political correctness, express our viewpoint, defend our right to say it, and prompt courts and politicians to uphold our first amendment rights against lawsuits meant to silence us. Just as gun-rights supporters filed legal motions to outlaw the filing of frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers, we must do a similar thing about outlawing frivolous lawsuits violating our first amendment rights. This, in part, means holding CAIR and other like it accountable for their violations of the US Constitution. We must also legally prevent radio station owners from firing their talk show hosts due to their employee’s protection under the Constitution’s first amendment. If free-speech dies, so does the free marketplace of ideas. And along with it our liberty.
