In 2007, CAIR led a campaign to boycott Savage because he called the Koran a "book of hate" and said "I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don't wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."
Of course I don't think those words warrant a boycott. But they seem no harsher than calling Islam a "wicked, vicious, faith". And in 2005 British National Party Chair Nick Griffin was charged with incitement of religious hatred - a crime that held a penalty of up to seven years in prison in Britain - for saying those three words.
Shameful as the travel ban is, it's far less totalitarian than jailing your own citizens.
The prosecution of Griffin and many other anti-immigration and anti-Islam politicians such as Frank Vanhecke, and Susanne Winter received scant attention in the American media and even less criticism. In fact I often hear conservatives repeat the "neo-fascist" smears against the populist right in Europee using the charges of hate crimes as proof. I've always responded that if they were in Europe, half of America's talk radio hosts would be in jail.
Maybe the Savage affair will help open the Respectable Right's eyes - preferably before Sen. Teddy Kennedy's Hate Crime Bill sneaks into law.
