No, I’ve never been a citizen of “The Savage Nation,” and I hardly count as an ardent fan of the bombastic, simplistic, perpetually enraged sort of talk radio exemplified by Michael Savage.

But regardless of my disagreements with the man’s style and substance, he’s absolutely right to stand up to bullying and intimidation by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Whenever a governmental official attempts to silence a journalist or commentator, then all those committed to free speech – whether conservatives, moderates or liberals – ought to protest vigorously against this clear-cut abuse of authority.

If San Francisco Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval dislikes the content of Michael Savage’s show he’s got a perfect right to go to management of the local station and urge them to drop the program, or to start a petition drive for that purpose, or even to organize a sponsor boycott.

Such protests would enable Sandoval and his leftist allies to use their free speech to answer the free speech of a radio host they find distasteful – the same way Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson used their national platforms to shut down Don Imus because of his notorious “nappy-headed ho’s” remark last April. I happen to believe that the anti-Imus hysteria represented a feverish sort of media insanity and over-reaction, but Imus can’t claim he was victimized by censorship. He faced the pressure of the marketplace and the force of public opinion – not governmental stifling or intimidation. And now Mr. Imus (having agreed to accept $20 million from CBS for their craven breach of his contract) appears poised to make a comeback, not because the government changed policy but because the marketplace and public opinion shifted.

In contrast to the Imus affair, the Sandoval-and-the-Supes attack on Dr. Savage amounts to precisely the sort of governmental meddling that civil libertarians of every stripe ought to resist. Sandoval introduced a formal resolution to the top governing body of San Francisco and his colleagues voted 9 to 1 to condemn Savage for “hate speech” and to demand his firing. The supervisors are entitled to their opinion, but they’re not entitled to abuse their position as elected officials to give those opinions governmental endorsement.

Government bodies on the federal, state and local level should strictly avoid condemning – or endorsing, for that matter – political opinions on controversial matters.

With the strident left clearly losing the battle of ideas, they want to use the power of officialdom to silence their opponents – hence the federal effort to revive the “fairness doctrine” under which bureaucrats would take responsibility for “balancing” broadcast opinion, rather than allowing the audience to pick whichever ideas its members want to hear.

The whole impulse to control, to punish, to stifle reveals the totalitarian complexion of contemporary “progressive” thinking. On CNN earlier tonight, I debated another talk show host who believed that Imus deserved a life-time ban from the airwaves because of his crude remarks about the Rutgers basketball team – comments for which he’s apologized lavishly and repeatedly. But at least the unforgiving critics of the much-derided Don haven’t demanded bureaucratic or official sanction to enforce such a ban.

For those who resent Imus or despise Savage, I’ve got a constructive suggestion: why don’t you just go ahead and turn these guys off? But for the sake of sanity and free speech, please avoid any governmental efforts to try to shut them up.