Yup. That’s terrorism.

There’s a great scene at the end of the conclusion of the Cartoon Wars twofer on South Park in which Kyle excoriates a group of callow Fox executives who have allowed themselves to be cowed by Cartman (and a group of radical Muslims) into pulling “Family Guy” from the air. Don’t you understand, Kyle implores, that you are giving in to terrorists? That the threat of violence is causing you to alter your commitment to your principles?

For some reason I thought of that episode when news came down that Geert Wilders has been banned from setting foot on British soil. It wasn’t so much that the Brits decided to police their borders; I think we can all agree that every country has the right to decide who comes in and why. It had more to do with the why: Islamist activists threatened to assemble 10,000 demonstrators to “block” his entry into parliament. How they would block his progress was not specified, but one can imagine they weren’t discussing a sit-in.

The UK is allowing the threat of violence to abandon their commitment to free speech and the exchange of ideas. Yup. The terrorists have won.