He can not.
Sarah Palin is a politician. The Prince of Wales is Heir to the throne of a Constitutional Monarchy. Their roles are not the same.
The Crown cannot be seen to be attempting to censor the press. This means that the Crown has to be incredibly careful even in criticising the press because it might be seen as an attempt at censorship. And as the Prince may become the Crown at any moment he has to abide by those constitutional principles.
And they are constitutional principles.
The Prince's problem often is the press.
In this particular case, the media is quoting selectively from the Prince's speech, leaving out a lot of context.
Let's look for a moment at one other small section of the same speech, which outlines the Prince's conservative viewpoint.
The Modernist ideology that has dominated the Western outlook for a century implies that “tradition” is backward looking. What I have tried to explain today is that this is far from true. Tradition is the accumulation of the knowledge and wisdom that we should be offering to the next generation. It is, therefore, visionary – it looks forward.
Turning to the traditional teachings, like those found in Islam that define our relationship with the natural world, does not mean locking us into some sort of cultural and technological immobility. As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do.
In this speech, which the media has tried to portray as being all about Islam (and it was delivered to a Muslim student group so there is a lot about Islam in there), the Prince quotes C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton - who, as you may well know, were both conservative Christian writers.
He also drew on Judaic, Christian, and Gnostic traditions.
This incidentally is also the teaching of Judaism. The Book of Genesis says that God placed Mankind in the garden “to tend it and take care of it,” to serve and conserve it for the sake of future generations. “Adamah” in Hebrew means “the one hewn from the Earth,” so Adam is a child of the Earth. In my own tradition of Christianity, the immanence of God is made explicit by the incarnation of Christ. But let us also not forget that throughout the Christian New Testament, Christ often refers to Himself as “the Son of Man” which, in Hebrew, is “Ben Adam.” He, too, is a “son of the Earth,” surely making the same explicit connection between human nature and the whole of Nature.
Even the apocryphal Gnostic texts are imbued with the same principle. The fragments of one of the oldest, ascribed to Mary Magdalene, instructs us that “Attachment to matter gives rise to passion against Nature. Thus, trouble arises in the whole body; this is why I tell you; be in harmony.” In all cases the message is clear. Our specific purpose is to “earth” Heaven. So, to separate ourselves within an inner darkness, leads to what the Irish poet, WB Yeats, warned of at the start of the Twentieth Century. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he wrote, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.”
These are extracts from the speech that the media is trying to present as being all about Islam. They're not the bits they are telling you about.
And, why is is this event that the media has focused on? This particular public appearance is getting a lot of publicity.
The media didn't choose to give this publicity to the three public engagements so far this month that His Royal Highness undertook to honour British troops and veterans. It didn't choose to give this publicity to the eight events so far this month where the Prince was promoting Britain's heritage and history. Or the three events promoting British industry and exports.
Or for that matter, the don't choose to mention the two historic Churches he visited last week either.
No, those things don't get publicisied. They pick and choose what they publicise in order to present a warped view of who the Prince is, and what he believes.
Personally, I think he's wrong on his environmentalism. And I've told him so. But speaking as a conservative, that is the only issue on which he is less conservative than I am. Generally speaking, he's much more likely to be right of me, than left of me.
He's a shooter and a hunter who believes in gun rights. He's a man who believes it is the fundamental duty of all people to honour their nations troops. He's a patriot. He's a Christian. He's for low taxes, and believes that personal and private charity is a better way to help those in need than government intervention. He believes in freedom of religion, and in freedom of speech. And above all else, he believes in duty. Ich Dien is his motto - "I serve'. And he does it every single day of his life, and will until the day of his death.
Prince Charles has a website which presents the full text of his speech, and also a video of him presenting it.
And the title of the speech, evidently chosen by the Prince himself, is “Islam and the Environment”
http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/index.html
Charles is fortunate to have a good friend such as you. But it is also obvious that he, not the mass media, is the chief author of his controversial reputation.
Comparisons of Charles to Al Gore are quite appropriate. Both live in luxury, while proclaiming the dangers of much lower levels of consumption by ordinary people. Are they simply incapable of comprehending their own hypocrisy?
Perhaps Charles might benefit from concentrating on mastering some art or science, and spend less time advising the rest of us how to live. I recall that Emperor Hirohito eventually made himself very well respected as a marine biologist.