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I'm not familiar with any on here who fit that bill.
But I don't think it's a fair parallel. It's not the same, as it does not involve the loss of your own life.
Charlie Kirk
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But I don't think it's a fair parallel. It's not the same, as it does not involve the loss of your own life.
I can see that. You said a UK citizen has a right to enter the US. They do not. There is no such right. That's not a question of colloquial speech; saying someone has or has not a right is binary, and in this case they have no right.
No, they don't. I'll try and simplify this as much as I can. There are things called rights. These are things the law says all people must be able to do. In the UK we have them defined in a big book called the Human Rights Act. If the right is not in the big book it does not exist. Entering the US is not in the big book. Committing crime is not in the big book. Other things you may think of that sound good, but are not in the big book, are not rights.
Urgh.
I'm not deflecting, I'm remaining on topic and being accurate.
Trump is of course trying to stifle free speech. But there is no possible mechanism for him to stifle the free speech of a UK citizen in the UK without the UK government being complicit. You may feel that he does, and his decrees may annoy you and inconvenience you, but he cannot, by definition, affect your free speech. Any more then Kim Jong Un is stifling your free speech by his threats to imprison anyone who criticizes him if they fly to North Korea. That is a far more visceral threat but nobody complains that their free speech is being violated on the strength of it.
Again, free speech is an important concept, arguably the most important concept in the whole of democracy. I believe it's important to understand what it is before speaking about it. Otherwise, what's the point.
The US is supposed to enshrine free speech more fully than any other country in the world, so in that respect it should be called out. But the truth is that it has never been the case. More pertinently, it is not the case for any other country. There is no government in the world that will guarantee you entry regardless of any opinion you have expressed. In countries like the UK and the US you will just be interviewed then put on the next plane out. In probably the majority of countries you will have an extended stay. In many, you will be jailed for decades or potentially executed.
So yes, Trump is blatant about his crackdown on speech he doesn't agree with. But at the same time, freedom of speech for US citizens in the US is far better than it is for citizens of our country, and of 99%+ of countries around the globe.
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I don't support Trump, I don't like Trump, but he's not trying to silence anyone. He's simply levying the protocols of border control in line with its purpose, to filter people who might not act 'in the public good'. Is it excessive to use it to deny entry to trolls? Probably, but that's another matter.
Twenty years ago I was friends with a guy who was refused re-entry to the US because he posted on social media (Myspace back then I think it was) a joke about slapping his boss in the face with a burger. He'd previously visited on a work visa, fallen out with the boss of the burger joint he worked at, and posted a joke online when he returned. That doesn't mean George W Bush had taken it upon himself to restrict the free speech of foreigners who made jokes about beef burgers, it's simply part of the border control process of all countries.
What an incisive argument. You'll have to give me time to consider my response because to be honest, you've taken me off guard with your quite brilliant intellectual parry.
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You don't seem to know how border controls work, or their purpose.
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