4 ms·

Yeah, because the American ideal of our forefathers was FAFO? This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally preten

Yeah, because the American ideal of our forefathers was FAFO? This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally pretending to be free speech warriors.

avazhi 6mo ago
I find the idea of a non citizen protesting and causing social unrest diabolical. Most international students, (whether studying in the US or Europe or Australia or Malaysia or indeed anywhere else) understand that their visa does not grant them the same substantive rights that citizens of a country get. That’s as it should be. I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I expect to be provided rights exclusively afforded to citizens of a country in which I was visiting. Some of you guys have clearly never travelled outside your home countries.
- soganess 6mo ago
  [dead]
- pesus 6mo ago
  There is nothing in the constitution limiting the 1st amendment to only citizens.
  - avazhi 6mo ago
    The US Constitution limits the legislature's ability to pass laws restricting speech. The Executive revoking a noncitizen's student visa does not breach that Constitutional protection.
  - WesolyKubeczek 6mo ago
    I applied for a visa and crossed borders enough times to remember this: visas can be refused and revoked for any reason at all. And a border guard is within rights to deny you entry for any reason whatsoever. Understanding these things made my life much easier.
  - nailer 6mo ago
    That’s correct. I’m a Visa holder. I have the right to free speech, but I don’t have the right to be in the USA. And when I’m outside of the USA, the government really doesn’t care about my freedom of speech one way or the other.
nailer 6mo ago
I could imagine someone arriving after independence and advocating against the new government, insisting that they return to King George, would indeed Find Out.
WalterBright 6mo ago
If you are invited to visit someone's home, and you go, and say nasty things to the homeowner, you'll be tossed out despite your right to free speech. If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest. When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that. I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was. A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.
- soganess 6mo ago
  A country is not a house. Conflating the legal framework of a nation-state with the etiquette of a private living room is a category error. As John Locke demonstrated when refuting the patriarchal theory of government, political power is fundamentally distinct from household authority. A private home is governed by the unilateral property rights of an owner; a republic operates via constitutional law and public rights. Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    Analogies are never perfect. The point remains, however. If you're here on a visa, the visa can be revoked, and you can be ejected. Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa. Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
    - wahern 6mo ago
      The maxim, "a government of laws, not of men" means state power should be exercised according to consistent principles and policy even beyond the letter of the law, not at the whim of bureaucrats or even leadership. Because it's generally impossible to draft laws to enumerate every possible scenario, contingency, and condition, statutes tend to nominally grant powers broader than for the purposes intended, even when there's no intent for them to be applied beyond the original purpose. For practical and procedural reasons courts typically only safeguard this principle by looking to whether the law nominally grants a power to do something, rather than if the power is rightfully exercised under a more wholistic and detailed interpretation of the laws, but the principle is still enshrined in US organic law, and in jurisprudence generally. Courts often do scrutinize exercises of state power to determine whether they violate this principle, but which applications are scrutinized tend to be a function of contemporary political debates and a courts ideological makeup. These deportations are an interesting study in how this plays out, because historically immigration and, especially, deportations is an area of law where the usual rule pertains. But free speech is the complete opposite, where for the past 100 years courts are much more scrutinizing; indeed, precedent in free speech case law requires explicit, deliberate, and fine-grained application of varying levels of scrutiny in each, individual case, a process which is quite exceptional even in cases involving constitutional powers and rights. It's worth pointing out that prior to the modern legal era, free speech law was quite different, both nationally and at the state level. Regulations and applications of regulations that incidentally impinged upon speech, but which otherwise clearly derived from legitimate state powers, received very light of any scrutiny. Regulation of commercial activity, for example, usually would not be considered to violate free speech rights even if it prohibited certain speech outright, so long as enforcement was nominally directed at commercial activity per se.
keeda 6mo ago
I think this is common sense advice rather than a philosophical stance about free speech, said advice being generalized as "When in a foreign country, avoid trouble." As an example, if you visit China and start FA about Tibet, you will FO pretty soon, no matter how right you are about free speech. Yes, this case is a travesty, but that does not change the soundness of the advice.
izacus 6mo ago
You can follow the ideal of your forefathers by changing those abusive evil laws. Instead of demanding that foreigners risk their head in protest.
- avazhi 6mo ago
  I mean, I’d rather foreigners who demonstrate and cause civil unrest not visit my country - seems like a lot less trouble for everybody that way. When in Rome.

Yeah, because the American ideal of our forefathers was FAFO? This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally pretending to be free speech warriors.

avazhi 6mo ago

I find the idea of a non citizen protesting and causing social unrest diabolical. Most international students, (whether studying in the US or Europe or Australia or Malaysia or indeed anywhere else) understand that their visa does not grant them the same substantive rights that citizens of a country get. That’s as it should be. I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I expect to be provided rights exclusively afforded to citizens of a country in which I was visiting. Some of you guys have clearly never travelled outside your home countries.

soganess 6mo ago
[dead]
pesus 6mo ago
There is nothing in the constitution limiting the 1st amendment to only citizens.
- avazhi 6mo ago
  The US Constitution limits the legislature's ability to pass laws restricting speech. The Executive revoking a noncitizen's student visa does not breach that Constitutional protection.
- WesolyKubeczek 6mo ago
  I applied for a visa and crossed borders enough times to remember this: visas can be refused and revoked for any reason at all. And a border guard is within rights to deny you entry for any reason whatsoever. Understanding these things made my life much easier.
- nailer 6mo ago
  That’s correct. I’m a Visa holder. I have the right to free speech, but I don’t have the right to be in the USA. And when I’m outside of the USA, the government really doesn’t care about my freedom of speech one way or the other.

nailer 6mo ago

I could imagine someone arriving after independence and advocating against the new government, insisting that they return to King George, would indeed Find Out.

WalterBright 6mo ago

If you are invited to visit someone's home, and you go, and say nasty things to the homeowner, you'll be tossed out despite your right to free speech. If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest. When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that. I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was. A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.

soganess 6mo ago
A country is not a house. Conflating the legal framework of a nation-state with the etiquette of a private living room is a category error. As John Locke demonstrated when refuting the patriarchal theory of government, political power is fundamentally distinct from household authority. A private home is governed by the unilateral property rights of an owner; a republic operates via constitutional law and public rights. Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  Analogies are never perfect. The point remains, however. If you're here on a visa, the visa can be revoked, and you can be ejected. Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa. Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
  - wahern 6mo ago
    The maxim, "a government of laws, not of men" means state power should be exercised according to consistent principles and policy even beyond the letter of the law, not at the whim of bureaucrats or even leadership. Because it's generally impossible to draft laws to enumerate every possible scenario, contingency, and condition, statutes tend to nominally grant powers broader than for the purposes intended, even when there's no intent for them to be applied beyond the original purpose. For practical and procedural reasons courts typically only safeguard this principle by looking to whether the law nominally grants a power to do something, rather than if the power is rightfully exercised under a more wholistic and detailed interpretation of the laws, but the principle is still enshrined in US organic law, and in jurisprudence generally. Courts often do scrutinize exercises of state power to determine whether they violate this principle, but which applications are scrutinized tend to be a function of contemporary political debates and a courts ideological makeup. These deportations are an interesting study in how this plays out, because historically immigration and, especially, deportations is an area of law where the usual rule pertains. But free speech is the complete opposite, where for the past 100 years courts are much more scrutinizing; indeed, precedent in free speech case law requires explicit, deliberate, and fine-grained application of varying levels of scrutiny in each, individual case, a process which is quite exceptional even in cases involving constitutional powers and rights. It's worth pointing out that prior to the modern legal era, free speech law was quite different, both nationally and at the state level. Regulations and applications of regulations that incidentally impinged upon speech, but which otherwise clearly derived from legitimate state powers, received very light of any scrutiny. Regulation of commercial activity, for example, usually would not be considered to violate free speech rights even if it prohibited certain speech outright, so long as enforcement was nominally directed at commercial activity per se.

keeda 6mo ago

I think this is common sense advice rather than a philosophical stance about free speech, said advice being generalized as "When in a foreign country, avoid trouble." As an example, if you visit China and start FA about Tibet, you will FO pretty soon, no matter how right you are about free speech. Yes, this case is a travesty, but that does not change the soundness of the advice.

izacus 6mo ago

You can follow the ideal of your forefathers by changing those abusive evil laws. Instead of demanding that foreigners risk their head in protest.

avazhi 6mo ago
I mean, I’d rather foreigners who demonstrate and cause civil unrest not visit my country - seems like a lot less trouble for everybody that way. When in Rome.