That Habbsie rushes to the support of Geert Wilders says all that need be said.
Is that a fear or a hope?
That, after all the tooth-gnashing, you still can’t tell the difference between supporting someone’s right to free speech and endorsing the entirety of his message.
An illumination of the fact that our “moderate Muslim” friend slipped up and revealed that she views the United States of America as a private house owned by Muslims.
You and reality aren’t on speaking terms, are you.
A short but relevant insight into what Geert Wilders believes and stands for. It’s his response to Charlie Hebdo.
He certainly goes too far, advocating an ambiguous “de-Islamization” of Europe, but deserves every right to speak his opinion as do radical Islamists.
Frankly, even getting into the particulars of what Wilders does and doesn’t get right is missing the point – we do not have a debate on whether some person agrees with correct political values before choosing to grant them rights. This is the U.S. and people’s rights, yes including the rights of non-citizens to visit, should never be contingent on passing an ideological test.
I will happily distance myself from Wilders’s paranoia about immigration in general, with the above caveat that it makes no difference to the issue.
Wilders is such a free speech advocate that he wants the Qur’an to be banned in his country.
There’s nothing “ambiguous” about what he intends: ban the Qur’an and the construction of mosques, end any Muslim immigration, and deport the Muslims that live in his country, and let the elected members of the political party he founded and leads openly proclaim their Nazi allegiance.
Your reading comprehension is letting you down again. Ellison and Carson nowhere claim that “free speech must be limited in cases of ‘prejudice’ or ‘inciting discrimination’”. What they actually say is:
They are not advocating any new restrictions on free speech: they’re simply pointing out limitations on free speech that are already acknowledged to exist. E.g., you can’t count on being allowed to get up on a podium and yell “Kill the [racial epithets]!”, or walk into a federal building wearing a T-shirt that says “All the Stupid [racial epithets] Should Be Fired and Shipped Back to [foreign locality]”. And arguing that you should be allowed to do such things just because of beloved FreezePeach will generally not be successful.
Now, as I said, I don’t happen to agree with Ellison and Carson that Wilders’ actions, loathsome though some of them are, are on a par with that kind of direct aggression to an extent that would justify actually denying him a visa. But it’s clear from what they actually say in their letter that they are not embarking on any sort of super-subtle legislative conspiracy to suddenly destroy the right to free expression as we know it.
You and that strawman of yours really need to get a room. What goes on between the two of you, however passionately absorbing you may find it, has absolutely nothing to do with the reality that the rest of us are living in.
You certainly can. You know nothing about free speech as either a moral or legal principle.
Prohibited incitements to violence must be specific (“kill the Jew Bernie Epstein” or “kill those Jews over there”, not kill Jews in general) and likely to actually incite imminent lawless action – “kill the Jews” at a mere gathering in front a podium is only prosecutable if someone does, in fact, go kill some Jews right away and it can be shown that the speaker influenced this decision. Brandenberg v. Ohio, et al.
Oh, you’re one of those.
Given these ideas he has expressed, do you believe he should be denied entry into the US?
It should also be added that there is no room whatsoever for prior restraint in the American legal system – no matter what you think some guy is going to say about Jews or Muslims or whoever, even if you have a copy of his speech in hand and he is going to meet the extremely narrow Brandenburg test, all you can do is hold him accountable after. It is totally and utterly prohibited to prevent speech from taking place based on its content. If Wilders were a U.S. resident, this would be a nonissue, and I wish the same standard were maintained with visas, because the censorship movement is constantly oozing out from whatever space it is given.
Why do you think the content of Wilders’s views is relevant to his right to freedom of speech? Hint: There is no answer to this question that does not involve disavowing his right to freedom of speech.
No, but neither am I going to be all that torn up if that hateful sack of Nazi shit gets turned back at the border.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, it’s perfectly legal in the United States to run a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, lead a Nazi parade through a Jewish suburb, preach in support of ISIS, and even join a political party controlled by a foreign superpower dedicated to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
What is it about Geert Wilders’s views in particular that requires ending the best thing about America?
It’s not. I’m merely observing that he’s a hateful Nazi shit who has more free speech than he himself thinks Muslims deserve. He’s certainly free to express his hateful Nazi views all he wants, just as you and Stringbean are free to support him all you want.
Well, that’s kind of the point – he very much is not free to express those views in the U.S. if Muslims in the U.S. Congress are using their office to exclude him based on the content of his views.
Conversely, your Muslim pals are free to express their hateful views towards women, children, and non-Muslims all they want. But, in an actual sense, not a theoretical one.
If revoking someone’s visa based on the content of their speech is “ending the best thing about America”, then I regret to inform you that it was ended long ago.
RIP America.
Meanwhile here in reality, he not only has a website accessible in the US, several books published in the US, and gets quoted often by press in the US, he gave a speech to the Conservative Opportunity Society in Washing DC two days ago.
He’s practically swamped in freedom to express his views in the US.
“Look at all the people Muslims aren’t censoring!”