It's not even about like or dislike. Some people dislike the UK, but I imagine that few feel threatened by the prospect of having to cross its border. It's an easier sell to make someone come to the country despite whatever they don't like to attend a big event. But with the US, who knows at this point? The system had been shaken up so much in the last year that there's no telling what's going to happen to any given entrant (especially someone from one of the "disfavored" countries), or what the rules are going to be like tomorrow. It's not preference, it's preference combined with fear.
>Besides, why would you want to come if you don’t like it here?
There's a difference between saying that you disagree with the way that a country is being run, and wanting to be violent or pursue criminal activity against that country or its people.
What you're missing is that the former should be legal in any democracy (and is in the UK), and the latter shouldn't be legal anywhere (and isn't in the UK).
You're claiming the UK lacks "freedom of speech" because it doesn't allow people to incite violence online, while saying the USA has free speech, despite it seemingly rejecting visitors for legal political speech.
'You're claiming the UK lacks "freedom of speech" because it doesn't allow people to incite violence online, while saying the USA has free speech, despite it seemingly rejecting visitors for legal political speech.'
Voicing support for the group Palestine Action has been met with quite harsh responses in the UK, even though that group is arguably non-violent in that its criminal actions are directed towards property with the aim of slowing actual violence.
There are other similar developments in UK state policy.
The accused person claims to have panicked due to how the police were interfering. If I understand the article correctly the cop was off work for three months due to the injury.
> You're claiming the UK lacks "freedom of speech" because it doesn't allow people to incite violence online, while saying the USA has free speech, despite it seemingly rejecting visitors for legal political speech.
Free speech means the country must tolerate what citizens say; it does not mean the country can't exercise its discretion over its borders to bar entry to foreigners who say things citizens don't like.
To the contrary, it's pro-democratic. In a healthy democracy, people should be able to vote to create the kind of society they want. That includes being able to exclude, through their government, outsiders who don't share their values.
Next up, in a society you should make sure that people you want to exclude have to drink from certain water fountains, can’t be in the same pool and go to separate schools…
Is it not chilling if government can proscribe the things that you say for other people, as if your position is one the government can directly oppose and call illegitimate?
I suspect those who find it chilling also perceive a weak distinction between citizens and visitors. For people who see that difference as foundational, differing treatment of those two groups is not chilling.
Rights can be inalienable but not universal. These rights are conferred by the government, but arise by virtue of membership in a body politic. For example, the right to vote isn’t universal but the government can’t take it away. Free speech arises out of America’s Anglo history and tradition and was viewed by the founders as a political right that protects democracy. There is nothing inconsistent about saying that this right is inalienable for citizens, but doesn’t extend to visitors who aren’t members of our body politic and aren’t entitled to participate in our democracy anyway.
The people you're describing found it consistent with liberty to own other humans, so forgive me if I am skeptical.
I understand your point, I just have a different theory of rights. Just because something is logically conistent doesn't mean I agree with the starting premises.
Personally, are any of your beliefs or statements things that could ban you for entry into the US? Because I have quite a few things that I have said on social media which would likely prevent my entry. It certainly doesn't make me feel like a "member of a body politic" when that body treats my beliefs as intrusive and foreign.
I’m not trying to persuade you about the premises, but only that—as a result of those premises—the slippery slope you fear is longer than you assume. For people who draw fundamental inside/outside distinctions, things that are intolerable for outsiders to say are tolerable for insiders to say.
I view America as a hot cup of coffee, and the outside world as lukewarm day old coffee. I’m not worried about how hot or cold individual molecules inside America are—the average will work out. My concern is about dumping lukewarm coffee from the outside into the cup.
I know you're not trying to convince me, and fortunately many of us see and have taken note of the ambient racism in your position. I understand your point because it is and has been broadcast to me everywhere I have lived in the US.
As a person looking for a cool drink of water, or who might be okay with drinking an iced coffee as the world burns, I am more concerned that the people I live around think that I should be prevented from drinking as I choose. And that's something that has happened here, often, historically, in other places, with many people.
So you can tell me that my concern isn't warranted; I get that all the time. It starts with "you're being hyperbolic" and ends with "well, we are glad they are gone because they weren't 'real people' anyhow."
The reality is that I'm not being hyperbolic in my concern.
> know you're not trying to convince me, and fortunately many of us see and have taken note of the ambient racism in your position.
Culture is not race. Children should be required to write that 100 times on a chalkboard. The third world is the way it is because of the culture of the people who built those societies. Nobody would be more thrilled than me if the only difference between Iowans and Bangladeshis was that we don’t need to spend money on sunscreen. (Except a little for my feet, which burn easily.) But that’s a fantasy world. It’s a fantasy that persists because most Americans have little personal contact with immigrants and can’t see how Bangladeshi mothers raise their children differently than Iowan mothers. Immigrants, meanwhile, actually have limited insight into the inner mechanics of Americans—they can see the results, the institutions, the rule of law, the order. But can’t see the inputs that lead to that. And obviously they have a vested interest in believing flattering falsehoods about what makes societies the way they are.
> I am more concerned that the people I live around think that I should be prevented from drinking as I choose.
You can drink as you choose. What I’m trying to avoid, because we’re all in this cup together, is drowning in the lukewarm coffee that my parents worked so hard to escape. We’re both trying to prevent the world from burning, we just disagree about where the fire is coming from.
That's certainly a stance you can take, but it's not one I'd expect to see from a US administration that's repeatedly (including from the president less than 48 hours ago) got on its high horse to criticise what it perceives as a government crackdown on freedom of speech in European countries.
It's only hypocritical if you believe in universal values that apply to citizens and outsiders alike, which Trump's camp does not. There is nothing inconsistent with supporting free speech for Americans in America and British people in the U.K. while also supporting screening visitors to those countries based on their ideologies.
But even then you can see that they continually talk about the suppression of 'free speech' when the people talking are white supremicists and neo-Nazis. But I am not aware that there is a single instance of them sticking up for Islamic or other radicals that don't fit their agenda.
When the US criticizes Europe for free speech and political suppression, you can be sure they're complaining because the criminalization of literal Naziism harms Trump's allies.
> Besides, why would you want to come if you don’t like it here?
Family, work, others in the group who enjoy it, the level of enjoyment might still be above the level of frustration, wanting to help, emergencies, etc. I could think of many reasons one would want to go to a country even though you disagree with ~50% the population + current leaders.
I've been in North Korea as an example, but I'd never claim to support the ideas and politics of their leader(s).
Reductionism is the sign of a lack of nuance, I speak badly of the USA but still would like to attend a friend's wedding if they choose to have it there. It doesn't mean I don't have contempt for how the country is being run, or how its society is quite flawed, saying those things don't make me an enemy of the state nor do I hate and dislike every single person and thing from there.
This lack of nuance is exactly one of the major flaws of American society, it's either team red or blue, in-group or out-group, black-and-white thinking is rather childish...
Sure, be one-sided if that's how you want to live you life. The rest of us will continue with nuance, and talk to people we disagree about, and favor freedom of expression above conformity. But again, you do you, I'm not asking you to change your opinion, just understand that many value other values.
> A vast majority of people aren’t happy about what’s going on.
What makes you say that? Granted, I'm just an outside observer trying to see what's going on, but since the majority isn't protesting as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like the majority doesn't care too much currently. Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
> Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
What is your mental model of the median American citizen?
> The nation’s affordability crisis has not spared middle-class families, one-third of which struggle to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and child care.
> Across the 160 U.S. metro areas studied, at least 20% of middle-class earners cannot afford to live in that place, after adjusting for local income ranges and price variations.
When you don't know how to afford food for the week or pay the next rent, you're hardly interested in going out on the street and protest. Been there and done that, and politics, no matter how aggressive or "against you" it can feel, is really the last thing on your mind in those situations.
> Boiled down and greatly simplified; someone who struggles to afford food, housing, and child care.
This is not a good description of the median American. Your article is about the income required to afford a "comfortable life," which is a vague target. You can get a concrete idea of what this target seems to mean by looking at the calculator they use: https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/.
For a 2 adult/2 child household in the Baltimore metro area, the calculator estimates you need a household income of $126,000 to meet this "comfortable life" benchmark. For a single person with no kids, the standard is $54,000 a year. It does not make sense to say that someone making $50,000 a year or a family making $100,000 a year in Baltimore (which is a cheap area) is "struggling." My sister-in-law's friend, a 20-something who works as a nanny, probably makes less than that and she has time and money to go out, travel, etc.
The basic error in this analysis is that it bakes in a number of assumptions about standard of living. It assumes that people with significantly below-median incomes (it defines middle class as the middle 60%, so someone at the 25th percentile is counted as middle class) can live alone in a median house, etc., send their kids to corporate daycares, etc. But people with below-median incomes live in below-median houses, they have roommates, they rely on family for childcare, etc. My sister-in-law's friend has roommates, which frees up a lot of money to go do stuff.
If you applied this standard to Europe, you would probably conclude that people are quite desperate there, though of course they are not. In Spain and Italy, half of adults 25-34 live with their parents. They probably couldn't afford to live by themselves in a median-priced apartment. But does that mean they're struggling and would have no time to protest?
So they aren't happy with what's going on, no? They just don't have the means to do anything meaningful about it until the next election cycle. Hopefully the one thing this administration has done is decreased voter apathy.
> Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
A lot of it's that. Our GDP is inflated by bullshit like over-paying for healthcare to the tune of double-digit percentages of total GDP, among other things, so we're flat-out not as rich as we look on paper, as a country. Our social safety net is really bad, government retirement systems and disability are sub-par by OECD standards, and we may have as few as zero paid vacation days or ability to refuse a shift (without being fired for it).
Anyone under the top 20% or so in the US is struggling, or at least stressed out by knowing that one bad month can mess them up for years and years and ruin any long-term plans they had.
We're also a lot more spread out than most countries. It's a lot more expensive and time-consuming to go protest in DC when you live in, say, Colorado, than it is for someone in Marseilles to go attend a protest in Paris. So they go to some local protest with 50 people instead, or maybe to one in Denver with a couple thousand, and you never hear about it. And the protests don't get rowdy (they might get teargassed anyway, of course) because see above about the "one bad month" thing—an arrest without charges of a working adult can easily end up making their family homeless, because they lose their job and can't get another one fast enough (and it's much, much worse if even very low-level charges are filed, even if the charges don't stick or are dropped—our legal system is great at eating thousands of dollars for what ends up being nothing, besides further schedule disruption bringing further risk to employment)
> A vast majority of people aren’t happy about what’s going on.
Because Trump hasn't gotten prices to pre-Biden levels like he promised, not because of what he's doing at the border. Trump has a 49% approval rating on immigration, 50% on "returning America to its values," and 51% on "fighting crime in America's cities." https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP... (page 9).
51% of the country, including 32% of democrats, support "us[ing] the National Guard and active-duty military to police American cities and stop crime and disorder." (Page 23)
I genuinely don’t. The French are famously xenophobic. Even Americans who are xenophobic in principle are not so in practice (which is why the so-called American “far right” is full of immigrants, and why anti-immigration Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens in 2024). Meanwhile, the French are not xenophobic in principle but are very much so in practice.
Yeah, turns out the government taking a strong-arm approach to managing private industry and enforcing cultural cohesion is not necessarily a bad thing.
Half things people criticize the current administration for enforcing wouldn't fly in China either (and more), but the real and final blackpill is we really should be copying them in more ways than one.
And we don't even have things like hidden police officers stalking influencers that conveniently drop by to check on them when they show something problematic on stream. (See: Hasan's recent trip to China, where officers surrounded him to check his phone within 30 seconds of him showing a Xi Jinping meme to his stream)
Everything that a certain population of the US correlated with the color Blue dislikes is considered hate speech by them, so things become impractical. Thankfully there are fewer and fewer snowflakes.
The trump administration is labeling people against fascism as domestic terrorists. Please don’t make this website Reddit with your idiotic views about ‘snowflakes’
I mean, a quick search of all of these people, and you can find something which absolutely warranted police investigation. That's the police doing what they're meant to do — investigate and ensure public safety.
- Jon Richelieu-Booth was investigated for stalking and making threats. The gun photo was not part of the police investigation.
- Jordan Parlour was charged for suggesting attacking hotels housing asylum seekers.
- Bernadette Spofforth was investigated for distributing misinformation with the intent to incite violence.
- Lucy Connolly for exactly what you say, inciting violence
- Norbert Gyurcsik had and was selling terrorist materials. (Just because you pair something illegal in a melody doesn't change its content...)
(With the exception of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, which was an unlawful arrest and they were had restitution for it.)
> - Jon Richelieu-Booth for posting a picture of himself with a gun in the US
A quick search suggests that the photo with the gun wasn't the sole cause of the arrest, given there were stalking allegations "involving serious alarm or distress" from someone he had a conflict with, where the gun was one part of what caused the complainint to (claim to) feel threatened. Police may well have overreacted due to the gun post, but your framing leaves out rather relevant details.
> - Jordan Parlour for Facebook posts that were deemed ‘hateful.’
Appears to have incited violence by advocating an attack on a hotel, something he pleaded guilty to.
> - Bernadette Spofforth for a post with a “mild inaccuracy”
Was arrested for posting a fake name for an attacker, but released and faced no further action.
Calling potentially putting a target on the back of someone innocent by connecting them to a violent crime a "mild inaccuracy" is at best wildly misleading.
> Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine
These people did get a wrongful arrest payout, but the claim was most certainly not just raising concerns in a private parent's WhatsApp group. The claims including harassment, and causing a nuisance on the school premises. The claim was still wrong, and the payout reflects that the police should not have been so quick to believe the allegations before making an arrest. But your claim is still hyperbole.
> - Lucy Connolly, for a post calling for mass deportation and to set fire to hotels housing immigrants
At least in this one you admitted the arrest was over incitement to violence.
> - Norbert Gyurcsik, for having “extreme right wing music”
No, for buying and distributing albums whose lyrics breach terrorism legislation and intended to incite racial hatred.
I have plenty of issues with UK terror legislation, which I believe is being abused to shut down legitimate speech at times, but framing this the way you did is again wildly misleading and hyperbolic.
But even if none of your claims were wildly misleading, none of them support your initial claim:
> You are allowed to say it. Unlike UK, you won’t be arrested. But you won’t be allowed in.
... about a comment referring to criticism of the government.
None of the cases above were relevant to that. Most of them are relating to classes of speech that are not protected in the US either.
This is hysterical. What actions is it you imagine the UK government would have taken to disadvantage me in secret because of what I've said about them that have been so inconsequential that I haven't noticed them?
Something I haven’t seen discussed here is the role of capitalism as the biggest lift to the quality of humans lives (in addition to things like vaccines and health departments or generally science).
The notion of Incentives in human nature to drive innovation, with efficient allocation via prices and value, plus competition, all leading to capital accumulation that just then be efficiently allocated to generate further value was amazing.
If you think about the current situation in Venezuela, China or Russia on useless missions that led to famine or to killing of millions of people, we cannot argue that capitalism wasn’t a huge influence in the impact in humans lives
I was looking at AOC’s comments about capitalism somewhere and could not believe my ears. Then Thomas Sowell gave a masterclass rebuttal to each of AOC’s ignorant points.
GP is saying that they’re okay giving up buying first-class tickets if it means someone else gets to live. (Because they pay more for health insurance, which allows someone else to pay less.)
It’s relevant because while the comment says that “they’re okay giving up buying first-class tickets” what they really imply is that they want everyone to give up buying first class tickets.
If they want to constrain their own choices to help a nameless “someone,” they can literally do that themselves without involving the taxpayer at large. Just send the check to HHS or to a specific charity or individual.
Obamacare failed at reducing costs. It mostly focused on insurance expansion and in consumer protections, not on dealing with hospital, drug, and provider pricing structures that actually drive the spending in the US healthcare system.
The ACA had its most effective cost-control mechanisms stripped by its political opponents. Sen. Lieberman (a turncoat Dem who had campaigned for John McCain) forced the removal of the public option, which would have helped hold prices down through competition. The Supreme Court struck the requirement for states to participate in Medicaid expansion, which limited the benefits for millions in a swath of conservative states. And Republicans in Congress removed the individual mandate, which enabled healthy people to go without coverage, raising prices for everyone else.
It's also important to keep in mind that reforming the US healthcare + insurance system was always going to be an evolutionary, multi-stage process, because of its complexity.
You shouldn't change all the parts in an engine to different specifications at the same time.
The ACA therefore blended structural improvements (insurer admin cost caps, standardized benefits, no prior condition exclusions, guaranteed access, etc.) with lubrication (individual mandate) in an effort to move the whole morass forward.
The worst part about the ACA is that neither party tried to pass ACA Pt 2, that went further. (And yes! That could have been a Republican effort too!)
The previous system was broken. The current system is less broken. It's possible to create an even less broken future system.
The real ridiculousness is anyone campaigning on status quo and/or 'it's impossible to improve things.'
In a constitutional republic like the US, it’s simply too risky to execute major improvements in a big bang fashion. It’s not that different from engaging in a multi-decade software migration project. Sometimes, small changes is really the only path forward.
Part of the reason why Obama, initially a unifying force, eventually became known as a Divider In Chief (in addition to some racial commentary around police work) was that the bold changes of Obamacare left too many victims behind who ended up worse off.
You have to start with the principles of the country and work with them in mind, if you expect to be successful. You also have to assume future change will be dependent on the political winds of the future.
There is likely a lesson somewhere here about introducing “lean healthcare” style of changes instead of “big bang,” but I haven’t taken the time to articulate them.
Maybe starting with principles and making yearly changes that can easily be undone or redone by future administrations is the only path forward.
> Maybe starting with principles and making yearly changes that can easily be undone or redone by future administrations is the only path forward.
I'd trend in the opposite direction. The death of bipartisanship (due to changes in media, education, and gerrymandering: none likely to change soon) render democracies incapable of solving large problems over a multi-voting cycle timespan effectively.
Ergo, the best solution is to punt to an independent body, in the same way central bank management was done.
It makes more sense to have democratically-elected government responsible for and deciding the details, but not the strategic arcs.
Healthcare, national debt / budget deficits, military procurement, voting rights enforcement, education policy would all be better off in consistent hands, even if occasionally less capable ones.
Sometimes, it's more important to keep to an approach than have the optimal approach.
Now? Most democracies get the worst of both worlds there.
The problem, at least in our American mindset, is that since America’s birth, there has been a marked reluctance to have unelected bodies be responsible for anything that impacts the people, ESPECIALLY anything that presumes some globalization intention or some overarching aristocratic ruler (and with good reasons).
Central banking works because problems are instantly catastrophic to the system, whereas healthcare systems are not that fragile. They can survive broken for a long time.
Everybody is okay having a central lender of last resort because the problem is technical, typically unemotional, and in general, benefits every participant equally (because everybody loses is the system collapses).
Healthcare is different in that it affects MY decisions on a regular basis. America is individualistic and self reliant. We never want some government bureaucrat deciding what treatment [I] should or shouldn’t get if [I] can afford it with my own independently earned money. [You] should take care of [Yourself], save your own money, eat healthy, exercise, or not, and live with your consequences.
States have power too. So it does not matter much if some Bernie politician has some fantasy about some central single payer system that has some theoretical average benefit if it restricts ME from making my own choices.
Other countries have other cultures and foundational principles, so Bernie may have better luck there.
But not here.
Is it limiting? Probably for this case. But the fact is the system works for many other things. Everyone wants to come here. It’s the best country in the world etc etc. It does not have to be perfect. But it’s the best we get with the philosophy that made the country what it is.
Does it suck for healthcare? Overall, probably. But not for [ME].
We saw the system has limitations in other cases (think pandemics etc, but even now, many Americans can’t forgive the politicians that kept them imprisoned in their own homes).
You have a right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. But not to anything that must be provided by someone else, like healthcare.
The Supreme Court is not “a political opponent.” It’s literally the way the country works. It found the requirements for states to participate to be unconstitutional. In fact, it was also SCOTUS who eventually determined in 2012 that the individual mandate penalty was functioning as a tax for constitutional purposes. This was the basis for upholding the law. The mandate itself was not upheld under the Commerce Clause but survived because the financial penalty was deemed a tax.
> The ACA had its most effective cost-control mechanisms stripped by its political opponents.
Because of lobbyism, healthcare sector is extremely strong politically and don't want to reduce their income, Democrats aren't immune to that they have mostly been just as pro corporate as the republicans are they just are pro different corporates.
I don’t go to UK anymore for example.
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