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Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

Have no more fear, your country is safe from all terrorists who tweet about their plans.

Truthfully, I wouldn't have expected this from America, they're the kind of jokes I could imagine myself making on Twitter, but will be careful not to before future trips there..

This is pretty much what I think of when going to China, and what makes me specially careful not to say anything the Chinese could take as a threat. Heh, last time I went we were doing some IPTV streaming from an event, and where given a list of words which, if anyone said on air, would have us all deported within hours.

edit: To people complaining about The Sun - yes, it's a crappy rag, but this is basically a story that no news outlet would hear of unless the people involved sold/gave their story, and there's no reason they wouldn't go to The Sun, where they could reasonably expect to get a little more $$$ than if they went to the BBC.

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US is done as the "land of the free". It's still very hard for many people to believe it, but it's true. I mean it's 47th place in the world for freedom of press now - 47th! That's far from the beacon of freedom US used to be.

Whenever I see the heavily armed and militarized police in US and how they react to protesters, it's like I'm watching news about Russia or something.

When _was_ it the land of the free? The period between giving black people the vote and the PATRIOT act? Even then, it was hardly number one.

I am always at odds with this because I find myself talking about our freedoms being taken away while I think back on my grandfather and what he went through. Gay people are even getting closer to the vast majority accepting them and possibly marriage (depending on the supreme court). This country was built with women and blacks having no true freedom. That does not mean I am not appalled at what is happening now, but what should we go back to? People constantly mention "freedom" like everybody in this country always had it. The government is just finding ways to do what it has always done, which no includes technology. The main difference is that the internet lets us know without a short time-span.

I do hope that we can make a better future, but it is not like the past was the greatest thing either.

One of the nice facts about history is that you will never see any group trash "liberty" and "freedom." Just about every dictatorial, authoritarian, or megalomaniacal political movement thinks it's pro-freedom. Communists? "The bourgeois have enslaved the proletariat, and we lock them up in the name of liberating the people." Nazis? "The actions of the Jewish Conspiracy at the end of the Great War have enslaved the German people." The U.S. Civil War stands as one of the most explicit examples: one side rallied behind the idea that slavery must be abolished; the other side rallied behind the idea that the federal government has no right to tell its member states what to do. It was a war where the liberty of the lowest class was pitted against the liberty of the state.

It's as if Mother Liberty was the Goddess herself: for whenever two nations come into a fight, people in both are always saying that "God is on our side"...

This goes back a _very_ long way; politicians used similar rhetoric in the Roman Republic (which was a slavery-based state which granted a meaningful franchise only to a wealthy elite).

This is because of the nature of freedom. Freedom is to constraints as silence is to sound. Constraints are the things that positively exist, freedom only exists as the negative space.

This is also why the concept of free will is so problematic: how free does will have to be to be called free will? Does it have to be free from the laws of physics? Does it have to be free from coercion?

I think there are more concepts where we have it the wrong way around like this.

Freedom is indeed absence of coercion by others. What's wrong with that?

Edit: thanks for the clarification, koningrobot,

Nothing, the problem is not with reality (of course :-). The problem is that most people seem to think about freedom as something positive. You can only create freedom for Joe by coercing Jane to not violate it. This enables the kind of scenario that the parent to my original comment describes.

I think your first sentence is really interesting & insightful, kind of treating "true" freedom as a sort of absolute zero -- that is, a never-actually-reachable ideal.

I feel like free will doesn't have much to do with the kind of freedom we're talking about, though. If some other human being (or group) has the ability to make you do something you don't want to do, that's a problem of freedom, not free will. (After all, you could decide not to do that thing and suffer the consequences).

Free will is much more about things that you have no ability whatsoever to actually make that decision in the first place, whether because of the manipulative hand of some supernatural force, or via some radical rationalist explanation of decision making.

I see at least two implications of what I said, one being that freedom is an absolute zero, the other being that shifting freedom around is a zero-sum game. Maybe these two are related in some game-theoretic way, I'm not sure. The only fundamentally productive way of obtaining freedom is by getting more control over our environment, i.e., technological progress.

I understand the distinction you're making between freedom and free will; I mentioned it because the compatibilist notion of free will is what you're calling freedom here. But yeah, it's probably not too relevant to the original discussion.

That period includes the internment of 110000 Japanese Americans in War Relocation Camps without any kind of due process. Land of the free, unless your parents were born in the wrong country.

Well, that depends on whether he meant when we gave black people the right to vote on paper (after the Civil War) or when black people effectively got the right to vote (1965). I assumed he meant the latter ;-)

Oops. Sorry, my lack of knowledge of the US history is showing.

Actually, right after the Civil War, I've read that things were pretty different - I know there were a lot of blacks who moved into Indiana and were accepted quite warmly by the people here, up into the 1880's and the Klan really got underway.

By 1930, of course, the KKK had a significant political presence in Indiana, and at this point, white rural Hoosiers hate blacks with the best of them, but I was surprised to learn that that attitude came well after the end of the Civil War.

There was no Klan in the 1880's. There was a Klan from the end of the war until the 1870's but that was a disorganized vigilante group and it was suppressed by state governments. Around 1915, Birth of a Nation came out and people started romanticizing the Klan and it reformed. For a good 35 years though, there was no Klan of which to speak. That's not to say there weren't other groups which filled the same niche in that time period, but the Klan itself didn't exist.

The US spend a very large portion of the 20th century being significantly freer than most other places on earth.

Certainly not perfect (especially not if you were black, Japanese, gay or communist), that would be a silly claim, but freer.

But, for the whole of the 20th century, I think, one could make the argument that there were places freer, particularly if one happened to be a member of one of the US's more hated minority groups. From WW2 to the 60s, if you happened to be a racial minority, there was almost no-where less free in the developed world; the US was extremely late amongst developed countries to grant universal suffrage.

the US was extremely late amongst developed countries to grant universal suffrage

I'll agree with you that the civil rights movement beginning in the 1960s was necessary for the United States to extend the benefits of freedom to all its citizens. But universal suffrage for women came significantly earlier in the United States than it did in Switzerland, for example, and black people in my state (Minnesota) have always been able to vote and to own property and to marry whomever of whatever race and so on since before Minnesota became a state (which, indeed, was one of the points of the Dred Scott case, in which a slave tried to become free by claiming that his passage through the free territory of Minnesota should end his condition of slavery). The Civil War was a necessary reaction to totalitarian denial of basic human rights by the Confederate states, and the civil rights movement after World War II was a necessary response to the deplorable segregation that still occurred in those states long after the Civil War, but everyone in some regions of the United States has long recognized that slavery and Jim Crow segregation were both aberrations, gone in some states from the beginning, and always contrary to the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights (and the bills of rights in various state constitutions).

Yep, I didn't say it was the last democratic developed country to grant universal suffrage, because of Switzerland (or the one or two cantons that didn't let women vote).

As for when, it wasn't the land of the free when they wrote the Constitution, but it was when Jefferson made them add the first ten Amendments. It wasn't if you were a black person who couldn't vote and it was in the period directly following the Civil Rights Movement -- unless you were gay, in which case it became the land of the free after the Stonewall riots. Unless you were gay AND in the military, in which case it just recently became the land of the free when Obama ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Obama made America briefly the land of the free when he was elected and unmade it again very soon after taking office. Unless your hobbies involve consuming any of a number of harmless or nearly harmless plants and/or chemicals, in which case you're going to have to wait until they ratify the 21st Amendment a second time.

Point is, it's always been a fight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-...

I left the country in 2008, and I'm wondering if I'll ever go back. It's only gotten worse since I've been gone. It's almost to the point where I'm not even sure I want to visit any time soon.

I left in 1997, and haven't visited since.

You get used to it.

Intressting. Where did you go? What did you find? What do you miss most?

Germany. Lots of liberty and smart people. Corn dogs.

I left in 2008, and I visit a few times a year because your last assertion is dead wrong.

It sucks, very very badly. I wish I could stop going back. But all of my people are there, almost without exception.

I know you have your reasons to leave, but it makes me sad when the good people, the ones who could do something because they can see what's wrong, leave.

The US may be far from perfect, but it's important as a country founded upon the right ideas. If it crumbles, we all lose, regardless of where we live.

I disagree. I think that the good people should all make an effort to leave, because the sooner it crumbles, the sooner it can be rebuilt.

There's no un-ratcheting the loss of freedoms there. It no longer has basic liberties or the rule of law, and it's actively dangerous to anyone trying to bring about changes to that status.

I still believe smart people can make a difference. The real danger is a country ruled by bad ideas with a strong military. Believe me: it's easier to bring change from the inside.

After posting that, you're probably already on the blacklist ;)

It's not that it has become worse, it's just that all those crazy things that happened after 9/11 have become institutionalized and bureaucratically entrenched.

Good luck getting rid of stupid when stupid has a budget.

"Good luck getting rid of stupid when stupid has a budget."

I love that line. Catchy.

Similar quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

Upton Sinclair

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

Well that was humbling.

Why? Great minds think alike :)

Same story here. Left in 2007, and no longer have any desire to return. My last visit, in 2010, left quite a bad taste in my mouth, with the creeping totalitarianism on display at the airports in particular. Welcome to America: don't forget that WE ARE ALWAYS WATCHING YOU.

What's especially depressing is that the commitment to paranoia and the dismantling of due process, civil rights, etc., is 100% bipartisan; there are no serious political voices taking a stand against it. Bush was of course bad; Obama -- my last great hope -- has extended and amplified everything that Bush did. And Obama's opponents are essentially unified in their position that Obama's chief failure has been to not dismantle due process and civil rights quickly enough. At this point, I think that Obama is probably still the lesser evil, but that's too damned evil for me to vote for.

I don't see any prospects for this reversing itself. Carry this trend out another decade or two, and it means the end of the American republic. There's nothing extraordinary about this thought: over long enough timeframes, great nations collapse all the time, and this is more or less the blueprint they follow when they do it: increasing paranoia about being beset by enemies both external and domestic; dismantling of internal political apparatus and centralisation of political power with a single individual; increasing inability to balance a budget, tolerate dissent, maintain infrastructure, etc. I fear that the present era will be remembered alongside Rome in the late 4th century, Spain in the early 1930s, etc.

I hope I'm wrong, and that those who stay can somehow turn it around. But at this point I'm glad I left.

Don't forget Ron Paul as one of Obama's serious opponents that still advocates liberty.

Eh, I'm not sure I'd call him "serious". He's definitely pretty good on some civil liberty issues. Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay. Even if that wasn't the case, his understanding of economics is sufficiently loony as to exclude him from serious consideration, at least in my view.

In any case, a belief in civil liberties shouldn't even be a discrete political position; it should be the bedrock on which all political positions are founded. When one candidate defines themselves as "pro-liberty" -- as opposed to all those other guys -- the game is already lost. Should they win power, they'll need to claim extraordinary powers in order to reinstate "liberty" -- undermining democratic institutions in the process, and thus the actual mechanisms that guarantee liberty.

In fact this is more or less exactly what happened with both Bush and Obama, and I'm pretty sure that the same thing would happen with Paul. His message is: "I will give you liberty" -- not "I will ensure that the institutional checks and balances which act as guarantors of liberty are maintained and reinforced". In fact he rarely shows anything other than contempt for those institutions. Therefore I do not believe he would be a friend of liberty.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with Paul's record but he's been a Congressman for 20+ years and has ALWAYS voted consistently. He was one of the three House Republicans who opposed the original PATRIOT Act. He consistently indicates that he will not use executive orders. He understands and has repeated that the president cannot take a country into war without a Congressional declaration of war first. He is constantly citing Constitutional provisions.

There is no reason to assume that Paul will turn evil as soon as he gets the Presidency. This is a different question from whether he will be able to be effective or not, and my belief is that he would not be able to do almost anything he wants to do, and that a Paul presidency would accelerate our plunge into chaos and anarchy, but I don't believe Paul himself would be corrupted and start ignoring the Constitutional stipulations on executive power.

"""He's definitely pretty good on some civil liberty issues. Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay."""

No candidate (actually, no party) really gives a f* if you "happen to be female, non-white, or gay". It's just a market niche they are milking, with the Democrats appealing to the "progressive" masses and the Republicans to the "conservative" ones.

In actuality they could not care less. Blacks, hispanics, women, gay, is not where the money (contributions, under the table, campaign funding, post-congress job waiting, etc) come from.

People voting with those issues in mind (either pro or against) are sucked into this false dichotomy.

I'd rather people voted for the ACTUAL issues, which mostly amount to FREEDOM, the ECONOMY, and FOREIGN POLITICS.

"Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay."

[citation needed]

You are way off base on this one and have nothing to back this up. Ron Paul has consistently been for every American. He is for repealing Roe v. Wade and allowing states to decide on abortion rights, he has been outspoken on the bias of prison sentences and the death penalty on minorities, and is against a federal mandate on marriage. Those positions are exactly contrarian to the ones you are attempting to assign to him.

I'm not sure why you think his understanding of economics is "loony" as he is the ONLY member of congress that predicted the housing collapse YEARS before it happened (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnuoHx9BINc)

Neither Bush nor Obama ever championed liberty. Ron Paul is a completely different animal. He isn't promising to GIVE you anything — he's promising to reduce government to get OUT of your life. Big difference.

Without knowing much about Ron Paul, I was shocked to see you call Paul for females by repealing Roe vs Wade! Abortion should always be a womans own choice, not something the government should meddle with.

I see your point. Paul is against abortion, but because of his strong constitutional stance is for states rights >>> federal mandates.

Whether abortion should be legal or illegal is another discussion I guess.

I'm not even American, and I think I can safely speak for 99% of gay Americans when I say that the grandparent comment was right in saying Ron Paul is anti-gay.

Abortion rights... well from this side of the pond we think it's nutty that anyone in your country can want abortion to be illegal, literally crazy. But whatever your view, pro-choice can argue that they're fighting for woman's rights, pro-life cannot - you can argue you're fighting for the rights of babies, meaning it's an issue not relevant to whether Ron Paul is good for women.

In the past he has somehow tried to blame those sexually harrassed in the workplace for being sexually harrassed - something that is far more a women's issue than not.

Overall he's a far-right (shockingly not the furthest right thanks to batshit teapartyers) Republican. I get that there are Americans who agree with his views, but don't try and argue that his views on these topics are universally considered correct - even in America.

His attempts to use jurisdiction stripping to remove the First Amendment/Fourteenth Amendment restrictions on establishment of religion from applying to state and local government says otherwise.

Text of Paul's legislation that was intended to accomplish the above: http://tinyurl.com/6ecpb8b

(Using tinyurl because the "real" url ends in a colon, and HN has a problem with that).

The eye on the dollar is the panopticon.

I left in 2006 for two years. As a foreigner in East Asia, it felt freer in some ways. But I think that was a combination of one, perception and two, getting breaks as a foreigner. Foreigners are given slack because they aren't expected to know the small details of whats accepted and not. They expect we know the big goods and bads but not the small ones.

And then there was perception --just not being aware of what was allowed and not. I do recall people telling me that mocking the president was not allowed. Anyhow, I'm back and I feel ok. It could be better, idealistically, I suppose, but it's not as bad as it would seem, vis a vis other places.

These stories we keep seeing do the US no good at all. From the outside the you look don't look very attractive to visit or do business with.

Thank you for your honesty. As an American, this issue deeply concerns me.

I have relatives in the US since my mother is from Rhode Island and I find myself always putting off a visit because frankly the last time I was there the border patrol made my girlfriend cry. We were separated because we weren't yet married and she was quite aggressively questioned because she didn't know the exact trip details. I refuse to brief my loved ones for possible interrogation before a vacation.

I have to say that most of the time I've travelled into the US things have been perfectly fine. However, one time I got questioned about why I had travelled to Turkey so often and got questioned a lot about why I liked Turkey as a holiday destination - which afterwards seems a bit surreal but at the time was quite alarming.

I know that for me everything I'm hearing has dropped the US quite a bit on my "places to visit" list.

To be fair, I realize my impression is probably slanted because of the origin and type of foreign news I'm exposed to.

Keep in mind this is a sensationalist story. The TSA unfortunately consists of workers trained to follow procedures by the book and have no authority to use common sense. Luckily the only place you ever deal with them is at the airport and usually you'll just walk right on through.

This does not represent the people US who generally like tourists and will be delighted and impressed by your accent, and helpful to show you around our country. (Yes, even in New York City!) Don't be put off by a few assholes, unfortunately we have them here too.

To be clear, I was not blaming Americans for this. Most of them look to be great folks - it's their government that's starting to give me the heebie-jeebies.

Trust me we don't like our government any more than anybody else does!

I have to say that from the inside, we don't look all that attractive any more, either. Do us a favor and boycott us loudly - money's the only thing our government actually understands.

If this gives you any solace, I'm planning to boycott the US for the near future.

Being French, I've always wanted to visit the US, and I'd love to come work / build a startup in the Silicon Valley. I'm really interested in American culture: I read mostly american books, and hang out on various English communities (reddit, HN, ...).

But, over the last few years, I've been following closely the various US policies (TSA, press freedom, wikileaks), and I have decided this country is not for me, at least for now. If I were to emigrate, I'd go to Germany or Canada, not the US.

That said, I might be biased by all the stories I see on Reddit...

I hope you change your mind about visiting the US, and the Silicon Valley in particular. If you're concerned about your safety or enjoyment while you're here, that's fine, but I wouldn't boycott the US to make a political statement. The strange minority of Americans who don't understand freedom aren't gonna get the message. Your boycott is gonna hurt the Americans who most want our country to be a diverse, welcoming place.

I highly recommend San Francisco in particular. We have a decent sized French expat population, and the city is fairly multi-cultural and liberal, even by European standards, I think. Once you arrive here, you're in driving range of stunning natural beauty--redwood forests, SF Bay, Yosemite National Park, Big Sur, etc.

Yeah don't pay too much attention to everything you read online. I mean it's all true--as well as annoying and frightening--but such politics and invasions of privacy are confined to a small aspect of a much, much larger, diverse, and interesting society. It's not like TSA agents are raiding our private homes, or quizzing us on the way to and from work (well, unless your work is of the traveling variety).

That's true, but is it really a good choice for me to continue living in the US, afraid to visit abroad and to thereby set myself up for the hassle of getting back in?

It is actually pretty funny that they have a saved search for "Destroy America". Better watch what I say for the superbowl, don't want to talk about killing the patriots or anything...

After not one but two of my acquaintances have been detained and deported at the airport on trips to the US I can't really see myself ever daring to go there. Both are Muslim, they don't have any terrorist sympathies that I know about, and one of them is even very outspoken in his refutation of violent ideologies.

It's funny but I feel much more comfortable visiting China.

Wow, this is an open invitation for trolling. Just imagine imposing someone who is going to fly to the US on Twitter.

Who provided the list? and can we get a copy of it?

I was under the impression that it came from the government to the event organisers (who we were contracted by), but it's possible it was a list compiled by them based on their experiences (they were a South Korean company who had done a couple of Chinese events before).

The list itself was really short, it was more interesting for the fact that our video game streams would be watched closely and that we would get kicked out of the country, than for it's content.

We called it "the Ts", off the top of my head the banned words/topics were Taiwan (call it "Chinese Taipei"), Tiananmen, Tibet.. and there were two others, both (I think) beginning with the letter T.

Usually its the 3TF list, of Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen and Falun Gong. There are other occasional topical words that are added, such as early last year Jasmine, including Jasmine tea being banned and just before that in late 2010, references to the Nobel Peace Prize.

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