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Comment by 15155 | Hacker News Reader

We're talking about foreigners: if you are a guest in someone's country, home, wherever, you should be respectful and quiet.

I don't want any foreigners contributing to any political activism whatsoever, regardless of ideology.

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I'd certainly expect visitors to be held to the same standards as the natives. This is the problem, as a US citizen I don't want to be respectful and quiet, especially when I disagree with my government.

> I'd certainly expect visitors to be held to the same standards as the natives.

Visitors are held to a higher standard than natives. Visitors do not have control, a vote, etc: they are temporarily permitted by the privilege of policy at the time.

> as a US citizen I don't want to be respectful and quiet, especially when I disagree with my government.

Good, don't be! You're not at risk of having a visa revoked or go unissued.

Telling the US government it's broken is a favor to the US government. Freedom of speech is a gift to both the people of this country and the institution itself, helping it be pure and accountable. It's the force that prevents us from becoming like China.

Those who seek to stop that regulating force are undermining what makes America great. Where those voices of dissent were born isn't pertinent.

This is naive, it's clear that someone without a stake in a country could just be an agent provocateur.

This is akin to the fallacy of saying that the accountability of "real name" policies on web forums make higher quality comments, and then you actually look at the contents of Faceboot. I mean, actual US citizens just voted this tiny-minded failure of a "president" in for the second time, because apparently he hadn't damaged the country enough the first time. Having a stake didn't help there, right? Either people are unaware they are harming themselves (stupidity/anti-intellectualism), don't care because others are getting harmed "more" (spite), or are in social media bubbles pushed by hostile actors (agent provocateurs don't actually need physical presence).

I feel like this is a ridiculous bad-faith argument. You know damned well that banning people from the country for having a JD vance meme on their phone is not stopping international agents. Arguing by presently demonstrably false hypotheticals as though they were reality makes me think it's a waste of everybody's breath talking to you.

It would be a stupid position. I was failing to explain that not all rights like the freedom of speech necessarily make sense to apply to foreigners who are given the privilege to enter the country. I am not necessarily firm in this position the other poster made an argument that they can speak because what does it matter which is a good point.

Okay but that's not what this is about. This is saying that a foreigner cannot express private thoughts online at any point before they enter the United States.

I assume someone who goes by "15155" would believe that having private conversations online can be useful. Or do you want to post your identifying information?

You do you, and we'll have the parties at my house then. Enjoy quietly playing Catan or whatever.

Your extrapolation to the national level is fallacious. Many of our academic institutions were deliberately hosting foreigners, with the explicit goal of being melting pots of ideas. That gave the US an exceptional cultural cachet around the globe. This whole thing is an exercise in attacking and destroying our traditional distributed institutions in favor of centralized autocratic control.

Why do you allow then foreign lobby groups?

Or why did you allow Elon to participate in elections, he was a foreigner at some point and he wasn't born in America?

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