I'm going to be optimistic for the future of humanity, and assume that was a (masterful) troll.
Americans tend not to realise that their free speech laws are sometimes seen as extreme in Europe.
It's not surprising they used a throwaway, they already got downvoted.
(It wasn't me.)
Unfortunately this means the UK tends to be run for long periods by social conservatives, because that's the only way to get people who are also fiscal conservatives. I don't think you can draw deep conclusions about the value of free speech to people in Europe or the UK when it's so rarely debated.
(British guy speaking here)
For example, you prevent anti-jihad activists like Robert Spencer from entering the UK to speak, but you're perfectly prepared to allow pro-jihad activists to live in the UK and preach hatred of Jews, women, and non-Muslims in general.
This is the problem with limits on freedom of speech - they allow people doing the limiting to ban speech they don't like, for no other reason that they don't like it.
Of course it isn't! They live here, border controls are entirely the wrong tool to use for citizens.
Those border controls are used to prevent many Islamists from coming to the country.
And violent Islamists are dealt with using other laws.
A better example of uneven freedom of speech laws might have been the protections that Jews and Christians had (under racial discrimination laws and blasphemy laws) that were not extended to Muslims.
No, they're banned because their speech is so unpopular amongst a small but violent group of the population, that the Govt. would rather they weren't allowed to speak there.
That's a freedom of speech issue, not a border control issue.
If the Govt. were functioning properly, it would uphold its duty to protect unpopular speech by preventing (or at least attempting to prevent) violence directed at them. Instead, they just close their doors.
If a user wishes to 'doxx' me, my right to privacy and their freedom of speech are at odds. Which wins?
I just admire the American concept of free speech more than I do ours.
There is no such thing as hate speech in a free speech environment. There is no guarantee you won't be offended.
For example, in the UK recently there was a notorious case where a Muslim teenager posted on Facebook that he hated the soldiers who went to Muslim countries and killed women and children, and he hoped those soldiers would go straight to hell. That is 100% pure political speech .... so what happened?
Well, a woman who was the mother of a soldier saw the post and was of course terribly offended. She reported him to the police, on the grounds that nobody should be allowed to criticise her boy's choice of career. The police arrested him and he was tried in court. The plods said, "He didn't express himself very well and that's why he's now in a spot of bother". Sounds so pleasant, doesn't it, except he was found guilty and sentenced to community service. It would have been jail but he agreed to renounce his heresy in public.
The moment you say "I support free speech but not if it upsets someone" you don't have free speech. The entire purpose of protecting free speech is to ensure ideas that some people might find ugly or insulting can still get heard and debated, and thus to keep flexibility in the political system. It must be possible to enrage other people with your speech.
I'm not an absolutist, there can be some exceptions - for instance I don't consider publishing a list of people's passwords to be "free speech", but the definitions of what's not acceptable should be incredibly tightly defined. And no countries laws even try, really. Especially not in Europe.
That's all any of us wants.
hmm...