alt Hacker NewsIf you are invited to visit someone's home, and you go, and say nasty things to the homeowner, you'll be tossed out despite your right to free speech.
If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest.
When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that.
I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was.
A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.
Replies
Different rules apply to members of the military stationed on a treaty-based foreign military base.
However, as a thought experiment, let's go with your flawed analogy: Even then, this person was acting like a guest -- it is a long-cherished American tradition to exercise our constitutionally-protected right to free speech, assemble, and yes, protest. Nothing's more American than speaking against Government oppression and overreach.
The government is not your owner. The government is not your father. You are a participant in the affairs of your country, and take responsibility in its direction. Civic engagement and right to protest are important tools to make our government accountable. These are fundamental American values. And you're welcome to bring friends. It's legal.
Restricting the protest rights of non-citizens is an extremely heavy-handed policy.
Yes, I know it's widespread, but it should really apply to non-residents. People that live and work in a country should have the right to protest.
A country is not a house. Conflating the legal framework of a nation-state with the etiquette of a private living room is a category error. As John Locke demonstrated when refuting the patriarchal theory of government, political power is fundamentally distinct from household authority. A private home is governed by the unilateral property rights of an owner; a republic operates via constitutional law and public rights.
Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.