undesirable people

The home office here in england has just published a list of undesirable people who are banned from entering this country, they include a famous right wing American talk show host and a certain Mr Phelps.
This sort of raises interesting issues, the first one being should you ban someone from entering a country simply because you don't like what they say?
The other issue is that according to the home office the famous right wing radio talk show host would be be treated no differently than other extremistist and would be under constant serveilance by security services if he were an English national.
The question being why aren't these right wing extremeists under constant surveilance by American secret services?

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Permalink Reply by Karl on May 20, 2009 at 12:54am
if fox or NBC want to discuss my program ideas, another one is called 'crash bang wallop - the worst home made porn videos'
Permalink Reply by Karl on May 20, 2009 at 5:06am
Yep dannyisme you are right its the old who polices the police problem, however i would suggest that we must have got it slightly right in deciding to ban Phelps and his ilk because we don't have anything like the same kind of problems from cults, sects or right wing groups running round armed to the teeth, and we don't have popular support for those types of groups either.
Permalink Reply by Karl on May 20, 2009 at 11:00am
You are right again Dannyisme,
However you'll notice that the fascists don't have easy access to guns as they would in other places, the police arrest them pretty quickly and the BNP itself is now a spent force in this country after someone posted the membership list of the BNP on the internet and people were quite surprised to find their vicar was a member.
Of coures we still have extremeists but they are a very small and ineffective minority.
I know its not a very good solution but its better than giving them their own telly show.
Permalink Reply by Karl on May 20, 2009 at 11:37am
It was quite funny when the British national party, a bunch of fascists to you and me, had their memebership list leaked last year and it contained members of the police and army who then had to resign.
Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on May 21, 2009 at 9:48am
Hi Creature - Yes, I am new here and did not come into this discussion with any prejudice about Karl's ulterior motives and/or lack thereof. Reading through this thread before responding, assuming the hypothetical that Karl's question was genuine, I can easily see how someone could get some of the responses that he did and conclude, "Wow, Americans and their ilk really are a bunch of blowhards who disagree with everyone who isn't them just because."

Assuming your given instead - that Karl came in with his mind made up and a superiority complex as inflated as that of any American - I still (personally) prefer the tactic of talk-to-the-person-as-if-they-are-a-rational-adult.

I find that people are more likely to get tired of acting like children if they are the only one in the conversation doing so. Not guaranteed to, but more likely to.

And if that doesn't work, their antics are at least more entertaining when I look from just outside of the playground.
Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on May 21, 2009 at 10:47am
Mary Wood: I find that people are more likely to get tired of acting like children if they are the only one in the conversation doing so. Not guaranteed to, but more likely to.

That's not very likely, if you do have a look at Karl's threads as Creature suggests. Virtually all of the responses start off with people (mistakenly) treating Karl like an adult, albeit a confused one. This isn't really the response he wants, at which point he responds on a hyperbolic path, like in this case, raising a baby sitter telling a child to drink draino as a hypothetical free speech issue. Possibly, Karl is enough of a retard to actually believe this. But I would hope this isn't the case. Its far more likely that Karl is instead just a run of the mill reetard - escalating the noise because nobody wants to play. You can choose to play attrition with him by treating him like a grown up, but it will be no more or less effective than just ignoring him. Both will result in attention seeking antics hoping someone else will bite. But whatever the actual causes or intents are, Karl is not a very deep thinker, shallow by even common troll standards, and one thing you are guaranteed to not get is a discussion of the kind you would have with a fair minded equal.
Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on May 21, 2009 at 2:38pm
How could I have made my qualifier any clearer? "Not guaranteed to, more likely to." Notice how that qualifier leaves all kinds of room for you or anyone else to interpret those odds as still-unlikely, still-low.

Unless you are arguing that responding to child-behavior with child-behavior is the path more likely to end the child-behavior.

Also, a common theme on this site is dealing with closed-minded Fundies. Closed-minded applies to all sorts of people and issues. If Karl were a Christian and these posts of his argue Creation rather than restriction of speech, given especially that his tone is far less trolling than most I've seen on the 'net I would still respond to closed-mindedness with reason and open-mindedness. Using my indoor voice. (**If that closed-mindedness is truly where Karl is coming from. I haven't had time to research all his threads and it is in my nature to give one the benefit of the doubt. Especially when it doesn't hurt anything, like debating an issue on the 'net).

I don't think I've actually turned any Christians atheist but I've gotten an awful lot of them thinking and have possibly turned a fundie or two into a more liberal Xian. I don't think any of that would have been achieved by beating them over the head with a science book (or in this case, the U.S. Constitution) any more than them beating me over the head with a bible works on me.

Hmmmm, I smell a new thread brewing in my brain. Something to think about while at work tonight...
Permalink Reply by Karl on May 21, 2009 at 2:46pm
Mary,
what you might like to do is try being open minded yourself I am beginning to think that you along with several other on this site are a bit too used to people agreeing with you, I suspect that you just bully them into submission.
Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on May 21, 2009 at 9:23pm
See Mary ? I told you so.
Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on May 22, 2009 at 3:27am
You're right Felch. I tried. *Sigh.*
Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on May 21, 2009 at 9:58am
Karl writes:
look if you had a child and her babysitter told your child that it was O.K to drink drain cleaner when nobody was around to correct the baby sitter you would think that was a dangerous situation and you would want someone to stop the babysitter.

That action would fall under incitement of a crime and not be protected under free speech. Not an accurate comparison to Fred Phelps and the like. If you are to debate the point, use an accurate analogy. For instance; if a bunch of us atheists were to publicly rally and protest that religion is evil and should be destroyed.

It sounds like both of our countries seek to respect free speech. America just draws the line a lot further back than Britain. Sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our detriment.
Permalink Reply by Karl on May 21, 2009 at 1:07pm
But don't you think that if someone where to go out a kill a homosexual because they were told by Phelps that it was gods law that too would be incitement?
This si the problem there are a lot of deeply disturbed people out there who don't need much encouragement to a lot of evil stuff as say god told them to do it.
I didn;t mean this to be a full blown debate but i don't mind debating it its people like felch who start insulting people.

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