Recently, a video of a man getting arrested for Facebook posts in the UK made the social media rounds. In the video, he wasn’t told that he had threatened violence or planned crimes. His posts were said to be hateful, and for that he was going to be drug out of his home and taken in for prosecution.
The obvious American response to this was the cyber equivalent of the middle finger. Because people in the UK weren’t allowed to speak out against the police there without fear of getting their doors kicked in, Americans picked up the slack. Some Americans even suggested that force should be used against the government in the UK to either get them to stop violating freedom of speech or to remove them from government entirely.
But, what I didn’t expect was to see the Bobbies double down and claim the power to extradite people overseas who they think are “keyboard warriors”:
Before I get into my reason for violating UK law from overseas, I want to first cover some family history. You see, the first Sensiba in North America was a Hessian serf who was pressed into service as a mercenary. In other words, the UK was paying German nobles to use slave soldiers to put down rebellion in the colonies. As you could imagine, this wasn’t something he wanted to do, and as soon as he got the chance, he fled the mercenary force. Knowing they’d hunt him down relentlessly, he had little choice but to join the Continental Army and help fight a common enemy.
Since that time, the UK would like us to think they’ve become a better place. Sure, they abandoned slavery in 1803, roughly 60 years before the United States, and have since reformed to better respect the rights of the people living in the UK. But, they never fully became a rights-respecting Republic. During the 20th Century, freedom of speech actually declined along with what little gun rights subjects had.
So, like most Americans, you can imagine that I’m not excited at all about the idea of submitting to UK rule remotely in 2024. Not only did several ancestors fight to keep this from happening in the 1700s and 1800s, but we’ve gotten better at respecting rights in the United States while the UK has largely gotten worse in recent decades.
I have zero hatred or even bad feelings toward immigrants who were foolish enough to move to the UK. I also understand why people born there stay. I can’t blame them since it is their home, unless of course, they are part of the problem. And some of them are.
Which brings me to there is one group of people I have an utter disdain and hatred for: tyrants. It is my sincere hope that agents of the crown who would arrest people for saying mean things online find themselves facing people who have decided to be citizens instead of subjects. I hope that these people use whatever force is reasonable and necessary to alter or abolish the government of the UK and provide new guards for their rights.
I sincerely hope that UK authorities reform themselves instead of further abusing the people they were supposed to serve, but if they don’t and they think they have some right to use force to continue tyrranizing the public, well then violence will certainly visit that country. But unlike America, where the Second Amendment was put in place to protect citizens from a tyrannical government. The Brits have allowed what gun ownership rights, and thereby their ability to resist tyranny when all else fails, to dwindle.
While expressing this likelihood is not illegal under United States law (at least not yet!), I’ve probably violated at least two to three UK laws expressing my disgust for government officials like “Sir” Mark Rowley and expressing my hope that they either stop being tyrants or are forced out of power by any means necessary to end their commission of crimes against their people. Heck, I may even be labeled a terrorist now according to “Sir” Mark Rowley. Who knows?
If you’re a UK official and think I’m a “keyboard warrior” who must be brought to the UK for trial, I dare you to try it and see how fruitless you are. But, you probably know that there are no valid grounds for extradition (the forum bar prevents it) and you likely also know that your embassy and consulate security aren’t up to the task of reprisals you’d likely face if you were to somehow start nabbing U.S. citizens and hauling them off to a kangaroo court thousands of miles away. We don’t even let our government get away with stuff like that, so you know it wouldn’t fly if you tried it.
But, there is an honorable alternative to being sniveling little brats who want to make idle threats online (I think this is the very definition of “keyboard warrior”). You could always grow up and act like public servants instead of pretending you’re somehow above the people who pay your paycheck and pointless TV licensing fees.
Editor’s Note: Virginia State Delegate Nick Freitas offers his usual interesting and humorous take on the British suggesting they can try and come get American’s if they’d like, but they should first remember the lessons of the Revolutionary War.
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