LONDON — On Friday, tens of thousands of protesters are gathering here in England’s capital to express their lament of President Trump’s ongoing trip to the United Kingdom. Further protests are planned in Scotland when Trump flies north later Friday to play a few rounds of golf.
But while Trump says he’s fine with those who oppose him, some folks are less happy.
Piers Morgan, for one, has been using his morning television show as a means to attack those who are protesting the president. The protesters are misguided, Morgan says, because they didn’t protest former President Barack Obama’s visits to Britain even though Trump’s predecessor had many of the same policies and the current Oval Office occupant.
But who really cares?
After all, Britain remains America’s closest ally and the systemic underpinnings of that relationship remain strong. And here’s the thing: a major source of the U.S.-U.K. special relationship is the fact that both our nations share values of free speech and assembly. While those rights are admittedly less secure in Britain, they offer citizens the right to tell those in positions of power what they think about them.
In the measure of history’s long path to this present condition of respect for individual rights, protests are a very positive thing. Yes, where protesters resort to violence or intimidation they cross a legal line and must be confronted. But that is not what’s going on in Britain, at least at that moment.
Morgan and Trump’s American defenders contemporaries should relax. Protests like these are a sign of democratic health, not democratic incivility. To believe otherwise is to miss the central issue.
[Also read: Trump warns Theresa May’s Brexit plan ‘will probably kill’ a US-UK trade deal: Report]
