“If liberty means anything at all,” wrote George Orwell, in a preface to Animal Farm, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Generations of students have been taught that lesson. Yet some of the world’s most robust democracies are in danger of forgetting it, according to the Tribune News Service.

The UK’s recent decision to deny entry to two American media figures, Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, is the latest retreat from free speech by a country that should know better. Piker and Uygur, far-left critics of Israel who have been accused of antisemitism, had been invited to speak at the Oxford Union, a storied debating society. That, apparently, set off alarms at the British Home Office, which refused to issue them visas, declaring that their visit “may not be conducive to the public good” — a rationale so broad that it could encompass almost anyone.

If Piker and Uygur had, say, criminal records relating to inciting riots, such a ban........

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