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Notes -
Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate!
First they came for the Nazis, and CNN did not speak out--because CNN reporters are not Nazis.
From CNN Politics today: Law used to kick out Nazis could be used to strip citizenship from many more Americans
This is not a meaty article--it seems like "the news" these days is mostly breathless speculation over the worst possible outcomes of things the Trump administration might be thinking about doing. As a rule, the "unprecedented" things Trump does are in fact wholly precedented--just, you know, not like that! But the substance is approximately this:
The article is light on numbers--well, it's a speculative article--so I went poking around and was surprised (not surprised) to discover that this is nothing new. An AXIOS article from President Trump's first term (but updated just two days ago, apparently) suggests:
This sounds about in line with the CNN article's suggestion that
The CNN article does at least include information about the history of denaturalization, which is more bipartisan than you might initially imagine...
That's more direct quotes than I intended to use, but the point is that I was really struck by the article's framing. Yes, the law has been used to "kick out Nazis," though it was originally intended to kick out Communists. But it has also been used to kick out e.g. scammers and child pornographers. Basically, the weight of history and legal precedent is that naturalized citizens absolutely can be denaturalized and expelled from the country for a variety of reasons, substantially at the discretion of the executive.
Several thoughts: first, even if aggressively prosecuted, I have a hard time imagining more than perhaps several thousand naturalized Americans being returned to their countries of origin in this way. This is not an approach intended to change actual demographics; rather, it is a way for the government to influence public attitudes and perceptions by identifying "enemies" and distinguishing them from "friends." Deporting Nazis, even after naturalization, sends a strong signal that we don't take kindly to Nazis around here. And who would object to that? Object too strongly, and you might start looking like a Nazi yourself...
I don't think this is a deep or surprising point, but as a consequence I was a little surprised to run into such a self-aware wolf moment on CNN this morning. "We made a law to expel Nazis, but now it might be used to expel Hamas supporters! Everyone: clutch your pearls now!" What I think of as the obvious question--"should we maybe have been criticizing the ideological slant of this law when it was being used to expel Nazis?"--never even gets asked. From the perspective of the CNN reporter, it's not the law that is bad, it's just that Trump is the one using that law, and against people CNN would prefer it not be used against.
"I can tolerate anything except the outgroup," indeed!
Anyway, add this one to the "Trump opposition continues to be mad at him for enforcing their favorite laws against them" file. I feel like, in a sane world, this would be inducement for Democrats to reconsider their historic commitment to infinite expansion of federal power. Imagine how things would look right now if Joe Biden (or his handlers, whatever) had made it his mission to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The easiest way to prevent a "Trump Tyranny" would have been to make law in a way that precludes tyranny, rather than to insist on empowering the executive and conspiring to ensure only the "right" tyrants ever ascend.
Why is it so hard for people to take the libertarian lesson from such events?
As I said--neither deep nor surprising. But I thought it was at least a thematically appropriate question on July 4th (even if Constitution Day might have been a better fit). The document of "enumerated powers" that is the putative core of our government practice is... "dead letter" might be an exaggeration, but maybe not. I do not usually perceive the federal government as in any meaningful way limited. Those bothered by Trump I would invite to consider the possibility that Trump is only a symptom; the disease is the statism toward which the United States has been creeping since, oh, probably July 5, 1776, but certainly since the Civil War, and more recently without even token opposition from any of its major political parties (since, I suppose, the Tea Party of 2007). DOGE makes many of the right noises, but the Big Beautiful Bill looks at best like one step forward, and one step back. (Republicans do not appear to have learned the lesson, either!)
Whether a reduction in liberty is worth the occasional schadenfreude of seeing one's ideological opponents kicked out of the country, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
I’m not exactly surprised by this. As much as people like to pretend to be in favor of the rule of law, as point of fact, nobody, especially those in power, are principled enough to support applying a law fairly. I’m not even sure it’s possible to do so, as the tribal instinct is simply too strong to be easily overcome by mere principles.
Power doesn’t care and cannot care. I’m convinced as I read more of history that our era isn’t really much different from any other. Sure the aesthetics have changed, the means of control have changed, but power is still held and wielded in ways that the old monarchs and emperors would have found fairly familiar. The constitution was never a particularly live letter. It’s not a letter, it’s a legitimacy producing document. It’s marketing. You want to live here because we have rights. Except that when the government really, really wants to do so it can easily get it done despite anything the constitution actually says about your rights. There’s no way that any fair reading of the constitution would allow the full faith and credit clause or the interstate commerce clause to be used to override state laws. It happens all the time. It’s happened often enough that the states have become mere appendages of the federal government. Free speech is mostly limited to approved speech that the mainstream likes. If you get much outside of those lines, then you get punished by the unofficial powers often acting in ways that the government insists they do. Your boss will get sued if he doesn’t fire you for racism or sexism. Social media for a time feared regulation if it didnT curb crime-think on its platform. That’s censorship, but because the people doing it are private individuals or companies doing so at the behest of the government, it’s fine. Free assembly is only free as long as it’s not racist or sexist.
Of course it's possible. I support principled application of laws (and general principles) all the time. Just because lots of people are hypocrites doesn't mean that it's impossible to escape that, it means that they are choosing to be hypocrites.
For individuals, yes, but I think on the national, let alone international level your representatives and elected government act a lot more like medieval potentates protecting and trying to expand their power and fiefdoms. To give a fairly recent example, the government is supporting Israel (I personally agree with them, but whatever). This is despite a large, fairly active movement that might have tipped the election to Trump and is unpopular with democrats and is strongest in supposed must-win states. By Democratic logic, it should be a slam dunk to support Palestine and go with the thing the public seems to want. Or the BBB which is unpopular and passed anyway. The government barely cares what people actually want, they care for their fiefdoms and maintaining power. If they can do so, they do so by rigging the districts so they aren’t competitive.
If forcing dissidents whether liberal or conservative to shut up allows them to win power games, they’re perfectly fine doing so. It will be hate speech or misinformation or state secrets.
Sure, I would agree that the government has come largely (some would argue entirely) unmoored from the will of the people. And I certainly agree that politicians continually act in unprincipled ways. Perhaps I misunderstood you as referring to all people rather than just politics.
I’m not convinced that anything has changed, that’s my point. The way politics has always worked is based on power, and whatever the window-dressing might be, and if the actual power elites don’t want a thing to happen, it will not happen. If those same elites want something to happen it will absolutely happen. It’s been that way since the first brick was laid at the foundation of the first city. Nobody with power has ever cared about what the public wants, nor do they care about the peasant population of their country. As long as the little people shut up and obey (or at least not interfere too much in the affairs of their betters), the powerful do not care.
The control mechanism of democracy is basically mass gaslighting. First convince everyone that whatever “the public” wants is what the government should do. Then propagandize the population to believe whatever the elites want to have happen. In the meantime you rig the districts such that those who the elites support have an easier time winning. Once this is done, most people will vote as instructed, and most of the rest will go along because they’ve been taught from birth that the results of the election represent the “will of the people” and thus cannot be questioned. So when the government serving the elites does something wrong, stupid, or evil, it’s your fault. The people in charge, running the show were just doing whatever they were told to do by you. So you vote as instructed and wonder why things don’t improve.
I’m fine with any sort of government that mostly works for most people without being too harsh on the average citizen. The form of government isn’t important, customer service is. By which I mean management should provide the vast majority a fairly comfortable lifestyle, they should build and keep up good infrastructure, to live in a stable and secure society, and to not have foreign governments attacking us, our trade routes, and so on.
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