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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7109 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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That's because they don't want to be sent back where they came from.

Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar were born in the US.

Isn't it begging the question to consider your standard to be the relevent one, if the discussion is about birthright citizenship?

As far as I can tell, the discussion is about birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.

Being born in a barn does not make a man a horse. They are foreigners, Indians, obviously, and that's the case no matter which barn they were born in.

I've met, had lunch, and argued about politics and baseball with Akhil Reed Amar. He's a better American than you.

Good for you, but no he isn't. He's not an American nor is he my countryman. He's the son of Indians, he married an Indian, and he has Indian children. I will give his parents credit for the middle name, though (Reed).

I'm sure he's nice to have lunch with, that was never in question.

Politely: quit it. "Americans" are not a race or ethnicity. They just aren't. On no serious theory are black Americans not Americans. You can claim to only recognize WASPs as your "countrymen" if you want, but "WASP" is not, nor will it ever be, the legal or the everyday, common-sense definition of the word "American"; insisting otherwise will only breed needless confusion. Like, dude, this isn't about political correctness. You'd have to search pretty far even among white supremacists for any significant numbers of people who think the sentence "Martin Luther King was an American activist" is somehow using the word "American" incorrectly.

I don't even know what you're trying to do here. I can understand some forms of insistence that Americanness is more than a piece of paper. There can be an actual, coherent political agenda behind that kind of linguistic warfare: for example, if you don't think paper citizens who barely speak English and don't meaningfully identify as American or participate in American culture should, in fact, be allowed to keep their paper citizenship, or to stay within the country's borders. That's a coherent, achievable political project, and the definition games make sense within that project.

But like. There's no constituency for expelling all non-WASPs or stripping them of citizenship. It's just not gonna happen. So what's the point of insisting, against all common usage, that you're only a real "American" if you're from the same ethnic group as the Founding Fathers? Literally what is the point? If you got your wish and everyone started using that as the definition, all you'd get would be a needlessly obnoxious situation where "Americans" are a hazily-defined plurality within the much, much broader cohort of "American citizens", and are one of several groups who participate in "American culture" and "American politics". That helps exactly no one. If what you want is just the dubious self-esteem buzz of getting to say "I'm a real American™" with the full blood-and-soil weight you give to the word, please just try to be happy with "I'm a Heritage American" or some other suitably complimentary turn of phrase, without trying to gerrymander what the bare word "American" means into uselessness.

I don't even know what you're trying to do here.

Trying to fix this:

"Americans" are not a race or ethnicity. They just aren't.

There's no constituency for

Not yet. Not until you build it. Not until you say it out loud, and declare that it's what you want, and goal worth pursuing.

Literally what is the point?

I'm happy to stake out, believe in, and defend the extreme stance of where I want to be in the knowledge that the only way to get what you want is to decide what you want, and then start going there. I want to break the assumption that American means "man of any race or none in particular." I want to regain my own national character.

There's simply no risk of children of legal immigrants being sent back to where they "came from" and they don't fall under the foreign born population you mention in the next sentence, so the claim of self interested motivation on their part rings hollow. Your personal belief that people who live in the US their whole lives and assimilate to its culture are not Americans is, to put it lightly, a minority view in no danger of being advanced by any serious legal scholars.

I never said foreign born. I said foreigner. I did use the phrase foreign born, mea culpa. The Japanese would use the word gaijin.

I don't care where he was born, he's not American. I don't care what passport he has, he's not American.

He might be able to have American children, if he outmarries, but I won't hold my breath.

to put it lightly, a minority view in no danger of being advanced by any serious legal scholars.

I don't care about legal scholars, I care about Americans, and it's pretty popular among Americans who are tired of seeing themselves replaced in their own homeland.

I don't care where he was born, he's not American. I don't care what passport he has, he's not American.

But that's not the point. The point is that, since (rightly or wrongly!) his citizenship is not in any actual danger whatsoever even by a very restrictive reading of the Constitution, he has no personal incentive to bend the laws towards more permissive forms of birthright citizenship, as you were claiming.

I don't care what the Japanese say, I'm an American, not Japanese. I have no interest in becoming Japanese.

Way to miss the point.

The japanese have a word that means foreigner, and it doesn't distinguish between citizen or not, or care where you were born.

You're using foreign concepts from foreign languages to try to tell me about America. There's a reason that there is no equivalent American word, because there is no equivalent American concept, because that is a fundamentally foreign belief system.

More like I'm using foreign language to break free of the propaganda that is relentlessly imposed upon us all.

No more illegal this, alien that, hyphenated American the next one. Foreigner. They're just foreigners, no other description necessary.

You're using a foreign language to try to import a foreign concept from a foreign culture. Akhil Reed Amar is not a foreigner, you'd know this if you knew anything about him, or his work.

"Foreigner" as a word in American English does not describe a person born in Michigan, raised in California, living in Connecticut. If you used it in conversation it would confuse people. You're reaching for the Japanese concept because you want to make my country more like Japan, I don't.

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I don’t know about American, but the English word is “foreigner”. It doesn’t refer to your passport.

Thank God and Ben Franklin I'm not English then.

I never said foreign born. I said foreigner.

You did say foreign born:

That's because they don't want to be sent back where they came from. It's all motivated reasoning, all the way down, but the truth is just like last time the foreign born population crested 15%, there's a backlash coming, and this is laying groundwork to salvage some of what will be lost.

Because that's what's measurable and comparable to the backlash I referenced 120+ years ago. Teddy and Woodrow both said something similar, back then, to what I said now.

I will grant that I said foreign born, but it wasn't about these people in particular but rather the state of the nation.

What did Teddy say that agrees with your, uh, limited conception of who is an American?

Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns out people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polygot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

Tell me, whence the crucible? I'm seeing polyglot voter registration in my home. I see encouraging and celebrating this, and I see it coming from the party that Akhil is supporting in his arguments. I see his arguments as directly undermining Teddy's goal and preventing the forging of an American people.

And if he were alive today, he'd say the same. He'd see ESL classes in public schools, he'd see interpreters in courts, he'd see the foreign flags being waved and American citizen representing hostile powers, and he'd say the same.

In his time, they fixed this by slamming the doors shut for sixty years. We need at least that much now.

I'm totally on board with Teddy here, but (and?) he's obviously staking out a position entirely different from yours. Consider a man who moves here from Mexico, acquires American citizenship, renounces his Mexican citizenship, speaks perfect (and exclusive) English, and flies an American flag in front of his house. Teddy would have no reservations about calling such a man an American, but you would never do so. Your positions are not at all similar.

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Only if by "in his time" you mean "after he was dead".

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