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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7020 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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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.

Akhil Reed Amar is not a foreigner, you'd know this if you knew anything about him, or his work.

I wouldn't call him a foreigner, but my WW2 vet grandfather absolutely would have (and did within my hearing for other similarly-situated individuals of Indian heritage).

Past tense being used here to indicate death I assume? My condolences, though at this point even a soldier who enlisted at 17 in '45 would be 97 or something.

In the fifties and sixties this might have been accurate to a reasonable degree, there were zero Indian Americans born in Michigan who went on to become important scholars. One could ignore them or wish them away. That isn't the case now, one must deal with Kash Patel and Akhil Reed Amar whether one likes it or not.

Well, I'd rather not get into a prescriptivist vs descriptivist argument.

They are foreigners to me, and no passport will change my mind.

You're reaching for the Japanese concept because you want to make my country more like Japan, I don't.

The Japanese concept is not exclusive to Japan, and you find it throughout American history. Those parts of which have been excised from the common teaching, and therefore I had to come to it from Japan.

The thing that makes America more like Japan is more Japanese people, which is why I don't want America to become more like Somalia, Mexico, India, or elsewhere. I want America to be for the Americans, that is, the pioneers and settlers whose labor tamed this continent and brought civilization to its farthest reaches. The people who, by the time of the American Revolution, had already become a separate and distinct people.

Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche.

The thing that will make America more like Japan is if we turn into an insular people, focused on our past and our heritage and our purity. You're so frightened of America you want to turn it into a foreign country.

Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living, and counted the old names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry, or in high, cold towers asking questions of the stars. And so the people of Gondor fell into ruin.

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I want America to be for the Americans, that is, the pioneers and settlers whose labor tamed this continent and brought civilization to its farthest reaches.

These people died. Their grandsons pioneer no longer, the land has been settled and the continent tamed. Whoever today carries the qualities that make them most like the Americans of three hundred years ago, is not likely to carry them because they have inherited them through an unbroken patrilineal chain of heritage extending to Mayflower.

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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.

If that man is anything but a myth, then I'm perfectly happy making him collateral damage in the necessary corrective. But in today's age, I simply do not believe in such men, and I am unwilling to moderate on their behalf. The hour is late. The crucible has broken, the judges have given their opinions about what is allowed, and now nobody leaves their loyalties at the door because they don't have to. Everybody sends remittances.

Teddy might try to spare your hypothetical man, but it would be sparing him from the righteous expulsion of millions of people from the polyglot boarding house.

I don't think Teddy would care more about your one man more than he would about mandatory ESL in public schools or voter information and registration printed in ten languages from four continents. You know, the things he warned about the are widespread, required by law and court opinion, and have resulted in exactly the scenario he warned against.

After the failure of his preferred methods, I think he would be reasonable about the consequences of such a failure.

I have my answer for what to do about the polyglot boarding house. What's yours?

Everybody sends remittances.

This is just false. Forget about the guy who moved from Mexico. If you think the American born kids of every immigrant (who you don't consider Americans either) are sending remittances, I have to wonder how many such kids you've met, because it doesn't match basically any of the second generation immigrants I've met.

mandatory ESL

What do you think ESL is and why is it bad to have it in schools? It seems pretty obvious to me that ESL classes improve assimilation over not having them.

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

This letter was literally three days before he died, but he was consistent before then. Just afterwards things went in that direction, too.

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