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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7602 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.

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.

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 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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