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Akhil and Vikram Amar, along with their student, Samarth Desai, have been posting a series of articles on SCOTUSBlog about the birthright citizenship case. I haven't really covered them. They sort of trickled in as I was working on my chonker post on the topic. I'm not going to go back and pick at every one of them. They have pretty clear difficulties for their arguments once you've just read through all the case law. They do, indeed, cite many of the relevant precedents. I would even give them credit for not really getting distracted by the smattering of random state court opinions that have been mined for dicta.
Yesterday, they posted another installment, with the primary argument being that since "parents" (or variants) are not to be found anywhere in the text of 14A, one simply cannot consider them in any way. Of course, this runs into the typical difficulties if you've read the case history. I won't go through this post in detail either. Suffice to say, this one doesn't talk at all about Indians; they address that case in other posts, and, well, it leaves something to be desired, for sure. But I guess I'll just let their glaring lack of addressing it here speak for itself.
What stuck out to me was this section, addressing the other categories that pose difficulties for their position:
I didn't want to spend the time to copy over their links, so click through if you want to read them. What stood out to me was that their only case link was to, wait for it... Schooner! Of course they're appealing to the framework and theory of Schooner! That's the case that elucidated a framework and theory for how to think about the principles of sovereignty, allegiance, license, and jurisdiction. They even pull what is perhaps one of the most confusing examples from the case - when a sovereign, himself/herself, were to enter the US.
Of course, they don't talk about Schooner's discussion about the case in which a foreign sovereign entered the US without the consent of the US. Nor do they actually work through the rest of the framework and theory that Schooner put in place. They want the Full Schooner, but they don't want to take it seriously! They don't want to actually read through the case and engage with how the opinion says the framework applies to various specific situations. They just want to pull very specific pieces and then form their own, different, theory to wrap around it. It's just so glaring now, every time I see someone write on this topic. I can't unsee it.
Goddamnit, these people have no business discussing the laws of my country.
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.
You're getting a lot of reports and more than one mod wants to ban you. Largely because you have a long and shitty record. Mostly, though not entirely, because of this particular hobby horse.
On the one hand, "Only white people should be considered Americans and birthright citizenship should be ended" is an opinion, and we don't prohibit people from expressing opinions. Even disagreeable opinions, even opinions that offend lots of people, even opinions that would strip a lot of people of their currently extant rights. So, you're allowed to express that opinion.
On the other hand, we do have other rules about civility, about contentless sneering at your outgroup, about making generalizations about groups. When you have an opinion like "Indians can't be Americans and don't deserve to live here" or "Jews are evil alien parasites" or "Women are NPCs" or "Blacks are incapable of civilization" and so on (note: these are examples; I am not ascribing all of those opinions to you), your sincerely-held opinion does run up against some of those other rules, and that's where people start complaining about how our rules demand you use "too many words" or dance around "the truth." Because yeah, you are allowed to believe things about non-whites, about people with non-white ancestry, about who should be a citizen. You are not allowed to just say "these people" like they are not citizens, or talk about sending them all "back where they came from" unless you are willing to put in a lot more effort actually describing a colorable position (even if it's literally race war, in which case, say so, and yes, you still have to be polite about advocating for a race war!). Because "these people" are also posters here and are entitled to the same civility as everyone else. That's the same reason I can have an opinion about certain people deserving a kick in the teeth, but I can't just express it like that. Because it would be antagonistic and rude.
Capisce?
So, every time you feel an urge to go off on your "Man born in a barn" metaphor sneering at people with funny furrin' names, pretend you are saying it directly to such a person's face in an environment where civility is expected. Because you are.
If you can't do that, next time I will ban you, and nothing of value will be lost.
I want to register that although I disagree with my learned friend in argument @KMC here and have said why below, I don't think this particular comment crosses the set lines of theMotte.
If we want to move the lines around that's fine, but it's perfectly in line with discussions of other ethnic groups that have been accepted in the past, and a new rule shouldn't be enforced retroactively.
Indians shouldn't get kid glove treatment because there are clearly open Indians among our number, where blacks or Palestinians or Iranians wouldn't because we don't have posters within those identity groups.
You read the above and your conclusion is that we just made up a new rule: "You cannot insult Indians"?
Buddha wept.
No. The rule is "You may not direct generalized insults at broad groups of people." Whether or not those groups are represented here on the Motte.
We/I did not "move any lines" or retroactively enforce some new rule against KMC. He's been warned about this before.
I would like to point out that there appear to be groups that are exempt from this this rule.
Jews/Israel are one example, MAGA-coded white guys and African Americans appear to be two others.
It is the appearance of such exemptions (IE that there are groups that users users here are allowed to denigrate and groups that they are not) that is fueling the push-back you're receiving here.
As I've said before, I chose to create this account and "rejoin" the motte after a year+ of mostly lurking in response to Charlie Kirk's murder, or more accurately in response to some of the reactions I observed on this forum. Specifically the casual dehumanization of Kirk and his supporters coupled with attempts to downplay his murder as "no big deal".
Always amusing when some posters are accusing us of allowing Joo-posting because we're a bunch of antisemites, and other posters are accusing us of protecting Jews because we're a bunch of Zionists.
You're simply wrong. There are no groups that this rule does not apply to. People are allowed to say they don't like Jews or blacks or MAGA white guys. They are not allowed to just insult people for being Jewish or black or a MAGA white guy. Do we always catch every single instance and enforce it uniformly? No, we're not AIs.
As for Charlie Kirk, your recollection does not match mine at all. Maybe someone here on the Motte said his murder was "no big deal" but I would bet more people by far on the Motte are sympathetic to Kirk than not. Even I, one of our resident "center-leftists" who had no particular fondness for him, was unambiguous about condemning his murder. Bluntly, if you are claiming one or two people said something dismissive, I'll take your word for it, though I don't remember it, but if you are claiming this was a widespread sentiment on the Motte, I think you are making things up.
I have two objections.
First: Whether you as a moderator believe that an exemption exists is only superficially relevant to whether such an exemption is perceived as existing. Similar to the arguments that I used to get into with @ymeskhout about crime statistics and electioneering, whether or not a specific instance of tom-foolery would sway the result is a separate question issue from whether tom-foolery occurred. The fact is that there are a number of of somewhat prolific users here who have built a significant portion of their "brand identity" around a sneering contempt for the outgroup. Whether that outgroup it is Jews, Blacks, or MAGA is also only superficially relevant to the conversation.
For the record I would like to commend you for the pulling the trigger on @DaseindustriesLtd but the fact that his antics were tolerated for as long as they were is a big part of the problem. People notice that certain users (and I am trying to avoid publicly naming names but if you want me to I will DM you) seem to get treated with kid-gloves, they compare these users' treatment to that of prior luminaries, and they start to pattern match. One of the patterns that is easy to arrive at given the make up of both the forum and the moderation team is H1Bs looking out for other H1Bs, and that is where I feel like users like @KMC and @FiveHourMarathon are coming from.
Second: The issue as I see it is not whether or not people here were sympathetic to Charlie Kirk, or whether one or two people here said something dismissive. The issue is that dismissive comments were tolerated, or that if they did get moderated, it went un noticed. As I have said in prior posts on the subject I don't think it was Charles Sumner (the man in my profile pic) getting beaten half to death on the Senate Floor that undermined the norms against political violence and made the US Civil War inevitable. It was the fact that that "Moderates" from Sumner's own party (the Whigs) and his opponents in the Democratic party were seen as defending it. In an alternate history where Preston Brooks and Lawrence Keitt were immediately arrested and faced broad bi-partisan condemnation does a "backwoods radical" like Abraham Lincoln get elected? Does the question of "free states" vs "slave states" get resolved with more or less bloodshed than in our timeline? I don't know but I think it's worth considering.
Your objection seems to be that people are allowed to say things you don't like.
We give a lot of leeway, but not infinite leeway. People can say they don't like Jews or they think ZOG rules the world. People can be dismissive about someone being killed.
"Lol glad he's dead" would probably have gotten a ban,. but expressing an opinion like "This is not a big deal" would not.
We try to be consistent and principled. We don't claim to be perfect.
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