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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23679 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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The Supreme Court has issued a ruling on Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship). 6-3 striking down Trump's executive order. You can find the ruling here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf

I've only had enough time to skim the ruling thus far. Jackson wrote a concurrence which I won't bother to read because she's the second most retarded member of the court (Sotomayor still reigns supreme in retardation). Kavanaugh partially concurred on the basis that this needed to be done by act of congress as opposed to executive order, but otherwise generally agreed with the Trump admin's interpretation of the 14th amendment. Thomas and Gorsuch outright dissented. Alito had his own separate dissent. Thomas's opinion includes several historical examples of people born on US soil to people not lawfully in the US who were denied citizenship, and I was not aware of these examples previously, making his the most interesting. Well that and the fact that it agrees with my 100% objectively correct and indisputable view of the matter of course.

This is roughly how most court-watchers expected this decision to turn out, but it still doesn't change the immense disappointment I feel over this news. Someone here earlier this week or last week said that this decision will be our generation's Dred Scott regardless of how it is decided, and that it will tear the union apart in similar fashion. Demographic changes in the West generally are leading to ever increasing tension and dysfunction, and I fear this decision will ensure that a breaking point is reached soooner, rather than later.

The meltdowns in response to the ruling have been pretty incredible, looking at a lot of comments on X would have you believe that the SC just decided to institute birthright citizenship today, instead of them just not changing the law of the land precedent of >150 years. No one alive knows a US without birthright citizenship.

If it's so damaging, why are we one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations not just in the world but in history? Even if you're a pessimistic doomer who can't appreciate the country today because you've gone too fast on the hedonic treadmill and who thinks the 90s or the 60s or the roaring 20s or whatever were Peak America, those times were also under birthright citizenship.

Conservatives even considered it a point of pride! Here's the great Ronald Reagan on immigration https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5

And since this is the last speech that I will give as President, I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: ``You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.''

Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it's the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America's triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond. Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.

But modern "conservativism" isn't conservative. It's a corrupted cult of personality based around grievance politics, and racial grievance politics is just a subcategory of that. If modern "conservatives" had any balls left, they would rise against the welfare state they think is attracting parasites, and not against stuff like H1B visas, scientists, engineers, and other great additions to the country. It's not very complicated

Micheal Tracey even made a great point about how victimhood complexes have consumed these "conservatives" so much that they've even largely stopped caring about abortion.

What they fundamentally need is a perpetual Victimhood Complex to sustain themselves, even when they wield enormous state power. This also sustains their ability to browbeat recalcitrant GOP-leaning voters when the next Presidential Election rolls around, because they can emotionally-blackmail these voters about why they must vote Republican, despite any misgivings, because it's just soooo existentially vital that a Republican President fill any forthcoming Supreme Court vacancies -- that's the only way to right this grievous wrong re: Birthright Citizenship, and avert the total destruction of America. (Even as the purported mass baby-murder genocide, which their "Supreme Court Or Die!" talking point would've been predicated on in the past, continues apace)

Here's the great Ronald Reagan on immigration

If someone lives in America but does not "become an American" (like it's impossible to "become a German"), then they are not who the letter-writer is talking about. Something like 90% of the immigration debate is about assimilation, and you can't dismiss concerns about poorly-assimilated residents by pointing out that it's not impossible in America.

AI + death of Western manufacturing means that mass bodies are less important to running a productive economy. Social spending/gibs are large and getting larger each year as a result of a large population of those who can't easily be employed productively. Moving to a developed nation is now maximally a 36 hour experience of plane transfers and you retain complete communication with everybody from your homeland.

It doesn't require a gigantic genius to see how this confluence of factors might make it a bit different than when Destiny was being Manifested. Your absolute best case scenario is that the genius quotient of the newcomers is high enough to somehow produce sufficient outliers to cover the rest, but as increasingly lower layers of the barrel are able to emigrate that seems unlikely.

The meltdowns in response to the ruling have been pretty incredible, looking at a lot of comments on X would have you believe that the SC just decided to institute birthright citizenship today

Where are you seeing these "meltdowns"? I've seen a lot of grumbling about Roberts being a coward (making this a day ending in 'y') and mockery of Jackson but nobody on the right that I've seen seems to be particularly surprised by this outcome. Pretty much everyone I know was expecting a 7-2 decision with Thomas and Alito in dissent. If anything the fact that we got Kavanaugh and Gorsuch at least nominally on side with the option for future legislation left open feels like a reason for cautious optimism. We may not have scored, but we did move the ball downfield.

Sean Davis, CEO of the federalist, among many other crazy ideas suggested the dissolution of the union and forced sterilization of all tourists which is definitely the biggest meltdown I've seen. But there's been others. Micheal Tracey points out the issue here

These tough guy right-wing pundits have the same emotional dysregulation issues as the most frantic Trans activists. Always with the knee-jerk cognitive distortions: the constant melodramatic catastrophizing, the whiny performative bellyaching at the slightest perceived adversity.

Sean Davis, CEO of the federalist, among many other crazy ideas suggested the dissolution of the union and forced sterilization of all tourists

Link? If your characterization is accurate I would acknowledge that as warranting a sincere "WTF Dude?" but most of the responses that I've been seeing have been more like this one. You can dismiss it as "cope" if you like, but I don't think Pinsker is entirely wrong.

Time will tell.

From here:

Several ways forward here given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language:

1) Nullification. States issue birth certificates, and they can just stop issuing them to non-citizens. Roberts/Barrett can deal with the fallout and litigate each birth individually.

2) Pack the court. If Robert wants to be a politician who writes laws instead of a judge, then he can fight with 10 more unelected legislators in robes.

3) Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.

4) Deny entry to all female foreigners.

5) Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.

6) Dissolution of the Union. A nation which can’t even restrict who gets to be a citizen isn’t a nation.

7) Amend the Constitution. This is pointless, because once a judge decides he can rewrite the Constitution at will (as Roberts and Barrett did today), the actual text is meaningless. But this is what most GOP politicians gravitate towards because they are useless.

If you think all these options are not great, understand that that is what happens when unelected judges decide that they are in charge of the country and get to write its laws.

I don't think Tracey's summary is accurate -- which shouldn't be a surprise, given Tracey's general behavior in other contexts -- and this is pretty explicitly a parade of horribles rather than a real proposal, but I don't think Davis is being particularly healthy as a response, either.

Because America “Akshually” sucks to live in now. And I can say that because I’ve been living in Argentina. Immigrants actually are kind of awful. We’ve been essentially ethnically cleansed out of NYC. I’m sick and tired of being exposed to gun violence in Chicago. San Francisco is a boring Asian town now which use to be like the people from Full House. Besides the quality and safety of our cities declining we’ve made it worse by not building housing in our cities and also subsidizing immigrants so that you either need to make 7-figures or live on welfare to live in a big city. The fact that the American Dream of living in a big city doesn’t exists anymore Akshually does mean immigration sucks and black crime killed neighborhoods. So sure America is great if you want to live in a 5k sq foot house with a giant truck far enough away from any immigrants to not deal with them, but if you actually want to live in an community then the American Dream dead.

It just better not living around immigrants in ways not captured by GDP goes up. The social contract was broken in America and people realize that now.

So sure quote Reagan. The issue with Reagan is he was wrong. The Italians successfully became Americans but that’s it. Of course the Italians invented Western society so perhaps it’s never should have been surprising they eventually assimilate.

NIMBYism is not the fault of immigrants.

Immigrants in the US commit crime at a lower rate than natives. Native Black people do commit crime at a very high rate, which can ruin neighbourhoods, but that has nothing to do with immigrants.

San Francisco is a boring Asian town now which use to be like the people from Full House.

What exactly is the problem? Just the fact that they're Asian?

You have zero good sources for immigrants commit less crime. Because the US does not have good data. I believe it’s Sweden that has good data on immigrants. And they commit a lot more crime.

Harvard discriminated against Asians in admissions for a reason. I don’t make the rules but even the elites decided Asians kill the vibes of a place.

Google "immigrants commit less crime" and you'll find studies galore. We can have a look at one in particular if you like. The profile of immigrants in the US and Sweden is very different and it is entirely plausible that immigrants to Sweden commit more crime than natives and immigrants to the US commit less crime than natives.

Harvard discriminated against Asians in admissions for a reason. I don’t make the rules but even the elites decided Asians kill the vibes of a place.

The reason being they're extremely racist? I mean, what you are saying about Asians is racist by any reasonable definition.

I know those studies exists. They all have flaws and the top one is grouping blacks with natives. We don’t want more black level crime. Classification on status is also a big issue.

The Swedish studies show a very agreeable issue - you need to heavily filter immigration at a bare minimum. If crime is the only standard then you need to be very racists in selecting who immigrates.

Sure Harvard is being racists. Is racism wrong?

Once you accept human biodiversity and differences in athletics and intelligence then there are almost certainly personality difference. US natives find Asians boring. Asians probably find us natives loud and obnoxious.

Since I’ve worked in trading. Citadel loves hiring Asian math Olympiad winners. They probably do make better market making algorithms and GDP goes up. But for a work environment I would much prefer being around a bunch of old floor traders. To me they are just cooler guys to hang out with.

How convenient that Blacks are too rowdy and criminal, Asians too boring and presumably not criminal enough, and your own race is just right.

Well I mean yes. Every race evolved to optimize for the living conditions they grew up in. I am not saying any race is better than others. It’s just each race prefers living with their own race.

Asians do not let non-Asians immigrate to their countries. Africans well are on video saying kill the boer and want to expel whites from S Africa. It’s a fairly universal belief to want to segregate.

And hey look we still see distinct voting patterns by ethnicities decades and centuries after they came here.

https://x.com/xwanyex/status/2072701003372060913?s=46

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Asians probably find us natives loud and obnoxious.

They probably do make better market making algorithms and GDP goes up.

He's not saying he's better than Asians. He's saying that lots of people with an American passport are still different people from his people and he wants to be around people like him. I can relate.

but if you actually want to live in an community then the American Dream dead

What is your urban community like in Argentina?

You see a neighborhood with children, adults, old-people all living and enjoying an urban environment. People playing in the park.

And I can say that because I’ve been living in Argentina.

Look, I love this country and would love it if all the mottizens lived here, but are you sure this is not just "I have American resources in a poorer country"?

Poor nomads left years ago. I have no idea how locals pay the bills but Argentina is not cheaper than the US anymore. Buenos Aires rent is maybe 30% lower than Miami when adjusted for unit quality. A few things are cheaper meat, Ubers, alcohol. Pizza is very weirdly the same. Groceries vary product type.

I would say there is no COL benefit versus living in Pittsburgh. People forget how cheap America can be. Status games are cheaper as locals don’t have expensive things. But status games don’t generate real benefits just relative benefits.

Not getting accosted by black homeless guy though is priceless.

Huh, this strengthens my view that we're due for a ~20% devaluation. Hopefully after I close on my mortgage.

That makes sense to me. It’s undervalued now.

And I can say that because I’ve been living in Argentina. Immigrants actually are kind of awful.

My impression was that people only liked Argentina because mass Italian immigration in the 19th century made it whiter and more culturally European than its Latin American neighbors. Otherwise it would have the cultural cachet of Ecuador or Venezuela.

I’m sick and tired of being exposed to gun violence in Chicago.

I don't think recent immigrants have much to do with this.

San Francisco is a boring Asian town now which use to be like the people from Full House.

I can't say I've seen a boring Asian town with this many homeless people, drug addicts, and shoplifters roaming the streets. And at least Asian cities build apartments.

Argentina also semi did genocide to eliminate black and brown populations so they are tiny today.
“ Argentina because mass Italian immigration in the 19th century made it whiter and more culturally European than its Latin American neighbors”

Correct they imported the right people. And got rid of the bad people. That is the entire right-wing argument that Countries are people not creeds. Argentina has cultural cachet because Italians always have cultural cachet. Along with Italians always seeming to have a failure point of funny money.

Agree on Chicago’s declining not being related to recent immigrant. The woke mind virus killed Chicago. The city was always super racists which allowed Chicago to be heavily black but also safe in many parts of the city.

We’ve been essentially ethnically cleansed out of NYC.

NYC is still plurality white and I know plenty of people living there who love the life. This "ethnic cleansing" does not seem to impact them.

sick and tired of being exposed to gun violence in Chicago.

Chicago sucked even worse in the "good old days!"

San Francisco is a boring Asian town now which use to be like the people from Full House. Besides the quality and safety of our cities declining we’ve made it worse by not building housing in our cities

This is what people want! So many American voters want the NIMBYism, and the boring sprawl culture. We don't build because citizens are constantly opposing new construction. I think it's lame too, but it's obvious that people genuinely disagree and love extreme sprawl without construction. You can see this with your own eyes if you visit any local city council meeting when new construction comes up as a topic.

and also subsidizing immigrants so that you either need to make 7-figures or live on welfare to live in a big city.

The main form of federal welfare that helps with housing is section 8, and those are highly limited. It also only applies to renters (therefore about 2/3rds of people are not applicable at all), and only 12% of renters have it. Other things like project based rentals are even less common.

But also you don't need seven figures. The median household income in my state's big city of Charlotte is ~83k. Not even six figures. Given that is the median, plenty of people live with less than that.

The fact that the American Dream of living in a big city doesn’t exists anymore Akshually does mean immigration sucks and black crime killed neighborhoods. So sure America is great if you want to live in a 5k sq foot house with a giant truck far enough away from any immigrants to not deal with them, but if you actually want to live in an community then the American Dream dead.

The American dream is an immigrant concept! The dream is coming to the land of opportunity, working hard and building up your life through your sweat and tears because of our historical libertarian freedom loving meritocratic ideals. Crime rates are also misleading, they are hyperlocalized. Unless you hang out on the kill streets (and if you're not a useless loser working part time at a McDonald's, you should be able to avoid it) then you avoid most crime.

People like Jensen Huang, a Taiwanese immigrant from a middle class family, Jan Kuom, a Ukranian immigrant raised in poverty, or Hamdi Ulukaya whose family were Kurdish dairy farmers before moving are living proof it still exists. You just need to be worth something. Stuff like the many Indian and Chinese immigrant workers in tech companies is lower level examples of this too. In the US if you can't make something of yourself and you want to, it's because you suck. It hurts to hear the truth, but it is the truth.

It just better not living around immigrants in ways not captured by GDP goes up.

Nope, GDP is the best metric and is great in part because of basic mathematics https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-boring-reason-gdp-is-inevitable

But why even throw in a random complaint about GDP to begin with except to signal economic illiteracy?

“ So many American voters want the NIMBYism”

  • this occurred post WW2 after a great migration and what was termed as “White Flight”. It’s basically impossible at this point to discern whether it occurred because of technology or crime. The urban schools became ghettoized which meant you have to pay private school tuition which meant making a lot of money. Cheap urban living became non-existent.

Is Charlotte a big city? I haven’t lived there in 20 years but I thought it was car-centric sprawl.

Chicago also wasn’t a shithole until posts 2016. They did effective segregation before then so the bulk of the crime was contained to neighborhoods avoided.

14th biggest city in the country.

That doesn’t mean anything in the US. Houston is the 4th largest city. Zero walkable neighborhoods. It’s one giant suburb.

I take it you've never set foot in Houston to injudiciously repeat that classic trope. All neighborhoods within the I-610 loop are walkable by any metric. Montrose is a genuinely pleasant neighborhood replete of ambient cafes. Museum District too. EaDo's nightlife experience is just as good as any other major city in the Western world. MetroRail is a system that is utilized by medical professionals commuting to work. Rice Village and the Medical Center add a density of educated professionals and vast amenities. Hermann Park is a serious urban park and I will say that the US does parks in particular better than most European countries. Beautiful biking trails along the Buffalo Bayou in the heart of the city. You only know Houston from trite, outdated tweets. I don't get the singling out of Houston when Dallas and Phoenix would strengthen that argument, though even those cities have developed substantial pockets of walkability that were nonexistent in the 1990s.

Worth a watch:https://youtube.com/watch?v=0fMTaNYYvwE?si=b5V8XKnuqY_P5T0C

I did live in Houston for a month during Covid. I’ll be honest I not consider most of that video as highly walkable. And most would seem like you need to drive into a strip of things to do and not walk from him.

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Well yeah, people in Houston and Charlotte don't want much walkable neighborhoods. If they did, they wouldn't constantly vote against dense construction and bike lanes and the like.

My initial comment was that diversity and immigration are bad. Yes people in America vote against dense construction. People do NOT like living in diverse dense neighborhoods. They don’t like living next to black people.

Yet homogenous societies live in dense neighborhoods. Buenos Aires where they literally genocide blacks and Indians is dense and walkable. European cities are dense and walkable. Chinese cities are dense and walkable. Tokyo is dense and walkable.

So yes you prove my point. People do not like living in diverse societies. When people are in homogenous societies they suddenly choose to live close to each other.

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Yeah, I had the impression that Charlotte, like almost all Southern cities, had exactly one walkable White neighborhood which you won't be living in unless you can afford million-dollar houses or $3000 rents. (Edit: and like all such neighborhoods nowadays, if your politics are anything other than "left-liberal shading towards DSA", you won't feel welcome there and you won't be making any friends. Expect pride flags and "In This House We Believe..." signs everywhere.) And, like most Southern cities, the public transportation in the postwar neighborhoods consisted of maybe one bus per hour, and there are no "third places" there unless you count Wal-Mart and McDonalds.

What? Densely populated urban areas will skew left just about anywhere in America (bar some pockets of Miami, thanks to Cubans, and Las Vegas, due to Mormons), but Southern cities are the ones that are more likely to have a substantial Republican minority, with neighborhoods that see 30-40% of their residents voting for Trump. Off the top of my head, you have Fort Worth, Jacksonville, and Virginia Beach (I don't consider Virginia to be a Southern state, but it's no less Southern than NC) which are some of the largest cities in the nation to have elected Trump. There are plenty of affordable, decently conservative neighborhoods around the SMU campus in Dallas and Houston's Energy Corridor/Memorial area (unsure if you mean walkable in a more purist sense, but you absolutely can walk to the supermarket and other retail spaces). Oklahoma City and Tulsa have plenty of solid downtown neighborhoods that are only 50-60% Democratic. In New Orleans, you have the tranquil Lakeview neighborhood entirely removed from the unsavory elements further east in the city, as safe as any suburb. Nashville, Memphis, and Birmingham's majority-white neighborhoods are not DSA strongholds, you have some rebellious partisan Democrat college kids but also many Republicans born and raised in the city. If you can handle a neighborhood that is only plurality-white, you'll have plenty more options made available.

If your idea of Southern is limited to Atlanta and Charlotte, then you may very well be right.

Chicago also wasn’t a shithole until posts 2016. They did effective segregation before then so the bulk of the crime was contained to neighborhoods avoided.

This is just completely untrue and historically illiterate. I was born and raised in Evanston, and am now living there again, and there was plenty of violence, murder, and gang shootings in Rogers Park and the Howard street corridor when I was a kid there in the 90s. Chicago, like most American cities, saw a spike in crime and violence that peaked there in 1974 at 970 homicides, still the record. It hit a slightly lower headcount but higher per capita rate in 1992 (948 homicides, but a higher rate due to a smaller population). Neither has been matched since. Not in 2016 (which saw around 762), and not during the peak of the COVID-era surge (which topped out around 800). It's been a continuous decline since then, and we had 416 last year, a 60-year low.

For reference: Rogers Park is the northernmost neighborhood in the city, and Howard Street is the literal Chicago/Evanston line. You will notice this is not 'contained' to the South or West sides of Chicago, it's the doorstep of the North Shore, some of the wealthiest lakefront real estate in the Midwest.

The southwest "bungalow belt" was safe - but it fell, starting around 1980. Its last hurrah was "Epton: Before It's Too Late" in the 1983 mayoral campaign which Harold Washington won.

The Loop and River North were safe from like 2006-2016. I don’t know when that area got safe but it very march declined after 2016. Having gun violence at my RN condo and a scary stolen car incident in River North told me to peace the fuck out. Rogers Park I agree has issues. Had stay there for a month with a friend a few years ago.

Hey man, I get it. My family actually moved us out of Evanston while I was in elementary school for the same reason. Within the same month, I think my brother both got mugged on the way back from school, and our apartment on Dobson, just a block or two off of Howard, got broken into. We ended up moving to Aurora, and it's only in the last couple of years that I've come back to Evanston.

Funnily enough, Howard Street's problems trace back to a weird jurisdictional accident: it became the Chicago/Evanston line, got physically cut off from Evanston services by a cemetery and the L tracks, and by the 80s was so full of cheap vacant buildings that a documented heroin market moved into right around the Clark/Howard stop. North Rogers Park basically just started subdividing their homes and larger apartments into smaller and cheaper units immediately after WW2 and never really stopped or replaced their aging buildings, and lo and behold you've got a slum and all the complementary problems high-density, low-income housing with poor services brings.

River North is a bit of a different story. It's a nightlife strip packed with 5am bars, and the local alderman actually tried to kill those licenses because drunk crowds plus guns kept ending in shootings. When the 2020 riots hit, River North and the Mag Mile got specifically targeted, not randomly, because that's where the concentrated high-end retail was, by organized crews with U-Hauls. Then COVID brought a citywide carjacking wave that hit the North Side especially hard just because it's dense with cars and pedestrians, and downtown emptied out during the day as offices went remote, so you lost the foot traffic that used to keep the nightlife crowds in check.

Juneway Terrace, the northernmost street in Rogers Park was (is??) known as Juneway Jungle.

Rodgers Park actually does have some really nice old apartments basically on the water. The demographics completely change as you get like 3 min away from the lake. Just old historical buildings that could be a great neighborhood.

River North wasn’t violence for a long time. I knew everyone in the club scene. There was a place called Cuvee that was high end. Then I guess it declined and I showed up one time and I still knew the doormen, but now they were bullet proof vest. There was a time when River North was just upper class kids from the North Shore.

Chicago had other issues leading to decline, but the violence making it into the wealthier neighborhoods and business drove a lot of people away. Chicago was two cities for a few decades. Post 2016 was a second White-Flight. I left the same reason Citadel left.

I suppose I have a very simple take on this, which is:

The Fourteenth Amendment clearly says birthright citizenship. Therefore birthright citizenship.

That's the end of it, surely? We don't need to import anything else. The supreme court's only job is to say what the law is. I think that birthright citizenship is an incredibly bad policy. The US is a small and radical outlier for having it; almost every other country on Earth is more sane.

However, I do not see any other way to interpret:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

That's what it says, so that's what the law is. It's stupid, but it's the kind of stupid that requires a constitutional amendment to repeal. Get on that, America.

Well, the question is, what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean?

The Congressmen pushing the amendment clarified that it meant "subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof", and that it would exclude Indians (who in a sense were subject to the jurisdiction), so then what counts as complete jurisdiction? Many people later in the 19th century believed that people who were only there temporarily were not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the relevant sense.

Hmm.

It's embarrassing to change one's mind, but I think I am coming around a little on this one. I think I'd like to see how the word 'jurisdiction' is used in other statutes contemporary to the Fourteenth Amendment, to get more of a sense of how it would have been read in the 19th century, but I'll grant that it's not crazy to say that, for example, a tourist currently holidaying in the US is not subject to its jurisdiction in the same sense that a permanent resident is.

Unfortunately, jurisdiction is used in more than one sense, which makes this harder.

The US is a small and radical outlier for having it

The US isn't an outlier - birthright citizenship is the default in the Americas.

It's just that nobody wants to birth tourist into Peru.

I think that birthright citizenship is an incredibly bad policy. The US is a small and radical outlier for having it; almost every other country on Earth is more sane.

I thought this too, but it seems that America would become the exception in its hemisphere if birthright were abolished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

The Xth Amendment clearly says Y. Therefore Y.

lol. lmao, even. It's a great ideal, but it's very clearly not the reality.

  • The second amendment guarantees the right to keep weapons of war in case military action is needed, and yet people have trouble getting their hands on a duck gun.

  • The fourth guarantees personal property, and yet that property can be suspected of a crime and seized through civil asset forfeiture without triggering those protections.

  • The fifth protects against self-incrimination, but a judge can still jail you if you forget (or "forget") how to decrypt a harddrive.

I'm sure people could add more to the list.

The US is a small and radical outlier for having it; almost every other country on Earth is more sane.

I wish I could include Canada in that list. As of the start of the year we don't just have birthright citizenship, we have ancestryright citizenship, where you are Canadian if any of your ancestors were Canadian, back to the founding of the country.

lol. lmao, even. It's a great ideal, but it's very clearly not the reality.

I am shocked, shocked to hear that the United States supreme court has acted lawlessly!

In case the sarcasm was not clear, I wholly agree that the history of the supreme court is full of politically-motivated or agenda-driven rulings that do not conform to the plain original meaning of the text. Barely two hours ago I complained about some of them.

I do not consider lawless past action to license lawless future action. The court has behaved badly in the past. That does not confer a right to behave badly now or in the future.

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof

What do you understand this phrase to mean? And why wouldn't it have sufficed to just say "All persons born or naturalized in the United States", why was the "subject to the jurisdiction" part needed at all if it says it as clearly as you claim?

"All people to whom United States law applies", basically. In practice it means "not the Reservations, not diplomats". I think the original meaning of the phrase is pretty clear, and interpretation of it to confer birthright citizenship goes back to the 19th century.

Immediately after the passing of the 14th, natives born off the reservation, on American soil, did not get citizenship. It clearly meant something more than your simple, straightforward interpretation.

Wouldn't they still be considered members of their native nations? The question is not whether the Indian in question was literally born inside a reservation, but whether the Indian is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

My understanding is that as early as the 19th century the understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment was that, outside the exceptional case of natives, anybody born on United States soil was a citizen. There was some room to debate it but Wong Kim Ark settled that and has stood as precedent for well over a hundred and twenty years. My sense of most of the pre-WKA disputes is that they are transparently racially motivated, and generally casting about wildly for justification, via a Dred-Scott-like "well, it can't possibly have meant that group as well!" rather than anything plausibly rooted in the text itself.

But the whole argument is that illegals are more akin to Indians.

Except neither the Trump administration nor the dissenting justices make that argument. Not even Gorsuch spends much time on the Indians. They focus on the comparison to temporary travelers and argue that "subject to the jurisdiction" requires the lawful establishment of a domicile.

Kavanaugh wrote:

The only apparent principle unifying the four disparate exceptions listed by the Court in Wong Kim Ark—especially in light of the exception for tribal American Indians—is that the parents in all of those varied circumstances were not U. S. citizens and were citizens of other nations, whether tribal or foreign. An exception for those born in the United States to foreign parents unlawfully or temporarily in the country is consistent with that principle and therefore with the Fourteenth Amendment.

and

And most starkly, plaintiffs cannot convincingly explain their view that the children of tribal American Indians are not constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship, while the children of foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country are constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship.

Among other things, Thomas wrote:

Like temporary visitors, tribal Indians were not completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The United States did not have the right to impose personal taxes on them—hence, “Indians not taxed.” Their personal affairs remained subject to the jurisdiction of their tribal nation. “The right of self-government” was “secured to each tribe, with jurisdiction over all persons and property within its limits, subject to certain exceptions, founded on principles somewhat analogous to the international laws among civilized nations.” The United States did not interfere “with the disposition, or descent, or tenure of their property, as between themselves,” or “prove their wills,” or subject them to the “laws of marriage and divorce,” or subject them to the “laws of the United States, against high treason.” Tribal Indians did not owe the United States primary allegiance and did not receive from it complete protection.

and

But, the Court cannot explain why tribal Indians were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States if they happened to be born outside Indian lands while foreign temporary visitors were. It is true that tribal Indians belonged to “alien and sovereign” nations and that the United States’ relations with them implicated “intersovereign concerns.” Ante, at 12. But, temporarily visiting foreigners also belong to “alien and sovereign” nations, and the United States’ relations with them also implicate “intersovereign concerns.” It is difficult to understand why China, for example, would be less alien or less sovereign than the Cherokee Nations. It is also difficult to understand why tribal Indians would be less entitled to American citizenship if born on non-Indian land within the United States than children of birth tourists who immediately returned to China.

Alito wrote:

the Court cannot explain why the Fourteenth Amendment did not confer citizenship on children born in the United States to tribal Indians. As explained, federal law governed those children and their parents to the extent the Federal Government wished. If the Court were right that the Citizenship Clause applies to anyone who is born here and is subject to our laws, then the Fourteenth Amendment would have conferred citizenship on all tribal Indians. But the exception for tribal Indians was well-established at the time and remained until Congress eliminated it by statute.

The question is not whether the Indian in question was literally born inside a reservation, but whether the Indian is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

But you said the meaning was clear, and this is very far outside your initial clear interpretation.

There was some room to debate it but Wong Kim Ark settled that and has stood as precedent for well over a hundred and twenty years.

Yes, and I'm saying Wong Kim Ark (and Schooner, for that matter) were decided wrong.

I’m not sure WKA was decided incorrectly. On the narrow grounds of the holding, it isn’t offensive.

In my effortpost, I referred to an old old comment of mine, where I said:

my highest aspirations for most administrations these days is that they give us interesting cases that clear up confusing Constitutional issues... and I think there’s a decent chance the Roberts Court can still do that on some of these matters.

After having (mostly) read the opinions, if I'm judging by this metric, I have to say that Roberts' majority opinion is a fail. To be clear, I am not saying that the opinion is wrong. On the contrary, as the saying goes, the Supreme Court is not final because they're right; they're right because they're final. So, yeah, they're final, and so they're right. But I do not think the majority opinion cleared up the confusion.

I don't think he really cleared up what was going on in WKA. Primarily because for the critical step, he just did what the Court did in WKA - turn to Schooner (DRINK!). One of the primary areas of interest was, in turn, what Schooner did and how it should be understood. On this point, Roberts was somehow even less informative than WKA. He didn't even quote the entire critical passage! Didn't even get to the part about the "implied license" under which people enter the country. As I said in the effortpost, the Court wants the Full Schooner, but it doesn't want to engage with it. It doesn't even touch on the full panoply of hypos that Schooner touched on.

The second major confusing question is how anything works with Indians. Indian law is confusing, yo. He could have at least said, "Indians are weird, yo." But he didn't even do that. I think this is basically the one, crucial sentence:

Indians born under those dominions, he concluded, were not “citizens or subjects of the United States,” but members of “alien and sovereign tribes.” [citing Kent]

Like, what counts as a "dominion"? What is it to be "under those dominions"? Does Roberts think it matters whether an Indian woman, carrying the child of an Indian man, wandered off the reservation and gave birth in non-tribal US territory? How does any of this work?

The biggest, most major sources of confusion are pretty much just swept under the rug.

I don't know that I buy the dissents, either. I at least felt like I learned some things from Thomas that I hadn't seen in the briefs/cases. He gave the most plausible explanation for what could have been the motivating reasoning behind the shift in language from the 1866 CRA and 14A, but I'm not qualified to assess the truth thereof. He really shines in making it visceral how confusing it is to read WKA. And I hadn't quite noticed in reading Fuller's WKA dissent that it could be read as agreeing with the majority that the child of a domiciled alien would be a citizen, but dissenting instead on the grounds that WKA, specifically, was not/could not be domiciled. I need to find time to go back and read it again; as of right now, I don't know whether I think this is a plausible reading or not.

I'd probably want to stew with it all and (re-)read some of the citations before saying who I find ultimately more persuasive. But I'm not sure either of them are "right" (as in, not the regular sense of right; ya know what? we've already covered this). That is, I'm not sure either view really provides a clear, convincing, comprehensive theory that fits all the pieces together and makes it less of an atrocious mess.

So I feel a bit better about my conclusion that the topic is an atrocious mess. I can take comfort that at least Kavanaugh agrees with me that the Constitutional question is "not straightforward". I'd like to also hope that Gorsuch was thinking something similar when, in his brief separate writing, he said, in a somewhat measured fashion, that he thought Thomas' view "better accords with the Clause's original public meaning". I'd like to remember his statement in oral arguments ("It's a mess"), and view him as agreeing with me that it's a mess, and then saying something along the lines of, "If the two best explanations for what's going on are Roberts' opinion or Thomas', I guess, if I have to, I'll take Thomas'." I'm not sure if that's where I'll end up after stewing with it longer, but it seems plausible.

Of course, the Constitutional issue being a 5-4 I think also supports my prior opinion that it is much messier than most people thought going into it.

Oh, and also of course, I feel a bit vindicated in my more recent prediction (in the effortpost here, rather than in my comment years ago at the old old old place) that we were likely not going to get a real, detailed, coherent opinion that cleared stuff up.

I am glad for this ruling because it accelerates the demographic downfall of the United States. I say that not as a leftist but as someone who believes that Trump 1 was the absolute last call to do something about the demographic situation, and now the United States populace must face the natural consequences of their actions. The quicker, the better. Let it be a lesson for the history books.

  • -13

I think at some point in the next 10 years, assuming a relatively normal timeline (no nuclear Armageddon, no singularity, etc), we will probably see either a grand bargain or a runaway convention resulting in some significant changes to the constitution. In this scenario, is Jus soli is one of the first things to go. People on the right hate it, and other than a few groups of ideologues (devout neoliberals, the everything-is-racist caucus, etc), the rank and file on the left don't seem to care about it that much. They seem much more concerned with full on economic Marxism at the moment.

It's hard to imagine any coherent conception of a nation with borders that can be infinitely exploited by any person who manages to give birth within them.

This being anything other than 9-0 is an ominous level of partisan hackery. Like it or not, the Constitution is unambiguous with respect to birthright citizenship.

Expect future decades of the big issues of our time being decided by judges because legislatures have abandoned their responsibilities, and declining civic participation and partisanship frustrates any attempts to amend constitutions.

  • -22

It is unambiguous.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States

The inclusion of the clause is unambiguous that not all those born in the United States are subject to its jurisdiction. Its enshrinement in the Constitution is the US government defining a hard limit on its own sovereignty. The argument of Wong Kim Ark is that "People born here are under US jurisdiction" when, for the clause, that is explicitly denied by 14A. Its first test and major precedent was a complete inversion of the language.

It's somehow worse than that. We see with these rulings that successive courts read 14A as though it were written:

All persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States

That's not what it says, and to emphasize as it's beyond question, this is the obligate read of 14A by every court that has upheld categorical birthright citizenship. As their read necessarily omits the clause, they are tacitly admitting that with the clause their read is wrong.

And, qualitatively, Gorsuch consistently breaks ranks in preference to the text of laws as-written. If it were "unambiguous" in your sense, he would have joined the majority.

Its first test and major precedent was a complete inversion of the language.

The general understanding is that "not under the jurisdiction" covers invading armies and diplomatic staff of other countries (and also Indians with internal self-governance).

Of course, the tendency to naturalize immigrants (or at least their descendants) is much older than the 14th (slavery non-withstanding). Most ancestors of today's US citizens were neither Native American nor part of the Mayflower.

The general understanding is that "not under the jurisdiction" covers invading armies

There is a rather-trollish argument, which I don't think the dissents mentioned (though holy shit, those things are long, so I've only skimmed them), that by definition an illegal immigrant who is still actually present in the USA is someone against whom the USA is failing to exercise jurisdiction, in much the same way as it is failing to exercise jurisdiction over an invading army.

I don't think I'd considered this before today (though I did when still reading the opinions, not from your post), and I'm not sure I agree with it, but it does seem colourable.

I'm certainly open to believing the framers were so intellectually rigorous as to consider it necessary to incorporate language for the situation where an occupying army brought along their own women, and further, the framers were so morally steadfast as to believe they would require a solid legal standard to apply to the children born of such women.

It's absurd, the sovereign doesn't need such specificity, but I'm open to it, because those men would say an invasion is exactly what's happening.

This is the door left open. This decision is now a legal impetus for the reactionary machine to mass-label aliens as invaders. It attaches possibility of material benefit to framing this as an actual war. That's is a perilous thing to incentivize.

those men would say an invasion is exactly what's happening

Not a military invasion, no. You could use invasive species rhetoric, but that is quite a different thing. It would be like triggering NATO article 5 because of the nutria invading the US.

Employed illegal immigrants pay taxes, same as citizens. If they murder someone, they are put through the same legal system. These two facts alone set them apart from members of any invading army. If you get invaded by the troops of Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, GWB or basically any other commander in the history of mankind, the invaders will not pay federal income tax. The idea that during the sacking of a city, local policemen would go around arresting individual invaders for assault or murder seems totally absurd.

Where they pay taxes and where they are subject to the legal system, because both are tenuous to flatly assert, that they have the opportunity to pay taxes or the "opportunity" to murder Americans are contraventions of the will of the American people and with the effect of producing further contraventions of the will of the American people.

That this doesn't meet prescriptivist definitions of war doesn't matter because the only valid prescriptivist definition of war is the continuation of policy by other means. If there are such other means to effect the same outcome as war without doing anything that "counts" as "war" then sophisticated actors will employ those means. It is a continuation of policy by asymmetric means of demographic replacement to ultimately hijack ordinary means with that very demographic replacement. Americans have never wanted this, and the nature of the matter necessarily rejects input from its beneficiaries. An anchor baby doesn't get a say in whether they can stay, and because Americans have never wanted this, the ordinary and legitimate means of effecting political change have been superseded by myriad inherently illegitimate legal artifices, i.e.; policy continued by other means.

The idea that during the sacking of a city, local policemen would go around arresting individual invaders for assault or murder seems totally absurd

This is exactly what's being said by the idea of us needing something in the constitution specifying that the children of alien occupiers aren't citizens.

I agree with this. The invasion-through-immigration is sensationalist terminology. Like the gazan and "trans" genocides. People are trying to cast themselves as the underdog, victim or injured party, or their advocate, and thus as justly outraged, in a well-worn and highly recognizable narrative.

Whatever is to be said about the "sensationalism" of the claim, the point at the end is there is now the prospect of benefit to calling them invaders.

If the courts say the exclusion only applies to the children of invaders, and so, they say, it's legal to do something about the children of invaders, then that's a strong incentive for those who want them gone to shift to primarily calling them the children of invaders. There is no sense of norms left to maintain and the sentiment is already rife among reactionaries. Now they have a reason to formalize and strengthen it.

I'm certainly open to believing the framers were so intellectually rigorous as to consider it necessary to incorporate language for the situation where an occupying army brought along their own women

I will note that the idea of "camp followers" should have been accessible to them; camp followers are so old that the Romans talk about them, and they persisted all the way into the 20th century*.

*The obvious example is the Imperial Japanese Army. Obviously, most of the "comfort women" were actually Korean and Chinese sex slaves and that was a crime against humanity. But one thing that's often forgotten is that some were actual Japanese prostitutes who volunteered and were paid; those were not a war crime, and very much were in the ancient tradition of camp followers - and could indeed be considered part of the occupying Japanese army rather than the Chinese populace or some third category.

This doesn’t make any sense. If illegal immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, then there is no legal basis to deport them.

This doesn’t make any sense. If illegal immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, then there is no legal basis to deport them.

The clause clearly isn't referring to jurisdiction in every sense, since the US had the level of jurisdiction that you're specifying over the Indians.

I think that’s easy to get by “to have jurisdiction you must be able to enforce jurisdiction” - if your not able to deport perhaps because you don’t know they are even here then you don’t effectively have jurisdiction. If you refuse to deport them but are able to deport them then you do have jurisdiction.

No, that's not true; it is accepted that diplomats and children of diplomats are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for the purpose of that clause, and they can still be deported.

No, they can be declared persona non grata, after which if they are not recalled they become subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and can then be deported.

No, we can do a PNG, revoke the visas, and then expel them. There's not a requirement for being "recalled."

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/1083603546/u-s-expels-12-russian-diplomats-for-allegedly-engaging-in-espionage

What we don't do is imprison them, since that's an invitation to have our own diplomats imprisoned. (Unless they try to stay after the PNG.)

(Also, lower level staff and their families don't typically receive diplomatic immunity.)

But being subject to deportation is not a strong sense of "being subject to the jurisdiction of the US" in that it's literally passing them back to their country of origin. Similarly, with illegal immigrants who are arrested for a (different) crime, the standard move is to deport them, not incarcerate them for their crime(s) in the US legal system.

One would think "you're not subject to our jurisdiction because we do not grant you legal status and therefore we will deport you if we catch you" would be logical enough to assert any kids born before they were deported were not citizens, but no. Some of the justices, like Gorsuch, were willing to say the children born of temporary visitors don't get jus solis (presumably for similar reasons to the kids of diplomats), but that's pretty weird logic since plenty of illegal immigrants are not permanent in their residential intent (leaving aside whether they are successfully deported), like seasonal workers.

It's all a giant mess.

Yep. And "a well regulated militia" similarly modifies the following clause in much the same, equally unambiguous, way.

The inclusion of the clause is unambiguous that not all those born in the United States are subject to its jurisdiction

Given the style in which the constitution was written, it's not clear to me that this is true. Phrasing, punctuation are clearly not modern. is not clear to me, just based on the text itself, if "and" is intended to be something more like a boolean union vs a logical AND.

even if you are correct about the logical parsing of the sentence, it could be the case that the category of "born here but not subject to jurisdiction" does not include categories like "child of mexican immigrant" but more things like "child of foreign ambassador" or "denizen of sovereign native American tribe". Illegal immigrants can definitely be tried in American courts for American crimes and then put in American jails so they definitely are subject to American jurisdiction to some degree.

Your confidence in what is or is not ambiguous is unearned imo.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,

Nominative absolute

A well regulated Militia,

Subject phrase

being necessary to the security of a free State,

Participial phrase completing the absolute

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

Main clause

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,

Subject phrase

shall not be infringed

Predicate phrase enshrining the right

The second comma marks the end of the nominative absolute and the beginning of the main clause. The absolute is grammatically independent of the clause, it provides context but gives no conditions to what makes a well regulated militia necessary. Semantically it's actually an embedded unconditional premise: [Because] a well regulated Militia [is necessary] to the security of a free State. The Constitution declares the Militia will always be necessary.

The main clause contains the unconditional predicate phrase "shall not be infringed" modifying the subject "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." 2A tells the government it has no authority to infringe the right to keep and bear arms. The government does this constantly, and while most of those infringements are patently unconstitutional, I have no problem with those who argue the framers didn't have rocket launchers in mind. It's the same for felons, the language would suggest blocking felons from owning arms is unconstitutional, but the qualified annulment of certain rights of criminals is part of the sovereign prerogative.

The prerogative is those who break the social contract can be treated differently. The power to prohibit a person from owning firearms comes from the same authority expressed differently as the power to put a person in prison. What this means is even if 14A were all-persons-born-are, it still wouldn't mean it must, under full force of law, apply to literally every person born in this country. In all other categories of law, "all" effectively never means "all."

So, as with how 2A, of which the framers would absolutely include all small arms ever made, the right obviously does not extend to violent criminals or to the FGM-148 Javelin, despite the former technically belonging to the category of infringements and the latter technically belonging to the category of arms, then just as with 14A, it is obvious that the children of diplomats, hypothetical alien occupier women, birth tourists, and all other aliens otherwise intending to exploit the Constitution, are none intended or justifiably said as beneficiaries of birthright citizenship despite them technically belonging to the category of persons born in the United States. This is where the legal artifice is transparent. Aliens who exploit the sovereign do not enjoy her special protections.

Finally, 14A is specific in the opposite direction for its clause, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, as the clause invokes a construct of jurisdiction. One inexplicable point of all these courts is how they suppose the Framers of 14A didn't understand the idea that everyone in this country is subject to her true jurisdiction. Those Framers knew in a far deeper sense of truth exactly that point of power, they knew everyone was, truly, under the jurisdiction of the sovereign. That's what the clause says, and in making the clause it so invokes the construct, and those who would exploit the law are obviously excluded from the construct where it would affirmatively implicate in the question of citizenship. This is both found in the conveyed language, for if diplomats who are here through the most rightful means (and who are not named in 14A!) are not under our jurisdiction, so much less then are illegal aliens not under our jurisdiction, and it is found as an axiomatic power in the prerogative of the sovereign.

The mothers are criminal aliens here specifically so their children get citizenship (birth tourists included as criminal aliens), so, obviously, their children don't get to be citizens.

The 2a is not even a complete sentence and is ungrammatical punctuated. In your own post you have insert assumed words and change punctuation just to make it grammatically correct. And yet you presume to claim that the plain text is so exactingly clear that there can be only a single valid interpretation (conveniently, yours).

This is both found in the conveyed language, for if diplomats who are here through the most rightful means (and who are not named in 14A!) are not under our jurisdiction, so much less then are illegal aliens not under our jurisdiction, and it is found as an axiomatic power in the prerogative of the sovereign.

This assertion is of course justified nowhere in the plain text of the 14th. Its just your opinion. The degree to which it is or is not true legally is certainly subject to a considerable degree of legal judgement. And the people who are constitutionally authorized to exercise that judgement seemed to have just come to the opposite conclusion.

Anyway, I find your continued claims that certain interpretations of the constitution text are unambiguous or axiomatic, when they just plainly ain't so, to be a sign. I don't think I will continue here. Happy 4th and may America have another great 250.

The 2a is not even a complete sentence and is ungrammatical punctuated.

It is a complete sentence (though the canonical version's first and third commas are wrong). The conjugated verb is "shall"; the first clause is a valid dependent clause, if in a style now highly unusual outside of formal documents.

What's your opinion on Obergefell? Was that ominous?

For what it's worth, and I realise this wasn't directed at me, I think Obergefell does join the long list of decisions based on the Fourteenth Amendment that are indefensible on their own merits. One of the reasons I think the Fourteenth was a mistake was that it is sufficiently open to be read so as to smuggle in any policy change along these lines.

I disagree with the policy outcome of Obergefell, but that is irrelevant to the legal reasoning. As regards the law, I think the material substance of Obergefell was a matter for congress, not the courts.

I think it was a matter for neither Congress nor the courts, but the states.

Yes. I think that legalizing gay marriage is/was a good thing, but I am skeptical of doing it via tenuous legal mechanisms rather than via the elected representatives of the people or referendum. I don't think that ruling was as tortuously reasoned as Roe v Wade (or the dissenters in this judgment), but it took an issue that should've been decided by legislatures and instead hinged it on a 5-4 decision on shaky grounds. At this point it does not look like gay marriage is particularly at risk of being undone but we've been through this before and it's no guarantee of it surviving forever.

It is clear that in the aftermath of Obergefell both the left and right wings of American politics have decided to use the courts as their primary means of advancing their "big issues" rather than Congress, or god forbid, actually persuading the public.

Sure, I think that's a fair opinion. I guess my question was rooted in objecting to hearing my opinion implicitly called "partisan hackery" when 1) the 14th Amendment is extremely open to interpretation 2) The predicted outcome of SCOTUS functioning as a super-legislature has basically already long since come to pass.

It is clear that in the aftermath of Obergefell both the left and right wings of American politics have decided to use the courts as their primary means of advancing their "big issues" rather than Congress, or god forbid, actually persuading the public.

If the courts didn't want to be used as a backdoor to legislation by tenuous legal mechanism then the courts should not have seized the power of the legislature by backdooring legislation by tenuous legal mechanisms.

Certainly. No disagreements here. I have been very vocal about this in Canadian politics, which is all the worse given that we (ostensibly) have parliamentary supremacy and the means to enforce it.

I think the legislature has abdicated its power to the court (and the executive), much more than the court seizing it.

If Congress wants to pass no laws then that is their right, and that is by design. Consensus is needed to pass laws, and if the consensus isn't there then the laws should not be passed. Those are the rules. If it creates a total mess then yeah that sucks, but the courts have no rights to step in and write their own. Especially since they draw their own legitimacy as being the referees of the law and not players.

This reminds me of Obamacare. Everyone was told “not a real issue” as the received wisdom was “clear” but when you actually look at the received wisdom it just isn’t clear.

I don't think Thomas is a partisan hack. He has a clear and intellectually coherent theory of what the Constitution in his head says, and rules accordingly. It's just that the Constitution that was agreed at Philadelphia, ratified by the States, and rededicated to the proposition that all men are created equal by the blood of the Union dead in which the Reconstruction Amendments are written, says something else.

Alito, on the other hand...

Goresuch, I am genuinely surprised by on this one.

And kavanaugh? Maybe that should make you pause and think perhaps your position isn’t air tight.

I think that literal interpretations of the Constitution don't work in practice though, because it almost unambiguously says that the government can't stop me from having nuclear weapons. I'm pretty sure that "arms" back then just referred to weapons in general. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

And if that's the case, we have had a very weird situation for a long time now where the 2nd Amendment has been interpreted in a very limited way even though the clear reading allows all weapons.

It could be argued that this is what the amendment procedure is for, though. I wonder if it would actually be possible for an amendment that limits the 2nd Amendment to certain types of weapons to be ratified in today's political climate. There would be obvious slippery slope concerns from many people.

I imagine that if the current regime of stretchy interpretations fell (i.e. the SC really came out and said that sorry, but the law as written says yes to personal nukes, deal with it), it would take between nothing and a single tiny backyard plutonium spill for bipartisan momentum for a constitutional amendment to circumscribe the 2nd to materialise.

But it would be really really hard for them to agree on an actual amendment. Somehow you would need to get 3/4 of congress to agree to one specifically worded amendment when all of them are going to have very strong opinions in opposite directions. I suppose the threat of random people having nukes would motivate people to compromise, but it still wouldn't be easy, and whoever was the most radical and stubborn about refusing to budge would get more of their way by making others compromise towards them.

If the Democrats win big in 2026 and 2028, most likely they pack the court. If they are feeling magnanimous, they may instead cordially invite the remaining Republicans in Congress to provide input to their amendment drafting sessions in exchange for political support back home to get the amendments ratified.

I do have the feeling that politicians tend to be able to draw on remarkable reserves of ability to compromise and act cooperatively when their personal interests are actually threatened (as they would be by randos with nukes). The wild defections you are talking about seem to be the province of things the electorate may care deeply about, but the politicians themselves are happy to game.

think that literal interpretations of the Constitution don't work in practice though, because it almost unambiguously says that the government can't stop me from having nuclear weapons

I'm still not convinced that this is a problem

It's not that hard to build a nuke if you don't have to worry about law enforcement (including "international law enforcement" in the sense of other countries firing missiles at your house). You'd need millions of dollars (though not billions), a year or three, and maybe a degree of recklessness regarding whether you get cancer, but it's doable.

What's nearly impossible is hiding that you are building a nuke. If Omega gave me Satoshi's bitcoin codes, took me off the various watchlists I'm probably on, and told me I had to build a working nuke without anybody knowing or the world would end, I might be able to pull it off, but I'd still bet against it.

Anyone who is has the resources and know-how required to procure and operate an F-35 or Nuclear Weapon is going to be a lot more than just some "fringe whacko" in a compound somewhere.

You don't personally need the resources or know-how for most of this (besides operating but even that can be simplified by bad actors) so long as people can sell you or gift you one. Decentralized terrorist groups like 764 already grooms random local depressed nutjob kids to shoot up schools among many other types of crime, imagine what damage coordinated rival nations could deal if these nutjobs could have access to major weaponry.

And if we ban selling or gifting major weapons but not guns, then we have already established there is a distinction and they do not count as "arms" in the same way.

Also, if nukes are a constitutional right then obviously forming associations to develop and build and sell them is also constitutionally protected.

"You can own a gun, provided you can file one out of a block of iron and personally mine the saltpeter for the powder because we ban the sale of guns and anything which might be helpful in making or using them" would go very much against the spirit of 2A.

Also, if nukes are a constitutional right then obviously forming associations to develop and build and sell them is also constitutionally protected.

General Atomics (GA) and Honeywell International (HON) are both publicly traded companies.

Sure, but like most defense contractors, they are bound tightly by government regulations. They can't just decide to outsource their production to China, or hire Indians, or to offer their products to arbitrary countries or sell their company to a state-run Chinese company in the way Ford can make decisions about their civilian car production.

My point is that private associations to develop build and sell nuclear weapons already exist.

imagine what damage coordinated rival nations could deal if these nutjobs could have access to major weaponry.

Then this is no longer a legal matter but rather one of foriegn policy.

We make it known that if material furnished by your nation is used in such an attack that attack will be treated as having come from your nation and let the rivals police themselves.

This has multiple flaws.

  1. What does "material furnished" mean? Do all guns and bullets have to be exclusively made from minerals mined and put together in the US or else it counts as a shooting by a foreign power? If the gun is stored in a Russian made holster, is that a Russian attack? If we don't make it extremely strict, then there's lots of inevitable workarounds created to provide the "pieces" of advanced weaponry to be easily constructed and used.

  2. What about proxy groups? Private organizations that go through deniability chains from those nations can furnish weapons for nutjobs. There will be sophisticated plans where building a convincing casus belli will be difficult. They won't be like al-queda taking credit for 9/11.

  3. It doesn't even take rival nations, just sophisticated networks like the aforementioned 764. They spend some of their child porn money on materials and supply it to a crazed member. Gonna be hard to charge most of them. If giving someone a gun as a gift who just totally coincidentally proceeds to use it in crime can't be charged, then the same would apply to a missile or drone or anything else. "Oh we didn't know he would blow up that building with the rockets we provided him for his birthday". They can produce a lot for their own legal deniability, just like they already do. If we can't get them for shootings, why should I expect we can do it for anything else?

I feel like you are being intentionally obtuse.

Material furnished is exactly what it says, if a nation or any other organization gifts or sells that material outside normal channels they are on the hook for how it is used.

I also dont understand your preoccupation with deniability, we're not talking about citizens with consitutional rights, we're talking about sovereign nations. "Drop the act, we know it was you" is a perfectly valid realpolitik response to such behavior.

Material furnished is exactly what it says, if a nation or any other organization gifts or sells that material outside normal channels they are on the hook for how it is used.

"Outside normal channels" what does this mean? Can a terror group just host a raffle that NutJob McGee just happens to win for a free missile?

I also dont understand your preoccupation with deniability, we're not talking about citizens with consitutional rights, we're talking about sovereign nations. "Drop the act, we know it was you" is a perfectly valid realpolitik response to such behavior.

Outside of what the other comment said about framing, it also means "what if we can't really track it well to begin with?". The exact amount, if any, involvement of Saudi Arabia involved in 9/11 is still contended to this day.

21 years after, we still don't seem to know if a single guy Al-Bayoumi had knowledge of the attacks beforehand, and if they were an intelligence agent working for the Saudi government. This of course is despite the initial reports in 2004 concluding there was no connection.

In 2022, the FBI stated that "there is a 50/50 chance al-Bayoumi had advanced knowledge the 9/11 attacks were to occur". Al-Bayoumi also helped the hijackers find housing in San Diego. Al-Bayoumi stated that he simply befriended the hijackers and also denied being a Saudi government agent. The Saudi government also denied that Al-Bayoumi was an agent.

Did they know? Were they involved? I don't know! There's apparently 50% chance that this guy, who may or may not have been an intelligence agent (and if he was may or may not have been doing it under orders from above) might indicate Saudi involvement. Maybe.

And they found circumstancial evidence for it! Just no smoking gun of direct links.

Operation Encore was a secret FBI investigation launched in 2007 to investigate the alleged links of Saudi officials to the September 11 hijackers.[51][52][53] According to The New York Times, "circumstantial evidence" was uncovered but no direct links were established.[54]

Under your argument where presumably we should respond to vague traces of government involvement despite layers of deniability, should we have gone after Saudi Arabia too or not?

And maybe the FBI does know the answer for sure and just won't tell us plebs, but that's an assumption. Intelligence apparatuses have been known to make plenty of mistakes, either on accident or "on accident". How do we trust them to be this mystical source after multiple decades in the middle east based largely off (in good faith) a huge mistake and (in bad faith) a lie about WMDs.

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I also dont understand your preoccupation with deniability, we're not talking about citizens with consitutional rights, we're talking about sovereign nations. "Drop the act, we know it was you" is a perfectly valid realpolitik response to such behavior.

A hostile nation could make a genuine effort to frame another nation, though.

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In modern America you amend the Constitution thru the Supreme Court. I guess you could call that a common law system. And it’s still a hard thing to do.

@The_Nybbler last week.

Birthright citizenship is obviously supported by both Constitution and statute, but I imagine there's a lot of wrangling over the wording of the opinion of the court (which may be unanimous, maybe 8-1 if Alito is as much of a hack as one ex-poster claims).

Looks like your departed poster (darwin?) didn't go far enough and there's three partisan hacks on the court.

Surprised me in both directions, actually; I figured Roberts, like Kavanaugh, would also lean on statutory rather than constitutional claims, and I didn't expect Gorsuch or Thomas to go that way. Although MadMonzer is right here -- Thomas isn't a partisan hack, he has a very solid idea of what the Constitution says even if it ain't right. For instance in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado: "[A]ny statute that forced the President to allow aliens to cross the border against his will would appear to exceed Congress’s enumerated powers, and a court could not enforce it against the President." -- he gets this from the Article II vesting clause, which is a pretty severe stretch. I would expect that Congress gets to decide which aliens get to cross the border, and certainly the law has always worked that way.

Although MadMonzer is right here

What is the world coming to? Roberts decides a case when the option to punt is available, The_Nybbler agrees with me on the Motte, and Germany exit the World Cup early on penalties. If we are far enough off the old timeline, perhaps England have a chance to win the thing.

We all know England are going to make it to the semis and then flop in the worst possible way imaginable.

Like it or not, the Constitution is unambiguous with respect to birthright citizenship.

No, it really isn't: "Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons." - Jacob Howard, drafter of the 14th Amendment

Children of foreigners, aliens, and diplomats were not intended to be covered by the 14th by the very author of the amendment.

Ehhh, I really don't think Howard meant aliens the way we now understand aliens. And this is assuming he meant aliens as a separate category rather than as explanatory of what he meant by "families of ambassadors or foreign ministers".

I did some research on this and this is a good summary: https://old.reddit.com/r/asianamerican/comments/1i6pbh1/from_1866_when_the_senate_was_debating_the_14th/

I read the debates itself as well: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-globe/congress-39-session-1-part-4.pdf

Really wished someone transcribed the whole thing for easy search and copy paste but Howard had no objection to the comment by Conness:

The proposition before us, I will say, Mr. President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States.

And Howard had plenty of objections when others say things he didn't agree with during that debate (such as on the matter of Indians untaxed or not taxed, etc.)

Children of foreigners, aliens, and diplomats were not intended to be covered by the 14th by the very author of the amendment.

Is that how you parse that quote? It seems to me he is referring exclusively to the children of foreign diplomats. Not three different categories of people (i.e., foreigners AND aliens AND those who belong to families of ambassadors...).

Howard in other instances seemed to very clearly anticipate that the 14th would apply to the children of people from other countries who were not (yet) American citizens. In any case, the amendment as written very obviously does not make the distinction you are purporting Howard to have made.

I think it critically depends on whether you read "foreigners, aliens," as opening a list with three entries or whether "aliens" is a clarification of "foreigners", compare:

[...] persons born in the United States who are foreigners (aliens) who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States

I think the 'who' makes the three-element-list reading at least awkward. It's a very "spoken out loud" construction. I would expect "who are foreigners, or aliens, or who belong".

It would certainly be an unconventional way to word it today, but it was 1866. I think ultimately you have to say that is the proper interpretation though, because everything outside this one specific quote with slightly ambiguous wording suggests Howard only meant to exclude children of foreign diplomats, and that's how it was interpreted then.

"This will not include persons born in the United States who are foreigners."

"This will not include persons born in the United States who are aliens."

"This will not include persons born in the United States who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States."

I'm struggling to find any other way to parse it.

I used to think this, but there is other context from the same time that does make clear that aliens and foreigners were referring to the same class of people.

Notably, a senator who opposed ratification was concerned specifically with the children of Chinese and gypsy immigrants (who had questionable legal status).

https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/the-fourteenth-amendments-guarantee-of-birthright-citizenship/

I don't like it, but that does seem to be the case.

That Senator ended his career with those comments, so I think the conclusion is the opposite. That is not what the people intended.

Because it's not a list of three categories. It's a description of one category, of which all three are needed to qualify. I.e. that citizenship is not withheld from aliens AND foreigners AND children of foreign diplomats, but rather children of foreign diplomats who are also aliens and foreigners. (Otherwise, for example, someone who had say, a foreign diplomat father and an American mother, born in America, would not receive birthright citizenship.)

I think semantically it is meant to be understand this way for a number of reasons: the alternative explanation is not consistent with Howard's purposes otherwise OR the final wording of the amendment, it doesn't make sense to describe newborn children being born as foreigners or aliens within the context of the rest of the amendment, and if it was a list it would certainly be more clear if there were ors/ands in between the items.

If I were to say to say, for example, to a car dealer that I only liked cars that were "red, fast, fuel-efficient"; I would expect him to understand that I want a car that is all three, rather than one car of each.

OK, but switch your hypothetical back to the negation that we're dealing with and it comes out my way.

If I want to see every car on the lot, but that this obviously doesn't apply to cars that are red, fast, fuel efficient, then don't bring me the red F150.

Other parse: this will not include person born in the United state who are foreigners AND aliens AND belong to (the families of ambassdors OR foreign ministers). So to be exempt you'd have to be a foreigner and an alien and be born to an ambassador or minister accredited to the USA.

That's an incredibly motivated reading which would not be used in the vast majority of other contexts. If someone wants a vegetable soup but asks you to exclude red, orange, purple vegetables, you're not going to toss in some carrots and tell them that they weren't crazy stripey polka-dotted carrots with red and purple on them. It's clear what they meant.

The text does not use the word AND, it's just a list of three things and then says "all other classes are included", meaning that these three classes are not. There are not logical operators being applied here. I suppose an OR could be implied, but I don't think mathematical logic was developed or widespread enough for them to speak that way (since there's often ambiguity between OR and XOR). Just listing the three traits which are excluded, and then saying "all other classes are included" is pretty clear.

Your construction makes no sense. First, the punctuation would be wrong. Second, describing diplomats as foreigners and aliens would be surplusage on top of surplusage.

Diplomats could be married to US citizens, or possibly be a US citizen themselves. Apparently there's been quite a few Canadian diplomats who are also American. There's also one of an American ambassador to France who had French citizenship through their marriage.

If the argument that using foreigners and aliens is to clarify that children borne of diplomats who happen to be U.S. citizens as well, then that moves me not at all.

Well there's also the big issue that if it's surplus then there is no reason whatsoever to include the final bit of foreign diplomats being included.

If I wanted to ban all fruits, I would not say "this ban includes fruits, and also apples". Apples is included under fruits. It doesn't make any sense to include them separately. If I wanted to make it clear that fruits contains something contentious, I would say "this ban includes traditional fruits and tomatoes" to clarify that tomatoes are included as a fruit here.

If diplomats would be included under the "aliens" and "foreigners", then why mention them? Presumably there's either

  1. A distinction between them and they kept it in mind that some diplomat children might not be alien/foreign

  2. Considering diplomats as aliens or foreigners is disputed for some reason,

  3. It's meant to be specifically fitting all three categories.

  4. We are meant to consider that US citizen who happens to be a diplomat to us of some kind actually make non citizen child.

I think we should be able to agree that the families of foreign diplomats would be foreigner/aliens. The question is, was his third category giving a clarifying example, or was it specifying more precisely the full scope of what he was referring to there? I don't think there's an obvious answer.

I think the context would lean towards a broader reading though, since right after, someone brings up the case of Indians, and Howard's immediate response is to say that they are "quasi foreign nations." Since not all the Indians are diplomats, he at least didn't mean his reference to "foreigner" in a way that he wasn't willing to take in a broader sense when suitable.

Not quite, it's possible to be a foreigner but not an alien, e.g. a US citizen who also has German citizenship. It's also possible to be an alien but not a foreigner, e.g. a native American back before they were all given citizenship; and it's definitely possible to be an ambassador/foreign minister without being either a foreigner or an alien and you use this language specifically to ensure that it doesn't apply to US ambassadors or foreign ministers who are also US citizens for instance in their own right separately.

The UK actually does something like this. If you're just a random migrant spending time on almost any "residnence" visa category in the UK after 10 years you'll be eligible for ILR (permanent residence basically). However if you're specifically in the UK as an exercise of being part of a foreign nation's retinue to it's mission in the UK there are additional issues and you can't just apply for ILR or naturalisation until you are no longer not subject to immigration control (basically not until your formal status as a diplomat has ended).

It would make perfect sense for children of ambassadors and foreign ministers while they are serving in their capacity as an ambassador/foreign minister to be carved out of US citizenship as a way to not create direct US ties and jurisdiction (like e.g. family law jurisdiction) over a family member of a serving diplomat of the other country, which the other country almost certainly would not be happy about.

Also - I dislike the framing by @johnfabian where everyone who disagrees with him is a partisan hack. He thinks it's clear - fine. I, like you, don't think that it is clear, and I think we need to recognize that reasonable people can in fact disagree on this stuff, and not just throw out insults.

But why should the author's opinion matter, if the opinion is not explicitly written into the text of the actual Amendment? That would open a whole can of worms. If that is what the author meant, why did he not write it into the Amendment? After all, it seems to have not been completely obvious, since he felt the need to comment on it.

Look at you rediscovering the originalist issue of textualism vs. intentionalism.

It isn’t dispositive but it is instructive. That is, if the answer is “obvious” then how did the drafter understand it to mean something else? That is at least a clue that it isn’t obvious.

The ambiguous word in the text on which everything hinges is “jurisdiction”. The author explained how the word “jurisdiction” is to be interpreted, with examples. How are his comments not relevant?

This is far outside of my domain of expertise, maybe there were other relevant considerations (e.g. historical precedent) that force a different interpretation of “jurisdiction”, I don’t know. But if the author’s comments on his own amendment are being reported accurately, then “he should have been more explicit” seems like an incredibly weak rebuttal.

Because when trying to understand what someone wrote into law it's useful to read what they themselves believed was the meaning of the words they wrote. This is totally uncontroversial legal practice.

Not necessarily. The difference between textualism and originalism is the former rejects that you should even need to try and interpret their beliefs. There's also the idea that Congress is hundreds of people, therefore "what Congress believed when they passed a law" is not in fact a single answer.

Important thing is that 5 justices agreed to the main majority ruling which means this issue is hopefully settled and dead for another 130 years. The right is free to try to change the constitution if they don't like the consequences.

I'm halfway through Alito's dissent and man is that dude a hack. Same level of bad as Sotomayor.

  • -19

Roe v. Wade was overturned only 50 years later, Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson only 60 years later.

50 years/60 years are also good enough for me. By then the makeup of the US will be so different to right now it'll be effectively a different country regardless!

  • -18

Why would you be happy about this ruling and then say the US would essentially be a different country. The US or Rome is the great country the world has ever seen - why would you want that dead? There is nothing more important than preserving the US.

It's going to be a different country anyway, even if you had a magical way to make it majority white. Change is not death. And anyway you are not the sole arbiter of what future trajectories constitutes death of the usa.

He genuinely hates the US and the West and would like to see it collapse.

It's because this is good for him and his likes, and not for the likes of me.

The revolutionary-minded are seldom correct about what they think is good for them

Wrong. I think there's a lot good about western countries and their history and everything. It's the people I mostly have an issue with, not the countries themselves. The USA for example I think has it in it to become the shining city on a hill it aspires to be, the geographic expanse, the natural beauty, the resources, it's the people and more specifically the mindset of these people that irks me.

  • -25

Because the people of Pakistan totally would have built something so much better if they were simply on the magic soil of America, obviously.

The country IS the people, not the land. Land is a resource. You're essentially saying that you want to destroy me, my people, and my culture so that someone else can have my stuff. That is pretty antagonistic and make you unambiguously my enemy.

What's your ethnic background? What ethnicities would you include or exclude from the category of "true" American people?

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If someone says you hate "the US and West" they don't mean you hate the geography or natural resources. It is the people, culture or institutions that would be the objects of hatred.

In fifty years the Latinos, Indians, East Asians and Muslims will have Irishified and the United States will be back to being 85 percent white.

I know I might be feeding a troll, but are you aware of the evidence that European ethnicities don't fully assimilate, as well as the fact that the genetic distances between white Americans and the races you listed are more than 5 times as large as those between European ethnicities? If you're not trolling, I don't understand how in 2026 such naive blank slatism feels plausible to you.

Oh, you mean like how Boston is an Irish city, not an American one, and now places like Houston and Los Angeles are going to be Mexican cities, and Dearborn will become Muslim?

Yes, the replacement will continue apace. The slope is still slippery, and we are still sliding.

With how "melting pot" has been deemed Nazi-adjacent in the past decade, in favor of "salad bowl" or "mosaic," I'm skeptical that repeating history in this way is likely. With immigrants and their children being actively discouraged against assimilating, it's going to be hard for them to "Irishify," even before you get to the superficial differences. Arguably we're seeing some of the fruits of that change in attitude towards immigrant assimilation today, with the strong anti-Jewish push happening on the left.

I think this depends on whether you consider the melting pot a project that must be actively pursued and that is sensitive to "leftist project" policy decisions, or an unavoidable consequence of dense cohabitation and intergroup mobility that someone just happened to slap a laudatory label on

Perhaps, and it's certainly possible that it's just something that happened that someone slapped a label onto, but I'm not sure there's such a thing as a positive "unavoidable consequence" that isn't sensitive to "leftist project" policy decisions or any "project" policy decisions. There are about a Graham's Number times more ways things can go negative than they can go positive, and in the rare cases where the positive things happen by chance, they seem extremely easy to destroy, either completely by chance or due to people specifically attacking the parts that make things positive, as is the case here.

Latinos are pretty likely to just be tan white people in another generation or two, they’re already assimilating and they want to be white.

No they will not be tan white people. They will either be nearly identical to native Europeans or be servant class. That is how it works in Mexico. So the most likely path is they will be tan people who clean your table and home.

They’re already majority euro by ancestry, and are intermarrying at high rates- it’s unlikely that ‘Mexican Americans’ will be genetically distinctive in 100 years.

Bell Curve 2 with a lower mean merging into Bell Curve 1 with a higher mean, thus creating a merged Bell Curve whose mean is the weighted average of its two constituents, is still a bad outcome when we could have just stuck with Bell Curve 1 and prevented Bell Curve 2 from coming into the picture in the first place.

Fair point. But it'll be a more inclusive "white" which I'll take.

  • -14

The East Asians are pretty much already there, and Latinos can probably make it, too. But Indians and Muslims? I don't see it. They will remain distinct, unassimilable groups, like blacks.

The East Asians are pretty much already there

Not even close, in any way. Happas are very acutely aware of their own non-whiteness.

in a contrast to other groups historically, this seems more far more imposed from within the minority than from the majority.

Second or third generation Indians have mostly already assimilated in my neck of the woods.

What does that even mean? Are they only 25% or 12.5% Indian on average? Because otherwise I can point out an important way in which they failed to assimilate.

...It really doesn't? At best your point would be that their parents or grandparents didn't assimilate.

And at any rate, I don't buy into the blood-purity ideal of America, so we're both sort of begging the question, if you think assimilation is functionally impossible and I think it's common.

Indian engineers and businessmen are completely integrated into my community. They join Boy Scout troops, they run for local schoolboards and serve on local charities.

Their kids win Valedictorian in the high school, and dominate the varsity tennis squad, but they also skive off on senior skip day and throw house parties and join the marching band and try and fail to lose their virginities on prom night.

My Indian neighbors futz about their lawns and wash their cars in their driveways and get season tickets to the minor league baseball team.

Hell, one of my most firmly held Indian stereotypes was broken last year when a group of Sikhs massively overpaid for a piece of real estate at an auction, due to lack of research, to the point of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on the deal.

There's just no difference.

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I’ve found upper caste Indias (and Pakis etc) as probably the group that easiest assimilates to the US. Especially in the upper class. We have right-wing Indian politicians in the west.

There’s basically zero East Asian or non-European Latinos in power in the west. Caste probably significantly matters for Indians and Muslims. And a wider variety of outcomes.

Norman Mineta (Japanese) was in the cabinet when Gary Locke (Chinese) and Ben Cayetano (Filipino) were Governor. Mazie Hirono (Japanese) is in the Senate, Hung Cao (Viet) is acting secretary of the Navy, Elaine Chao (Chinese) is Secretary of Transportation.

So, Hawaii and Washington governors, Senator from Hawaii, and a smattering of cabinet roles.

Not a lot of non-European Latinos in power in Latin America either.

Everything that has been said about Mamdani was said word-for-word about Kennedy.

Kennedy wanted to tax specifically white rich people?

Rich white people were already being taxed at an 90 percent rate so it wasn’t a live issue. To seriously answer your question, Kennedy was broadly sympathetic to the racial Current Thing of the era, in a mealy mouthed Barack Obama kind of way.

I’m not asserting that Mamdani is necessarily either a good politician or a good man. I’m just saying that the racial and religious politics surrounding him are currently well within the bounds of what we have seen for other integrating ethnic groups historically.

They accused Kennedy of being a communist? Because that's what I hear about Mamdani when I turn on the radio.

Yes, Kennedy being soft on Communism to the point of being a secret or not-so-secret red was a constant rhetorical drum beat on the right, like it has been about every single democratic politician since FDR. Look at the “Wanted For Treason” flyers that were being passed around Dallas the day he was murdered.

Nobody ever called Kennedy a Ugandan Muslim.

I think it would be fair to just call this 5-4 so I guess this is still in play. This is probably 9-0 or 8-1 in 2018.

This might be worth Trump ignoring the court and challenging their authority which has always been an important balance of power. He could just lose the citizenship paperwork.

The question now comes down to how long does Sotomayors health hold up. Birthright is dead if anything happens to her and the GOP holds the Presidency.

Believing that it’s actually 5-4 requires believing that either Kavanaugh will fold or that Congress (to satisfy him) passes the requisite law with a 60 seat senate majority which the GOP is not going to have, and even if it did have it you’d need in the region of 65-70 GOP senators because the liberals will vote against it just like Roberts and ACB did.

You only need 50 Senate votes. And yes it’s time to get rid of the filibuster. The legislature should doing more legislating and the courts less.

Someone here earlier this week or last week said that this decision will be our generation's Dred Scott regardless of how it is decided, and that it will tear the union apart in similar fashion. Demographic changes in the West generally are leading to ever increasing tension and dysfunction, and I fear this decision will ensure that a breaking point is reached soooner, rather than later.

Sounds to me like the there will be increasing tension and dysfunction regardless of whether your stated position was affirmed or struck down. The decision is just another signal/marker of the continuing trend that you're describing. Dredd Scott can be viewed as a bad decision that made things worse, but one can also see that even if Dredd Scott ruling was reversed (that Dredd Scott became a free man by staying in the free Missouri territory), there would still have been a Secession. Congress (and by extension the People) punt on something long enough then yeah it will come crashing down on them. This is exactly what the People deserve.

Leaving it as a statutory question would have given an out that did not demand taking the amendment process or ramming the hardest-right justices through the courts as the least escalatory answer.

Dred Scott, once issued, couldn't be reversed: even were Scott freed, he couldn't become a citizen. Indeed, under Dred Scott, Scott couldn't even sue anyone over anything in federal courts in the future. That's why Dred Scott made non-legal avenues the only available ones, either direct defiance of the holding (eg the Territorial Slave Act of 1862) or the eventual war.

This isn't quite that bad, but the calculus for immigration restrictionists is still far uglier than Roberts had to make it.

agreed. I personally don't think this is Dredd Scott level of bad, I don't think people will secede. I also haven't read the thing yet but Kavanaugh left it open for Congress to make some laws.

Sure but Roberts for unknown reasons reached the constitutional issue when he needed just statutory.

I think Robert killed any chance the texturalism will be a future legal theory. Robert’s declared birthright isn’t texturally therefore unless GOP drops birthright (I believe it’s doubtful) then we will likely see a litmus test on Birthright for future GOP judges and it’s tough to swap a recent precedence so they will be likely adopting new legal theories to justify their views.

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