This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
It is unambiguous.
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:
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.
Yep. And "a well regulated militia" similarly modifies the following clause in much the same, equally unambiguous, way.
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.
Nominative absolute
Subject phrase
Participial phrase completing the absolute
Main clause
Subject phrase
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 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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link