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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7613 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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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.

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.

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.

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