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 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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link