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 -
There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.
The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.
A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.
Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.
Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).
This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.
This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.
Edit: Trump weighs in
This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.
The US feds seem to be backing down, apparently they're not going to clear away the barbed wire. Is this a tactical retreat or an operational pause?
On the one hand, they might try again in a couple of weeks when everyone has forgotten and the media's moved on. Or they could use other methods to facilitate illegal immigration that divert around barbed wire.
Alternately, it is a bad look in an election year, it might make sense to slow down now. As far as demographics are concerned, time is on their side - well over half of Under-15s are non-white and that number is still rising. Reducing inflow doesn't matter so much, as long as Republicans aren't able to execute a huge expulsion and re-emigration operation, Democrats/Progressives will enjoy permanent electoral/demographic dominance. In terms of voting, the key thing is race - whites tend to vote Republican, non-whites hugely favour Democrats. This is a perfectly rational strategic decision, Dems favour the expansion of social welfare, redistribution, multiculturalism and affirmative action, which usually favour non-whites over whites. Either the Republicans will move to join them, or they'll become irrelevant.
Is the idea here that the migrant flows at the border are a result of a deliberate strategy to stack the electoral deck in favor of the Democrats? Illegal immigrants can't vote. Hell, legal residents can't vote. I know lack of voter ID laws would make some amount of illegal voting possible, but the implication here that this is a big coordinated effort to gain and maintain federal power via illegal immigrants' votes strikes me as a bit far-fetched.
Probably what's more likely is the usual sclerosis of the federal administrative apparatus (favoring the status quo, whatever it may be), combined with the very strong negative political polarization we have (that leads to legislative deadlock - don't want to give the other guys a win on an important issue), plus a bit of an influence from the true believers, the multiculturalism and open borders people who probably do see the firm securing of the border as a moral failure. Is this not enough to explain what is happening?
Places are moving to allow illegals.
You can’t ask for pretty much any info. It would be relatively easy for illegals to vote.
Illegals kids will vote.
Illegals’ kids voting is something that can only be stopped by constitutional amendment re. birthright citizenship.
In general it seems unlikely that illegals vote. The American citizen underclass already very rarely votes, and illegal immigrants often believe enforcement is much, much harsher than it actually is. Why would a penniless Guatemalan illegal vote? To their mind it’s a risk for zero real benefit, they don’t know much or anything about American politics, and their sole goal is to stay under the radar to not get deported. They don’t conceive of any kind of civic duty, and their knowledge of American politics will be very minimal, they don’t know where their local polling place is, and they probably have neither the time nor the inclination to visit it.
Like most Americans I’ve met my fair share of likely-to-certainly illegal immigrants, and I find the suggestion they’d vote in elections pretty ridiculous, not out of principle but for many more practical reasons. There are maybe 15 million of them, so surely a few have, but I find it hard to believe it was many.
So, crazy legal position alert, but I'm not sure that's entirely true. Yes, I'm aware of the standard view that Wong Kim Ark declared birthright citizenship as inviolable Constitutional law, but I actually don't think it's that clear.
One can start with Elk v. Wilkins. John Elk was born on a reservation, but the case had approximately nothing to do with physical location. I’m not sure that anyone would think that it would have come out differently if his parents had left the reservation briefly to, say, have his birth in a particular hospital. Instead, it was entirely about political allegiance - his political allegiance was to the tribe, not the United States, even though he had left the reservation as an adult and spent much of his life in the US "proper". Much of Wong Kim Ark discusses political allegiance, as well. AFAICT, the rule they embraced was, “Political allegiance has something to do with it, but we think that the only cases that are clear are foreign ministers (not consuls, though, for complicated weird reasons) and invaders (huh, that word again)... oh, and Indians are weird, yo.” Were there reasons for the court to think that the case in front of them should not be excepted? They cite The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon:
You can start to see how there might be room here. There’s still a linkage between jurisdiction and allegiance, but it’s not entirely clear how it operates in all cases. They’re imputing a temporary allegiance to common travelers, but even this stems from “the implied license under which they enter”. It’s squishy. There are indicators that go the other way, too.
Further, I should note that the majority opinion was clear about the fact that they were engaging in a common law approach to this question (while taking some guidance from the above-quoted statute using the language “not subject to any foreign power”). There’s a lot of squishy room here, which is why the same folks who would call it an invasion for purposes of A4S4 would want to call it an invasion for the question of birthright citizenship – they're essentially saying, “We recognized two cases that were clearly problematic from the perspective of political allegiance; I think this a third.” And I’m not sure that there’s any super knockdown legal argument against that. In fact, if faced with a statute saying, “Illegal aliens are on this side of the political allegiance line; we clearly and obviously have not given them any implied license to be here whatsoever,” rather than engaging purely in a common law exercise, I’m not sure how the Wong Kim Ark Court goes. (They had a statute saying that he couldn’t be naturalized, but that’s clearly different.)
I've heard similar arguments before. Trump promised to end birthright citizenship in 2016 and again in 2018 by executive order (which would presumably lead to the inevitable SCOTUS challenge), but never did. He promised to do it again last year and the year before, but again, it seems that even the Trumpist wing is resigned to the fact that it's unlikely anyone but Thomas and maybe Alito would support the repeal.
I think it would definitely be a heavy lift with SCOTUS. I then have an unfortunate thought, that if it's just an EO, SCOTUS probably shuts it down... but if it were an actual, no bullshit statute passed by the full Congress, it might have a legit chance. Of course, I doubt that will happen anytime soon, but in this same thread, I also tried considering the legality of Congress just passing a statute declaring that the borders must be open, so I am a sucker for these sorts of, "What is the actual limiting principle," questions.
I agree that I think there’s a chance a conservative SCOTUS majority accepts a law that passes congress abolishing birthright citizenship, but I think that’s the only way it happens (short of constitutional amendment).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Enter VBM and activists getting illegals to sign things they don’t understand because the activist is…otherwise helpful
If you’re running an operation in which people show up at polling stations, declare they’re citizens under false identities and vote under false pretenses then you have no need for illegals and are in fact best served by using ideologically committed fellow activists who definitely won’t sell their story or give you up for nothing if caught.
If you wanted to use illegal migrants in a voting scheme, why would you ever bring them to a polling station?
Ballot harvesting has far fewer oversight and procedural control mechanisms.
If you're ballot harvesting the votes of illegal migrants, what's the difference between doing so and just making up names? Why do you need a real life illegal immigrant to register to vote illegally when, by definition, the illegal alien won't have a legitimate SSN, won't have a legitimate birth certificate and so won't have a legitimate (non AB60 or equivalent) license? Of course many have fakes of the above, but if you're just registering fake voters for such a ballot harvesting scheme the illegals themselves are unnecessary in that case. You might as well have your own citizen activists register or vote as dead people, vote multiple times, impersonate others etc. which hugely minimizes the risk of the plot getting out.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link