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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Texas is standing up because they kind of are actually defending themselves against an invasion right now. Several hospitals are basically only serving migrants and aren't being compensated. They are threatening to shut down and leave the state. Biden has no political leg to stand on, and only a thin legal leg that there are 4 strong votes on SCOTUS to kick out from under him, and 2 questionable votes.

Er, Biden has a very strong legal leg to stand on. It's not an invasion, it's illegal immigration. The current situation is different in scale to what has happened continuously for many decades but not conceptually. I understand the desire to rhetorically brand the situation an "invasion", but it's not actually what it is. October 7th is what an invasion looks like.

The federal government does in fact have the legal authority to administer immigration law. That the current one is doing so very badly does not change this.

Historically this is invasion. The Romans never would have let millions of migrants enter their territory and use their resources. They would have slaughtered them.

If I open a dictionary this fits many of the definitions you will find. I’m sure in about a week all those definitions will be modified to make sure invasion only means with guns.

We also frequently use the word “invasive species”. Those aren’t species using force to enter a new environments. Often their species that lack predators and therefore grow uncontrollably.

So often a debate does come down to the definition of a word.

I would note you I believe think Trump committed insurrection on Jan 6. In many ways this is very similar but I do believe the gap between: Trump gives speech causing riot is the meaning used by 14th amendment rioters as an insurrection is much larger than the gap between the definition of invasion constitutional writers used and what is occurring at our southern border.

This just comes down to how stretchy are the words invasions and insurrection.

Historically this is invasion.

The federal government is going there with forklifts and lifting up the wire to facilitate their entry. That's a bad policy choice, but it's also clearly a choice. Never mind the lack of force, these people aren't even violating a "please stay out" sign. They're being welcomed in.

It's irrelevant that the Romans wouldn't have allowed it. The Democrats are allowing it, and they are the government.

Again an invasion doesn’t require use of force by many dictionary definitions. Nor does the constitution explicitly define invasion as by force.

Like I said invasion is like insurrection. Both have some stretchy meaning.

What's your principled reason for adopting a narrow definition of insurrection and a broad definition of invasion?

  1. It serves my politics
  2. I hope my reasoning isn’t motivated reasoning and I’m making distinctions for good reasons

Don't these points contradict each other?

Doesn’t your insurrection views do the same thing?

And yes I wander how much of my view is usefulness versus honest reasoning.

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