If you're born here, you're a citizen. 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War to drive a stake through the heart of the pre-war Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to blacks because, well, they were black and "had no rights that a white man was bound to respect," according to the Supreme Court. You can see why an amendment was needed.
Not everyone agrees that birth in the U.S. should entitle you to citizenship. They'd prefer, apparently, that you qualify, politically, to make sure that you didn't hold ideas that might bring us down.
That prompted a discussion among a few constitutional law perfessors, one of whom floated the idea, strictly as a thought experiment, mind you. One more thought experiment like that and we're liable to have a revolution.
Here's the exchange, with some of the names abbreviated to protect the less-than-fully-innocent, starting with my rejoinder:
By RS:
This is a surprise ending, that because even without, allegedly, wide general understanding of civil liberties (sez who?), or contrarily, "we really do have a political culture at least weakly supportive of our traditions and liberties" (really, only weakly?) that "we should not risk it by diluting it with active opponents of our liberties."
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I think there is widespread and strong love for our political liberties which continues to make us a magnet country. Yes there is a constant fight because we quarrel over the particulars and tend to regard as undeserving of liberty those who are socially disfavored at any one moment from women to blacks to gays to any other minority [insert name]. It's the "I.e" that [Therefore] we should not risk it [our liberty] by diluting it with active opponents of our liberties" that seems otherworldly. This is how you lose liberty, by banning supposed "opponents" of it. The pro-liberty "banners" become the anti-liberty losers by the fact of banning.
First of all, people don't immigrate to the U.S. in wholesale lots in order to eliminate civil liberty. They come here hoping to reap the benefits of it for themselves and their kids.
Secondly, the bigger danger comes from the indigenous folk who don't recognize or care about the danger of what they advocate, such as the old America Firsters before Pearl Harbor, isolationists, opponents of "foreign law," and other assorted "me" firsters.
Third, someone advanced the notion here that birthright citizenship might just as well be jettisoned. Yes, that would certainly open the door to all sorts of testing for political correctness to earn citizenship, wouldn't it. We could get rid of anyone at any time, so long as we decided retrospectively in the heat of some controversy that they had obtained their citizenship under false pretenses or forfeited it by lapsing into political heresy.
That would be a fine kettle of fish for America. Creative dissidents don't have enough to worry about already; under the new regime they could worry about deportation and loss of family as well. This is truly a wonderful control mechanism for those who believe in the wonderfulness of government control over individual liberty. So much for the old Abolitionists; they'd have been gone, because they were wrong for sooo long.
We should do this, of course, eliminate birthright citizenship for all of us, because a few Mexican women have the cleverness to realize that it's a good idea to come North to give birth in order to give their child a better chance at life than South-of-the-border. The mother cannot benefit until the child attains age 21.
To cure this terrible loophole in our border, the rest of us can start life anew like Liza, balancing on a political ice-cake in a freezing river. I'd like to see the constitutional amendment which authorizes this. Will I be grandfathered in, or do I have to take the new test? Who will write the test? Some Conlawprof? Which, or who?
This cure is deadlier than the disease.
Again I say that these arguments are based on fear, and that the cure against fear is not to build walls around this country and people's minds but to open the windows and let the sunlight in. Take the risk of dealing with idiots. Have a little more confidence in the common-sense of enough Americans to withstand those who are so far outside of the political mainstream that their ideas are recognized as abhorrent to our better values. Then ignore or marginalize them politically.
We have experience with those who are already aboard and are ready to pull up the ladder against those still in the water. It hasn't been good.
rs
sfls
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What prompted the above:
M.K. wrote:
E: What of polls that show that our current population, if shown the Bill of Rights, is generally opposed to its principles?
Don't we have constitutional perils of Pauline already?
One could conclude, Somehow we survive without wide general understanding of civil liberties, or, to the contrary, As bad as our current co-rulers may seem when asked about civil liberties, somehow we really do have a political culture at least weakly supportive of our traditions and liberties. I.e, somehow things work out, even without widespread commitment, or we have a widespread commitment, if not one that is articulate, and we should not risk it by diluting it with active opponents of our liberties.
M.K.