Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
So, yesterday, five of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices decided that our 14th Amendment to our Constitution actually means what it says. Any person born on American soil is automatically an American citizen. No one could have predicted that the party of MAGA, who believe the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning, are now having brain meltdowns over our 14th Amendment.
Our Fourteenth Amendment
Our 14th Amendment was written into our Constitutional Bill of Rights after the Civil War. It was a direct response to a pre-civil war Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans, many living below the Mason-Dixon Line who were slaves, had no rights of citizenship. Once the war was over, Southern Democrats still insisted that freed or not freed, their former Black American slaves had no rights of citizenship. Decent Americans believed different, and on July 9, 1868, our 14th Amendment became law.
The Amendment actually has five sections, of which the first section specifically covers citizenship. The entire amendment reads:
AMENDMENT XIV
Section 1.
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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The MAGAt Reaction
All the usual White Supremacists are screaming about our Supreme Court’s alleged “tremendous betrayal,” as if following our Constitution is now some Liberal plot to destroy “Their America.” “Moderate” MAGAts are merely demanding a complete ban on pregnant woman tourists trying to visit America. Those same “Moderates” are also demanding states just ignore (“nullify”) federal law and refuse to issue birth certificates for babies born to “undesirable” women. The MAGA “extremists” are demanding all foreign women be forcibly sterilized before being allowed to enter the U.S.
Of course, the excretable White Supremacist Stephen Miller, top aid to trump, has even said “Birthright citizenship means the children of illegal aliens can vote to tax your children and seize their inheritance.” I will not link to his post on the site formerly known as Twitter. But here is a screenshot:
No word if stealing our children’s inheritance happens before or after they eat our dogs and cats.
Cry Me A River
I’m way past giving two shits about what MAGAt-Americans think about…anything. In this particular case, I do have a personal investment. As I’ve previously written, my maternal grandfather Eric Wilkens was an illegal immigrant to America. As a Dutch Merchant marine sailor, he jumped ship in New York City sometime around 1920. He subsequently married my grandmother, and later delivered my mom. It was about 20 years later, during WWII, that he became a legal immigrant (going up to Canada for two years, then re-entering the U.S. legally). So, I can honestly state that I am a the descendent of at least one illegal immigrant.
And I’m God-Damned proud of that. As I’m God-Damned proud of all four of my immigrant grandparents for the lives they built, and the families they raised in America. I directly helped two women, my first (ex-) wife, and present wife Winnie, become American citizens. I deeply admire every person who has the courage to pack whatever they can carry with them, travel to a strange new land, and build a second-chance life for them and their families.
Every immigrant to America has more individual courage than all the trump-aligned MAGAts combined.
Musical Coda
I leave this totally political rant with a bit of entirely appropriate “In-Your-Face” music to honor our American immigrant history. And may we continue to see more MAGAt heads meltdown, as the ugliest Americans among us continue to show just how twisted, ignorant, and small, they are.
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