There is power in being a citizen. The power to vote. The power to speak up. The power - in theory, sadly not so much in practice - to walk down streets and go to work, and go to eateries and clubs and temples and events without harassment. The power to stand against tyrants and say "No."
This is why tyrants twist the laws of citizenship, why dictators demonize those they would deem an underclass without rights or power, why corrupt forces do everything they can to demean and harm those they view as inferior or "sub-human".
This is why trump and the Republican Party are threatening to subvert the entire concept of "birthright citizenship" and violate the 14th Amendment to pursue their godless war against legal immigration.
This isn't about illegals crossing the border: what trump and his ilk are looking to do is deny rights and protections to anyone they would NOT deem American.
The 14th Amendment exists precisely because conservative extremists we know as the southern slaveowners pushed for the Dred Scott legal decision, where Chief Justice Taney committed serious overreach in declaring ALL Black Americans - even the Freed Blacks who lived in Free states - had no rights under the law. Horrified by the implications, the Abolitionist Republicans - no relation to the Far Right GOP we have today - made sure after the Civil War that:
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.
That's it. If the First Amendment and Second Amendment and all the other Amendments are set in stone, then the 14th Amendment should be as well. If you're here, born here or worked to become here, you are a citizen and you have rights.
To a group like the Far Right, desperate to fearmonger and demonize the Other, they despise the 14th Amendment more than any other (even the First).
I wrote about this before. The haters now in charge of the Republican Party would like nothing more than to white-out (literally) this amendment that prevents them from abusing their political power to persecute anyone. Just think of all the groups that Republicans led by the demagogue trump repeatedly insult on Fox Not-News or the other outlets: Gays, Blacks, Latinos, Jews, Feminists (really just Women in general)...
The Conservative rank-and-file from the McCarthyism Era just loved pointing their fingers at people and accusing them of Un-American behaviors. They ruined a lot of lives over rumor and lies, and that was even with a 14th Amendment assuring Due Process and legal protections. Those McCarthyites never went away: Just look at media screechers like Coulter, and Limbaugh, and Hannity, and O'Reilly; Just look at politicos like Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham so eager to violate every other person's rights with glee. And now they want to go further and bloodier than their 1950s progenitors ever went.
Do you HONESTLY THINK the Far Right will respect any Gay or Trans or Black or Latino or Muslim or Jew or Hindu or Female if every member of those classes no longer had citizenship, no longer had the power to defend themselves and speak up for their rights?
And do you HONESTLY THINK those haters on the Far Right will STOP the persecutions of others as they succeed in hounding each victim into flight, cages, or the grave?
If we as Americans ever lose the 14th Amendment protections of citizenship, the Far Right will immediately go on the warpath against ANYONE they deem Un-American. And that's a list of people that can grow faster than a lot of you realize (just ask Paul Newman).
Just remember the poem from Martin Niemoller, a German pastor who was a supporter of Hitler's Third Reich up until 1934 (when he found out his own phones were tapped by the Gestapo), and who became enough of a critic to end up in a concentration camp in 1938 (He later regretted his support of the Nazis and had to answer for some of his own Antisemitic statements from that era).
He wrote later (there are variations of this, but they all follow the same pattern):
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Where do YOU think you're gonna be on that list? Sitting comfortably on the sidelines while trump's MAGA Hat Brigades coming knock down everyone's doors once our citizenship rights are gone? You think you can last past the union people, or the religious groups?
These haters are not going to stop until they purge everyone on their personal Shit List. Your skin color, your gender, your religious belief, your political belief... ALL of that will be under scrutiny and you WILL be found wanting unless you sell yourself completely out.
You willing to do that?
What IS the cost to you if the Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment goes away?
I will tell you now: the cost will be your soul AND your life.
Stand up. Get off your GODDAMN KNEES and STAND UP AS A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES.
1 comment:
McCarthy? Roy Cohn was Fergus' political mentor, so this is to be expected with him.
He's just throwing out anything outrageous he can think of right now (and none of it is real: you can't change the constitution by executive order, you can't pass a middle class tax cut before the election when congress isn't in session, etc.) because he's terrified of losing the majorities in congress that have shielded him from accountability thus far, and thinks that his only hope is turning up the fire under his voters to eleven.
That does not discount what you have written one iota. This is the fascist vision of America these nincompoops are tirelessly working to bring about. Fergus has elevated himself to his current position by amplifying all of it for them to gain their loyalty, and that has worked well for him.
I believe his mistake is in failing to understand why GOPers before him have shied away from the full embrace of such an ugly, illegal, un-American vision, and instead tried to just "dog-whistle" such support to them: it is deeply unpopular, and they are outnumbered.
They are trying to get past that with vote suppression tactics and just making the whole process so ugly that few want to participate, but he is obviously not confident they will succeed going by the frantic disregard for electoral norms he is displaying, and his packed schedule of campaign events.
Then there is the question of whether or not he would be a US citizen under his proposed change: would his mother still have been naturalized four years before his birth, or would he be the thing he made his political bones accusing Obama of being, ineligible for the presidency?
-Doug in Oakland
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