Understanding Birthright Citizenship and Its Misconceptions

In the paragraph from the article above the author makes the claim that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment could not have foreseen how it would be applied today. I would encourage anyone who believes this to go back to the record of the congressional debate of the Amendment. In that record you will find the authors of the Amendment clearly did foresee the kinds of issues that the author of the “First Things” article brings up. They explicitly mention all of the potential issues and still say that the Amercement was necessary and good. So historical the author of the “First Things” article is simply wrong.

Second, and even more upsetting to me is that the author refers to the problems of “the postwar consensus”. For those who might not be familiar with this language, the postwar consensus is used to refer to the idea that ethnic nationalism (like that practiced in wartime Germany) is bad. The author of the article is saying that multiethnic countries are a bad thing and will ultimate fail. This is the same language used by Christian Nationalists, who whether they admit it or not see ethnicity as a superior bond than Christianity. In fact, some go so far as saying that having multiethnic societies on earth will spoil heaven. Honestly, consider that for a moment, Jesus wants us to have all the blessings of life with him here and now and yet somehow we are supposed to believe that if we peruse one of those blessings now it will spoil God’s future plan for that blessing. But this is how Christian Nationalists think that twist the evil until it sounds like a good. They call interracial marriage sinful and say God does not want us to spoil heaven with multicultural living today.

The truth is that their idea of a “postwar consensus” is a lie. Their desire to have an ethnically homogeneous nation is a lie. This is the language of white supremacy and should be called out as such.