@SecondJon According to wikipedia, that is accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

Trump's statement that we are the only country in the world with birthright citizenship is blatantly false, as is typical of him.

@peterdrake
Right, over exaggerating Trump over exaggerates. Would you say that your claim that this may be the death blow to democracy is also over exaggerated and also typical of your toots?

I would prefer that we all tone down the hysteria.

@SecondJon If they actually did it, I don't know that it is an exaggeration. I may be hyperbolic in that the GOP won't hold Congress long enough to pass the law.

The Republicans have been doing a lot of voter suppression lately. (The Democrats have not.) This birthright citizenship move is clearly a ploy to redefine the electorate in a way that benefits Republicans. I wouldn't be shocked to see them next go after Puerto Ricans moving to Florida.

I admit to being very alarmed and frightened, but I think it's justified.

@SecondJon Also, I don't think it's fair to say that my toots are generally exaggerated or hysterical. I tweet on a wide variety of topics (comedy, computer science, fire dancing, teaching) other than politics. When I do get political, I try to back up any factual claims with reliable sources.

Of course, if I do make (or boost) a claim that's directly, factually incorrect, by all means call me out.

@peterdrake
Maybe I'm not reading correctly. If European countries have democracy yet no birthright citizenship, how would the US having the same policy be the end of democracy.

@SecondJon It would depend on exactly how the new criteria were worded. If it were made retroactive, it would disenfranchise a huge number of people who have lived here their whole lives, working, paying taxes, etc., knowing no other country. I would wager that very few of those people are Republican voters. The primary motive for such a change is clearly stacking the deck in favor of Republicans. The secondary motive is racism.

It's a death of a thousand cuts, but this move (along with lots of other GOP voter suppression and gerrymandering moves) is increasingly putting us in a situation where, even though a majority of people oppose the minority that rules them, they have no electoral route to change. That's not democracy.

@peterdrake
I think a lot of that is fair. I don't like to try to read motivations onto people, but I suspect you're right that Republican politicians would tend away from birthright citizenship and be in favor of stronger border policies if they believe the result will be more votes for their party, and that democrats would be of the opposite opinions because they'd see it as a boon for their political power.

I'm not owned by (or even anymore affiliated with) one party or the other, I think this one is a fair critique of both.

For example, would democrats be pushing for voting rights for felons of they believed the result would prevent them from being in power? I think they'd have to argue that for the greater good they'd have to retain power and abandon the ideas.

We see a lot of shifts in principle that shouldn't happen,and the opposite party points it out when it happens on both sides. An example chosen just due to availability heuristic : Obama agreed with Trump on illegal immigration when it was politically expedient to get elected, then reversed principles when it was expedient for political purposes later. Most of them do this.

We aren't dealing with the side of the angels VS the side of hate. Perhaps we're mostly dealing with power hungry politicians from two major parties whose core principle seems to be their own power and prestige, and other principles fail in line to support those.

@SecondJon I agree that both major parties support parties that help their demographic. I prefer the Democrats because their demographic is inclusive rather than exclusive.

I like some third parties even better; I was once co-chair of the Indiana Green Party. Alas, third parties have no power at the national level. I'd like to see instant runoff or approval voting, which might improve this, but getting rid of the Electoral College is a higher priority. Among other consequences, it erases third parties: Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992 and zero electoral votes.

@SecondJon Typo correction: support POLICIES that help their demographic.

@peterdrake
I think diversity language is definitely at home on the left.

It was also the Democrat governor who declared conservatives aren't welcome in New York, Democrat candidate Clinton who labeled disagreers as deplorables, leftist businesses that fired the creator of Javascript (his name escapes me) and James Demore for holding a diverse opinion. The left condemn anyone who shares views with first term Obama on things like marriage and immigration.

Because of these and other examples of exclusivity, not inclusivity from the democrats, I don't see the democrats as the party of inclusion.

I think members of both parties believe they're the bastion of diversity (for a right example, look at the diverse republican primary candidates including multiple minorities with different policy ideas in the last presidential election VS the old white candidates of the democrats), they simply define diversity differently.

BTW, Thanks for the courteous exchange.

@SecondJon I also thank you for your courtesy. It's also nice that, although we're each seeing or emphasizing different subsets of the facts, those facts are at least drawn from the same universe.

There is certainly something to the notion that the left (especially the far left) can go too far with its "zero tolerance for intolerance". ("Vegetarian but not vegan? You animal-abusing $%^#!") It's been said that the left's version of a firing squad is a circle.

There is also the difficulty of balancing the need for free speech against the need to protect people from actual harm. I believe direct death threats are generally illegal (which didn't stop the alt right from using them to drive the Sandy Hook families from heir homes). Inciting violence can also be a crime. Creating a hostile work environment (as Demore did) can, I think, be at least grounds for firing or a civil lawsuit.

Back to the parties, I think comparing the 2016 presidential hopefuls is ... a misrepresentative sample. Looking at voter demographics, Republicans are vastly whiter (Pew says 83% vs 59%). In Congress, the Democrats have three times as many women and nearly six times as many nonwhites. The left finds it particularly galling when a committee deciding on women's health issues consists entirely of old, white men.

@peterdrake

I hear you on those not subject to a policy or ruling shouldn't be the ones to vote on it, like only men voting on women's health issues. But is the problem that it's all men voting, or that you don't like what THOSE men decided?

Roe vs. Wade was decided by all white men. Using the metric that issues that affect women should not be decided by men, we should throw that out.

I hope my opinion of the ruling (and other issues) is not based on the race or gender of those who made the ruling, but on principles.

@SecondJon If we threw out everything that was decided by only men, we'd have to start from scratch. At the very least we should stop doing it.

I would not want such decisions to be made by a group composed entirely of progressive men either.

@peterdrake I think this is related and potentially significant to the discussion - can I get your opinion about something I'm genuinely not sure on the left view on:

How do these 2 ideas reconcile (or am I getting one or both wrong)?

1. Gender is so solid, so significant, so immovable, that we shouldn't allow decisions that are only made by men, women must be involved in every decision, because the differences between men and women are objective, undeniable and important.

2. Gender is purely subjective, there's no objective male or female, gender is nothing more than a social construct - the only difference between a man and a woman is a person's ideas about themselves.

I'm not being sarcastic or trying to straw man, hope this doesn't come across poorly.

@SecondJon Let's look at the second idea first. I'm not an expert on gender theory, but I'm familiar with the line, "sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears". The vast majority of people (but not everyone, even at birth) fit into one of two sex categories. There's a lot more going on with gender, including homosexuality, transgendered people, those who identify as nonbinary, and those who simply don't conform to norms about how people of their sex should dress, behave, etc.

If someone who was born with a vagina identifies as male, I've found that it's VERY important to them and costs me nothing to, e.g., use their preferred pronouns. I also know that there is an enormous amount of hatred, legislation, and murderous physical violence directed against the LGBT community.

The right seems to have the idea that people change their gender identity on a whim. My sense is that people do this only after a very long and agonizing decision process, weighing their need to be honest about who they are with the very real possibility that they may lose their careers or be cast out or even killed by their own families.

(Perhaps a #gender theorist or #LGBT person on here can weigh in.)

Looking at the first idea, there are two reasons to object to decisions (especially decisions about other groups) being made entirely by straight, cisgendered men. The first is that diversity is good -- having people with different backgrounds, life histories, and areas of expertise makes for better decisions. (I think it is very likely that men and women tend to think differently for cultural reasons, not immutable biological ones.) The second is that the nondiverse committee tends to consist of members of the group that has traditionally held power and oppressed others.

@peterdrake
Thanks for the time you put into that... Is it fair to summarize the male-only voting issue as a value on diversity of outlook among those voting on the issue?

I think I agree with that - but disagree that gender and race are the most direct paths to diversity of outlook. For example, two politicians in the same party who were elected in the same year in the same election after attending the same schools and having the same voting history, but one of them is male and one is female, I don't think that's a lot of differences in background, life histories, and areas of expertise.

To aim for those things, I think we may need to look deeper - to different cultural backgrounds, ages, and differences more than skin deep, which is more difficult than getting an electorate that looks like Captain Planet kids.

I think looking for race and gender differences, among others, can result in the virtuous feeling of diversity but still allow excluding all those with different ideas and opinions.

This makes me think the electoral college is a wise idea - a straight popular vote could result in limiting elected officials to those whose backgrounds are appealing only to those with the shared background and experience in the most densely populated areas, and we'd get less and less of the differences of perspective that could provide the value we're discussing.

@SecondJon Diversity is something to strive for, but on these specific cases (all-male committees legislating on women's issues) the complaint is that the people making the decision don't have to bear the consequences, or, in some cases, know what they're talking about:

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2015/02/24/idaho-lawmaker-asks-about-swallowing-cameras-to-get-pregnancy-pictures

Yes, race and gender are not the only factors in diversity. Others include geography, socioeconomic class, and (as you note) age and ideology. That said, if there's a group that is consistently underrepresented, that's a problem.

As for the Electoral College, the President can't be diverse because there's only one (at a time); diversity has to come from Congress and the Supreme Court. (Man, a lot of capitalized terms in that sentence!)

Are you arguing that the EC is valid because it provides extra votes for rural people? I don't buy it. If we're all going to choose one person, every vote should count equally. That's the core of democracy.

Drawing districts to ensure fair representation in a multi-representative body is a more complicated question.

@peterdrake I was trying to apply the principle:

IF for decisions that affect many people, we should focus on diverse inputs to that decision.

and IF the decision of who is president is one that really affects many people.

THEN we should strive to emphasize perspectives that are underrepresented by a popular vote alone.

Without that, 1) the vote will be increasingly made only by the perspective of city dwellers and 2) candidates will have zero reason to put themselves under the influence of diverse opinions and ideas from a diverse though minority population.

Pragmatically, the left gets support from metropolis areas, so I understand it's desirable to draw the line of valued diversity at the city limits. Then majority not diversity is key.

Perhaps the desire for emphasizing diverse viewpoints was the reason why the US was founded as a republic, not a democracy, seeing the straight majority vote as dangerous in it's silencing of the minority backgrounds and points of view. I'm not a historian, just speculating.

@SecondJon What's more diverse than literally including the entire population?

Curiously, suburbanites outnumber urban and rural populations combined. Catering to only urban voters is not a winning strategy.

I've never understood the "republic not a democracy" thing. I'm also not a historian, but aren't we a democratic republic? Yes, we're a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. I'm fine with that -- I don't have the time or expertise to deal with every legislative, executive, or judicial question, but I want my fair say in choosing the people who do make those decisions.

What protects us from a tyranny of the majority is not the existence of representatives but the Bill of Rights and the judicial system.