The Constitution not only lays out a framework for government, but passage and ratification of the Constitution by the States actually constituted a new government. The federal government is literally the creature of the states, a thing created by them.
A government exercises sovereignty over its territory and its citizens, and our Constitution specifies that government sovereignty is at the sufferage of the citizens themselves. This point is repeatedly made in writings on how the Constitution came to be, in procedures spelled out in the Constitution itself, and explored thoroughly in associated writings by those who brought forth the Constitution itself.
Citizenship is as tightly defined by custom and usage as any other term. We all know what it means for most purposes. Borders are also not much in dispute. Borders and sovereignty go hand-in-hand, just as citizenship and the Constitution do. These four things taken together are the boundaries of a legal, mental, moral, theoretical concept. And we live in it. We the People have breathed life into this idea — centered upon Liberty, bounded by limits, defended with our lives, inherited and passed on as best we are able.
Threats to this construct of Liberty are multiplying, gaining ground. Among them is the idea that our Constitutional rights apply to non-citizens, foreigners, all humanity, and so forth. This is plainly nonsense. In the most recent version of the same old threat, the argument is made that applying a “religious test” as an immigration control is unconstitutional because of the “no religious test clause” of the Constitution.
But first off, that’s not what the clause says, and second, it doesn’t apply to non-citizens. In the first case, it prohibits the Federal and State governments from requiring a religious test in order to hold office. It is silent on the issue of who may be a citizen. In the second case, it limits the action of only the governments. It does not limit the mental or physical activity of any person exclusive of the performance of government duties.
Finally, the Constitution itself can clearly not be seen to protect non-citizens, and especially extra-territorial non-citizens, as there is no mechanism present or even possible to make such an arrangement reality. If the rights enshrined in the Constitution as the property of all Mankind are to be protected by the Federal government against encroachment for the benefit of all Mankind, that the US government is a world government, bound to respect no sovereignty except its own. And since the supremacy of the citizen over the government is explicit and unavoidable, then the United States would have to be open to elections with votes from all seven billion humans (limited as the law specifies for nothing but age). If country of citizenship is not a basis for discrimination in a legal sense, then of course nothing is. Why should a twenty-year old Saudi-Afghan Taliban get to vote while a seventeen year old American Soldier does not? Why does a potential immigrant overseas get to claim protection under the US Constitution?
The clear cut answer is that they do not.
Nations exist all over the globe. They have frequently chosen their respective forms of government. NONE of them are like America. NONE of them hold a democratic republic to be the obvious proper balance of interests between the states and the people. NONE of them view states as sovereign of anything. Indeed, all of them view government as being privileged to “govern” – to the extent and degree the people allow and to be retracted – and modified – at the will of the people. All, instead, claim authority to do as they please, within the bounds on internal controls some of which reflect the people’s wishes.
And, indeed, the corollary to this is that most of the people of the world wish to be ruled. We wish to be left alone. Or at least many of us do.
Oops. Lost my train of thought. The sentence in the middle should read “Indeed, none of them view government as being privileged to “govern”…”
To the question of blocking all muslim immigration, one needs to read 8 USC 1182. It clearly gives the president power to block, deport, or otherwise limit any group, segment, etc that he deems poses a national threat. CARTER used it to block Iranians from entering the nation AND deported those here – during the Iranian Crisis.
WooHoo! [piping you aboard] beloved Admin: Howdy!…Am poking my nose into Charles Murray’s latest…Where are we gonna locate Galt’s Gulch? I’m in…What about our relationship with Saudi Arabia itself?…Aren’t they the chief exporter of ‘Islamist supremacy’? Now that ISIS controls territory, can’t we declare war, and impose limits on that basis? Truly curious…Howdy, too, Dev!
Excellent essay, and sent it off to all my lefty and righty family and friends, being as there is no longer any difference in them.
Saudi Arabia needs to be cast adrift. Indeed, we need to cast the whole Mideast adrift. They have nothing we need or want, and we can buy whatever it is we might want. Israel is the only nation there we should care about, and mostly they can take care of themselves. We only need to be supportive, which we have not been much of lately.
And we need to cast the whole “two nation state” and the alleged “Palestinians” adrift too. They, too, are a made-up category, rather like “Hispanics” who are actually Central and South Americans.
Not quite yet, I don’t think. Part of our policy in the Middle East has been to get the countries over to our side, and for some of them, we had been making strides before President Bumpkin started screwing it all up.
Dev, thanks for a bit of sanity; can we get the Christians out first? Talked to a longtime friend, who’s a Melkite Catholic priest who has a Syrian Christian family in his congregation. He says they are “Beyond grateful to get out.” Where are our priorities?! Grrrr!
SP – you refer to our “strategy” in the Mideast, as if there was one. No one seems to have one. Further, there are no apparent national interests of ours there, so our continued involvement is tenuous, at best.
The fact that islam has declared war on Western European culture is mostly bad for the Europeans. Too bad for them, I feel sorry for them, but they have long been willing to fight to the last American drop of blood. Time for them to spend some of their own gold in their defense. If they want to continue to muck about in the Mideast, more power to them. Just not with our soldiers.
ISIS has made a lot of noise. So far, it has only been that for us. I believe they require a careful eye kept on them. Perhaps a BLT or MEF dropped judiciously with a solid target/goal and pull back afterwards could be useful. But regular commitment of troops is simply silly. We have no national interest there.
Oh, man. I managed to trash part of the HTML tag, and now I can’t edit the comment.
Grrr.
Fixed it for you with my super powers! You’re welcome.
This caught my eye on FB – a “contemporaneous” take on Islam:
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/27/thomas-aquinas-distrusted-islam/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social