ONCE UPON A TIME…

ONCE UPON A TIME…

          This is how most fairy tales and bedtime stories for little children begin.  Let’s see how we may apply that phrase now.

          Once upon a time the United States was the shining city on the hill…a place that many legally emigrated to because of the opportunities.   It was THE power among powers and yet it was the most devoted to peace.   It was, and still is, where the governmental power is peacefully transferred every four years, or at least has an opportunity to do so.   We should keep in mind, however, that the United States, once a colony of Great Britain fought a war to rid themselves of a government just like the one we have in the Obama administration.   Will the American people become so fed up with the type of government that is now running the country, and rise up in some sort of revolution?   We’ll sit back and wait and see on that one.

          Once upon a time men went into a restroom that said “Gents”, “Men” or by some graphic, indicated that it was for men.  Women went into a restroom that said “Women” or “Ladies” or by some graphic that indicated it was for women.  Now here comes the crowd that THINKS they are something other than what they gender were born and nut-jobs in private business and government say they can use whatever restroom they want, because now they think or feel they’re a different gender.  Once upon a time women used to take their small children into the bathroom with them…even boys.  So it wasn’t uncommon to see a small child waiting patiently for his or her mother to finish what she had to do.  Nowadays with grown men going into women’s restrooms, would you take a small child in there, and leave him or her alone…for even a minute?   Back in August, in Jacksonville, Florida, two small boys went into the restroom at a McDonalds…their mother used the “buddy system” but it didn’t work.  One of the boys was assaulted…this particular story has a relatively good ending because they caught the rapist.   Not all stories like this end this well.

          Once upon a time, around 1939 or 1940 the United States Army trained with broomsticks for rifles, automobiles for tanks, used what equipment they had from The Great War, and had a complement of about 450 thousand troops.   Under the current administration, which is drawing down all of the services because of budget constraints, the Army is expected to bottom-out at 420 thousand troops, just slightly below the pre-war level.   Considering that these draw-downs place the United States in a position of jeopardy, how can it be justified that we are still giving money in foreign aid to countries that, at best, just tolerate us?   What does it mean to the average citizen that our military may be under-manned to the point where it couldn’t defend the homeland, much less wage a successful war on foreign soil?

          Once upon a time it seemed that the entire “free” world wanted to emigrate to the United States and, to a large degree that’s still the same.  The only difference is that now we have a problem of illegal aliens walking across a seemingly non-existent border.  Along with the illegal aliens who may be coming here for employment are probably people that have the destruction of the United States as their goal.   From video clips shown on television it would seem that even high metal fences are not the whole answer to keep unwanted people from entering.   There are other, workable, solutions to the border problem but few in the Washington hierarchy are inclined to listen to them because they WANT those illegal aliens here.  Those illegal aliens will, if Democrats have their way, eventually gain or be granted citizenship and they will most likely vote for the party that brought them in and gave them the power to bite the hand that fed them.   You only need to look to California to see the handwriting on the wall.  In that state illegal aliens can have a driver’s license which, in most instances, is the key document to getting the rest of whatever is available, including voting.

          Once upon a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, Americans spoke up when they decided that something was wrong…and the dissentions were peaceful, but meaningful.  Nowadays the protests are loud, violent and meaningless because many of the young people involved have no idea what they are protesting about, or for.  They don’t know what Socialism is, they have no clue as to how the government works, only that they want to change it, and if you ask them about something of a historical nature you probably will get a blank stare or a giggle.  Yeah…once upon a time, but that’s just a bedtime story’s beginning and I certainly hope the United States is not being tucked into bed for a long sleep.  Wake up America, your country needs you…desperately.

TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING…

TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING…

            In the first stanza of our national anthem, there is the phrase, “twilight’s last gleaming”.   Francis Scott Key was a prisoner on a British ship when he wrote the song.  When the sun set in the evening- "in the twilight's last gleaming"- the last thing he saw was the flag waving overhead at Fort McHenry. In the morning, the first thing he saw- "by the dawns early light"- was the flag still waving, indicating we had not been defeated overnight.   Now, the United States is under attack by foreign forces again, but this time they are not en masse, but singly, or in very small groups.  Are we to be witnesses of our own version of the twilight’s last gleaming?   Are we to be the last, truly free Americans…or has the surrender already begun?

            For over fifteen years our country has been under attack from without and within.  Evidence comes along, sometimes good and sometimes bad, and from that my opinions have been formed.   Mostly, because of that evidence, it seems that the United States is in a downward spiral…economically, scholastically, militarily and morally.  Our economy is barely bumping along when it should have continued to be robust and provide jobs and security for the working people.   The armed forces have been systematically shredded to the point where we have a politically-compliant military which, some experts say, cannot properly defend the homeland.   Morally we have entered into a quagmire of questions about sexuality.   Our schools, from kindergarten to college are turning out people that have no clue as to what’s what in our government, much less the world.  It does not bode well for us.

            When, “in the dawn’s early light”, shall we see a nation rising up like the phoenix, out of the ashes…or will those ashes cover “the land of the free and the home of the brave”?   We have been extremely fortunate that, when needed, we had men and women rise up and step into the fray and save the day for us.  We call these people heroes, but if you speak to them, most of them would probably say that they were just doing their job…either the job we elected them to do, or the job we asked them to put their lives in jeopardy to do.   Do we have those heroes today?   Of course we do, but in the anti-hero atmosphere that surrounds the present administration, they are virtually ignored except when it’s impossible to do so.

            If the last century, the twentieth, was the American Century, is there any reason to believe that we could not continue with our exceptionalism?   This is an exceptional nation, “conceived in liberty”, and  we are being tested “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”   We are a republic…not a democracy, although we are a democratic nation.   We are a republic…not a monarchy, although some might believe that we’ve crossed into that territory.  We are a nation of independent people, although some seem to be more independent than others, while others seem to be more dependent than some.   Once we shook off the chains that tied us to a tyrannical government and, if necessary, we could do it again.   That is the premise under which we govern ourselves, and the Constitution clearly states what is, and what is not, permissible for the government to do…to us, and for us.

            Recently, retired Marine General Mattis said, “Since coming back from overseas, this is more of a foreign country than the places overseas. I don’t understand it. It’s like America has lost faith in rational thought.”  So, as we approach another peaceful change of government, let us know and understand the great burden that has been placed on our shoulders…we the people, have the ability to turn the United States back onto a course of prosperity, power and prestige.   We must not shirk what I believe to be our responsibility, which is to truly represent what the statue in New York harbor means…Liberty enlightening the world.  Finally, this…”Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls…it tolls for thee.”  from Meditation 17 by John Donne.   Wake up America.  Your country needs you…desperately.

VIGNETTES

VIGNETTES

It was April 18^th, 1942 and the USS Hornet was turning into the wind, to give the aircraft on the deck the most lift that they could get.  The men in the B-25 Mitchell bombers had trained for this day…a day that would prove to be more symbolic than destructive.  Sixteen aircraft took off, bound for the Japanese homeland, in a surprise attack to show the Empire of The Rising Sun that America was not defeated…not by a long shot.  The raid was successful, but the aftermath was not.  Our ally, Russia, interned one of the crews for a year.  The Japanese captured eight of the fliers and executed three of them.  It was a bold move by brave men who, if they thought about it at all, probably knew that it might very well be a suicide mission.

            In The War Between The States, on December 5^th, 1861 a Confederate soldier observed a Union soldier moving, and the distance between them was calculated to be around 1400 yards.  The sniper fired, and a moment or two later the Union soldier lay dead, and the troops around him were completely baffled as to where the shot had come.  Patrols were sent out but because of the distance involved, it was never considered that a sniper could make a shot like that.  Even today, it’s ranked as the 14^th longest shot in history.   Considering the technology that was around in the 1860’s, it probably was something of a miracle that the shot could be made, but the Whitworth rifle was the best of what was available.

            Our twenty-sixth President, Theodore Roosevelt, was a man among men.  Once, while giving a speech an assassin shot him in the chest…Teddy continued on with the speech.  He single-handedly changed himself from a sickly boy to a robust man, becoming an expert marksman, running his own cattle ranch and being the leader of  the “Rough Riders” in the Spanish American war.  When his own political party rejected him, he formed the Bull Moose party.  As President he showed the flag by sending the US Navy around the world, and all the ships were painted white, thus earning the name The Great White Fleet, and presenting the United States as a world power.  In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, for actually doing something to bring peace to the world.  He is carved into the Mount Rushmore façade along with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.   Good company, I’d say.

            More people have probably heard of Edison than Tesla…unless they associate the name Tesla with an electric car.  Nicola Tesla was an American of Serbian birth and one of the great geniuses of his, or any other time.   When Edison was bring light to the world, via direct current, Tesla was working on alternating current…which is the system that the world uses today.  He died in 1943, and a unit of magnetic flux density is called a tesla.   He put on demonstrations of high-voltage by sitting in a chair and having spark-like bolts of thousands of volts crashing around him, with no harm to him.   In the 1893 World’s Fair, Tesla put on an exhibition and an observer noted:  Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the current was turned on, the lamps or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by Tesla in London about two years previous, "where they produced so much wonder and astonishment"

            We have people like this in the United States today, believe it or not…but between political correctness, silly regulations and downright stupidity on the part of the Federal government many of these people are ignored and their creations never see the light of day.  I remember, way back in the late 1940’s there was a story about something called the Pogue carburetor.  It was a device that would greatly increase the miles-per-gallon of the automobiles on the road.  The story goes that the-then Big Three, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, along with Big Oil bought the patent and buried the idea. 

            Then there was the Winchester, the Sharps, and the Henry rifles which, along with the Colt six-shooter, tamed the wild, wild west.   Firearm technology has always been a painful process primarily due to the failures sometimes being fatal for the shooter.  Samuel Colt, the maker of the six-shooter, had a line attributed to him, that pretty much summed it all up.  It was said that God created Man, but it was Colt that made them all equal.   At a time when single-shot rifles and revolvers were still high on the list of technological wonders, a lever-action repeating rifle and a six-shot repeating revolver were eagerly sought, and gun salesman traversed the west selling everything they could get from the factories.

            We were a nation of doers, makers of wonders and our kids were in what I believe was the finest education system in the world.  Now, most of that is gone and I cry for my beloved country.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, WHITE PRIVILEGE, AND BORDERS…

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, WHITE PRIVILEGE, AND BORDERS…

Phillip Hodges reports on April 15, 2016, in Constitution.com.  

In an effort to raise awareness of the university’s anti-gun policies, a student participated in a protest in which he wore an empty holster, emphasizing the fact that he and his fellow students are defenseless. Two campus police officers confronted him and another participating student, and their encounter was caught on video.   D. J. Parten is president of Students for Concealed Carry in Alabama. He told Campus Reform, “This week is the empty holster protest for Students for Concealed Carry in Alabama to demonstrate that students are defenseless on campus.”   Following Parten’s encounter with campus police, the officers cited the University of South Alabama student for wearing an empty holster, as it was “causing alarm.” While the university prohibits weapons of all sorts, its rules say nothing about empty holsters.   The university’s policy lists the prohibited items, which “includes, but is not limited to, bullets, ball bearing bullets, bullet balls, pellets, firearms, guns, knives, paintball guns, air guns, hunting bows, archery bows, swords, martial arts weapons, and replicas of such weapons. Toy and water guns are prohibited.”   In spite of the policy’s silence on empty holsters, the two campus police officers insisted that students must obtain permission from the university to wear them.   The officers repeatedly asked where Parten’s weapon was. From their perspective, since he was wearing an empty holster, he was obviously hiding a gun somewhere.   Parten tried explaining that it was a protest – an empty holster protest. But the officers said that it didn’t matter. Apparently, someone had called the police when the empty holster was spotted, and because someone was “alarmed” by it, the police had to respond.   At one point in the video, one of the officers even admitted to Parten that wearing an empty holster was not breaking campus rules, nor was it breaking any law. However, Parten was still cited for “causing alarm.”  Folks, where are we going with political correctness?

            Newt Gingrich said, during the Outnumbered program on April 15^th, that the “white privilege” was an industry of idiots, and he certainly hit the nail on the head.  It is not by design that a person is born black, white, brown, yellow or whatever other color there might be.  You are what you are and you make the best of it.   Personally, I don’t think there’s any so-called white privilege, but then, I’m white so maybe I haven’t noticed it.   In my lifetime there have been wars fought over very tiny things…the atom, a drop of pigment and eggs…and nobody mentions that these things have nothing to do with anybody’s privilege.   Maybe I live in the past, but it seems to me that America went through a decade of looking inward, to find out what we were doing wrong, and to fix it.   We were well on the road to human equality and then…what happened?   We lost a great leader in Dr. King, a president in JFK and his brother, RFK.   Top that with the more recent events, like Ferguson and Baltimore, and you have the makings of a great divide in the country.   Abraham Lincoln, who took a giant step to heal the country with the Emancipation Proclamation once said “A house divided against itself cannot stand."

We are a house divided.

            As regards a border, that is what designates a country, and without a border, there cannot be a country.  So, what’s to be done?   Walls, fences, natural borders such as rivers or mountain ranges sometimes serve to define where the sovereignty of a country is, or isn’t.   Recently, at John Carroll University in Ohio, a fence, of sorts, was erected.   The fence, which was actually just two sections of a chain-link fence, had been approved by the university but that didn’t stop the fracas that it brought on.   The fence was supposed to show the students that favored Trump that they were behind him, but it sort of backfired.   Similar and less threatening, at least in my estimation, were the chalk writings for Trump that caused students to seek counseling for trauma.  Getting back to the fence, and apparently the physical presence of a bob-tailed fence also caused great trauma among the students at the Ohio school.   This dovetails right in with what I’ve been saying for years…not only are the students being dumbed-down, they are being spoon-fed a one-sided view of the world, which makes them totally unprepared for the real world that’s waiting.

            A parting shot.  Events taking place in the world now and in the near future lead me, and have led me, to believe that another global conflict is on the way.  Contrary to popular opinion, and to my original thinking, it will not be a nuclear war.  No, that would destroy everything and everyone, which is not what the enemy will want.   Urban warfare is what this country is preparing to fight, and it may very well be our government against our citizens.   Wake up America, your country needs you…desperately.

Dear Member of Congress,

This came to me as an anonymous letter.  It’s good, and I added a few touches of my own.

Dear Member of Congress,

From the time I was able to vote I voted Democrat. About 8 years ago I changed my affiliation to RepubIican because the Democrat party had become something I didn’t want to be a part of, and they had put forth a mystery man to be president.  I am 82 years old, and have a great deal of respect and influence with hundreds of seniors, many of whom are veterans,  who also network with thousands of others around the country.

            I received your questionnaire and request for money and strongly agree with every question, as I have since Obama was elected. Unfortunately the one question that was missing is: “What have the Republicans done for the American people?” We gave you a majority in the House and Senate, yet you never listened to us. Now you want our money.   You should be more concerned about our votes, not our money. You are the establishment, which means all you want is to save your jobs and line your pockets… Well, guess what? It’s not going to happen. You shake in your boots when I tell you we’re giving our support to TRUMP and he hasn’t asked for a dime.

You might think we are fools because you feel Trump is on a self destruction course, but you need to look beyond Washington and listen to the masses. Nobody has achieved what he has, especially in the liberal state of New York.    You clearly don’t understand why the Trump movement is so strong, so I’d like to share with you an analogy to help explain the Trump phenomenon. By the way, it’s not just the Republicans who feel ignored and disrespected, there are plenty of Democrats and Independents who also feel let down by the Washington elite. You seem to have  forgotten about “We The People” and who hired you to represent us.

So here it is, the best analogy I could come up with. Here is the reason so many Americans have boarded the Trump Train, and why your pleas to come back to the party who deserted us, is falling on deaf ears:  Imagine you’ve been on vacation for two weeks, you come home, and your basement is infested with raccoons. Hundreds of rabid, messy, mean raccoons have overtaken your basement. You want them gone immediately…You call the city and four different exterminators, but nobody could handle the job. There is this one guy however, who guarantees you he will get rid of them, so you hire him. You don’t care if the guy smells, you don’t care if the guy swears, you don’t care how many times he’s been married, you don’t care if he was friends with liberals, you don’t care if he has plumber’s crack…you simply want those raccoons gone! You want your problem fixed! He’s the guy. He’s the best. Period.

Here’s why we want Trump: Yes he’s a bit of an ass, yes he’s an egomaniac, but we don’t care. The country is a mess because politicians have become too self-serving. The Republican Party is two-faced & gutless. Illegal aliens have been allowed to invade our nation. We want it all fixed! We don’t care that Trump is crude, we don’t care that he insults people, we don’t care that he had been friendly with Hillary, we don’t care that he has changed positions, we don’t care that he’s been married three times, we don’t care that he fights with Megan Kelly and Rosie O’Donnell, we don’t care that he doesn’t know the name of some Muslim terrorist.

This country is weak, bankrupt, our enemies are making fun of us, we are being invaded by illegal aliens and bringing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees to America, while leaving Christians behind to be persecuted. We are becoming a nation of victims where every Tom, Ricardo and Hasid is part of a special group with special rights, to the point where we don’t even recognize the country we were born and raised in; “AND WE JUST WANT IT FIXED” and Trump is the only guy who seems to understand what the people want.

We’re sick of politicians. We’re sick of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We just want this thing fixed. Trump may not be a saint, but he isn’t beholden to lobbyist money and he doesn’t have political correctness restraining him. All we know is that he has been very successful, he’s an excellent negotiator, he has built a lot of things, and he’s also not a politician. He’s definitely not a cowardly politician. When he says he’ll fix it, we believe him because he is too much of an egotist to be proven wrong or looked at and called a liar.

Oh yeah…I forgot…we don’t care if the guy has bad hair either.   We just want those raccoons gone. Out of our house, the People’s House. NOW!

IS EVIL REAL?

IS EVIL REAL?

            In the second Ghostbusters film there is a scene where it looks like all sorts of bad things are being drawn into a building.  One of the Ghostbusters says something to the effect that it looks like Evil Central.   That got me to thinking…is evil real?   What would qualify as evil?   In one of the Austin Powers movies there’s a Dr. Evil, and his sidekick, Mini-Me, but they’re more comical than evil.  So, what exactly is evil then?

            William Hirstein, Ph.D., is  a Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Elmhurst College, and has this to say about psychopaths, and it sounds to me like they are evil people…”First a bit of terminological history, to clear up any confusion about the meanings of “sociopath,” “psychopath,” and related terms. In the early 1800s, doctors who worked with mental patients began to notice that some of their patients who appeared outwardly normal had what they termed a “moral depravity” or “moral insanity,” in that they seemed to possess no sense of ethics or of the rights of other people. The term “psychopath” was first applied to these people around 1900. The term was changed to “sociopath” in the 1930s to emphasize the damage they do to society. Currently researchers have returned to using the term “psychopath.” Some of them use that term to refer to a more serious disorder, linked to genetic traits, producing more dangerous individuals, while continuing to use “sociopath” to refer to less dangerous people who are seen more as products of their environment, including their upbringing. Other researchers make a distinction between “primary psychopaths,” who are thought to be genetically caused, and “secondary psychopaths,” seen as more a product of their environments.   The Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL, describes psychopaths as being callous and showing a lack of empathy.”

            Richard Speck, in 1966 tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses, so he certainly fits into that category.   Ted Bundy assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier, and that qualifies him, I believe.

There are other people that would certainly be titled as mass murderers, and for that they can be called evil.  How many did Stalin order killed on his way to the top?   Although he didn’t execute them all personally, he was responsible for many thousands, and may have, in fact, killed some of them himself.   The Nazi soldiers who shot unarmed civilians, and tried to get out of it by claiming they were following orders, they could be called evil, and so could the ones that gave them the orders.   Pol Pot, was a Cambodian revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until 1997 and, under his “leadership” an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died.  

            Some may claim that any American President that orders men into battle could be called mass murderers, but I’d have to dispute that.   Every one of them, even the feckless one that’s in the White House now, had at least a moment’s pause to think of the consequences of his actions…and they knew that what they were doing was right.

American armed forces have never gone into battle to exterminate the people they were fighting…we defeated them, we worked with them and we helped them.   That is not the actions of a psychopathic government.   We think we know evil when we see it, and, of late, in our own country, it has become more and more visible.   Evil isn’t just in mass murderers.   Evil shows up in a person who, for whatever twisted reasoning they’re using, thinks they have to settle a grudge, or make a name for themselves, and they go out and do something evil.   Evil can start at any age.  Children that do bad things to dogs and cats will very likely grow up to do bad things to people.  I believe that’s evil.   People that live by a code of violence and revel in heinous crimes, I believe they are evil.

            To be sure, evil will always be with us…but we don’t have to allow it to metastasize beyond controllable limits.   We have to make sure that “good” will always triumph over evil and that isn’t to say that we all have to begin to be “bible-thumpers”.

Over in the muddled Middle East we have ISIS and they are pure evil in my book…a malignancy that has to be excised from the body of humanity.   You kill the cancer, the evil, before it kills you.  Sometimes, as the saying goes, you have to fight fire with fire, and if you’re a firefighter you will understand that right away.  When you’re fighting evil you do what must be done to eradicate and extinguish the fire.   Brutality on the part of ISIS cannot be met with brutality on our part…that would be just as evil, in my estimation.  However, beating the enemy definitively, to the point where he can never again pose a threat, that’s not just permissible, it’s the only way.

            This is from Haile Selassie, the great Ethiopian leader, “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” 

HEY, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

HEY, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

            Governor Brown of California has made it possible for illegal aliens to get driver’s licenses.  In many places a driver’s license is all that’s necessary to prove you are who you are…and that means you could probably vote.  Extrapolating that it means that thousands, maybe millions, of illegal aliens will be voting in the next election for President of the United States.   They will consider who made it possible and vote for that person’s party…in other words many, if not all, those illegal aliens will be voting Democrat.  That would automatically negate every single vote cast in the state of California, unless and until they come up with a foolproof method of discerning who is and who is not legal.

            As with any estimate of how many illegal aliens there are in this country now, the guess for California is about 3 million…which is a pretty good block of voters by itself, and then when you add in the Democrats already registered there, it presents a very sizable chunk of pre-determined votes.   It could be that these illegals are not permitted to vote in a national election, but I’m not sure that any serious effort would be made to eliminate them.   To the best of my knowledge, no other country allows non-citizens to vote in their elections…so why do we?  The answer is simple, it’s a strategy to build the Democrat base.  A simple-but-effective strategy.

            Immigration is always a hot-button political issue, and no more so than in the months leading up to a presidential election. From sanctuary cities to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to birthright citizenship, what can and should be done to fix our current system is on the forefront of the minds of many politicians and voters.   . It has long been accepted by many people that the Constitution automatically bestows citizenship on anyone born on United States territory, even if the parents of that child are illegal immigrants. Scholars, however, have questioned whether this is so, and critics of birthright citizenship believe that it encourages foreigners to come to America, legally or illegally, so that their future children can become U.S. citizens, along with all the benefits that citizenship confers, simply by being born here.

The dispute has consequences, because if those who believe that the Constitution provides for birthright citizenship are correct, it would require a constitutional amendment to change it.   If they are wrong, then Congress could simply pass a statute declaring that the children of illegal immigrants who are born in this country are not citizens.   Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which states: “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.” There is no question that this section was meant to overturn the Supreme Court’s opprobrious and infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which a majority of the Court held that slaves were property and that black people (even those who were not slaves) and their children could never be citizens even if they were born in this country. After ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, citizenship would no longer be denied to someone because of his or her race or ethnicity.

The section makes no reference to the alien status of the parents of the child, and many believe that the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines the rule of citizenship defined by birthplace, rather than the rule of citizenship defined by blood; in other words, citizenship defined by the parents’ citizenship, which is still the rule in many countries. There is also the curious phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Some scholars argue that this language excludes the children of aliens from citizenship because they owe allegiance to another nation and are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, at least as that phrase was understood in 1868, a time when, unlike today, there were no restrictions on immigration. Supporters of birthright citizenship contend, on the other hand, that this phrase means only that such aliens be governed by American law when they are in this country, excluding only a small number of discrete categories of people such as the children of foreign diplomats and invading enemy soldiers who are in, but at war with, the United States.

In 1868, this list also included the children of Native Americans living on tribal lands who were considered semi-sovereign people, but in 1924, Congress passed a law granting them citizenship.   In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court held that a child of Chinese parents born in San Francisco was a citizen who could not be barred from re-entry into the United States under the xenophobic Chinese Exclusion Act. In that case, however, it was clear that the Chinese parents were lawful, permanent residents of the United States at the time their child was born.   Opponents of birthright citizenship claim that the parents in that case owed their complete allegiance to the United States, not China, but that the same would not be true for the children of parents who are not lawfully present in this country or who are only temporary visitors at the time of the birth.   Which side is right?   My friends, it’s past the time that this business about “anchor babies” is looked at again.