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For example, the only concrete definition of assimilation I can identify in your argument is speaking English and following the law.
If you mean something more than that, I am simply asking you to define it.
As I eluded to earlier...by assimilation, I don't mean abandoning your heritage. I mean embracing a common civic identity, such as speaking a common language in public life, respecting the constitution and the rule of law, participating in civic institutions, and viewing yourself as american first while remaining free to preserve your cultural traditions. It doesn't have to be more than that.
My point, though, doesn't depend on everyone agreeing on a perfect definition. It depends on the fact that there are multiple plausible reasons someone could support a more restrictive immigration policy that don't require the motive you're attributing to them.
What evidence would convince you that the primary objective is border enforcement and a more selective legal immigration system rather than the motive you've attributed to the administration?
You lost me here:
“participating in civic institutions” and “viewing yourself as American first.”
Those aren’t measurable standards. How would you determine whether someone meets them? And how would a government enforce them without making subjective judgments?
“What evidence would convince you that the primary objective is border enforcement…”
The administration would need to stop repeatedly pairing immigration policy with rhetoric about demographic change, “remigration,” immigrants “poisoning the blood,” and selectively restricting or favoring groups in ways that go beyond ordinary border enforcement.
Taken together, its rhetoric, policies, and actions point to something broader than simply securing the border or creating a more selective legal immigration system.
You're confident that the administration's rhetoric and policies support one dominant inference about its motives. I'm saying they support multiple plausible inferences, and you've consistently treated yours as the only reasonable one.
So what objective principle are you using to conclude that your inference is stronger than competing explanations, rather than simply the one you find most persuasive?
I don't think we've disagreed much about the facts. We've disagreed about how much certainty those facts justify.
The objective principle is inference to the best explanation.
I do not ask, “Can I imagine another explanation?”
I ask, “Which explanation accounts for the greatest number of independent facts with the fewest assumptions?”
Your explanation requires treating each piece of evidence in isolation:
- Trump adopts the term remigration.
- Stephen Miller adopts it.
- The State Department adopts it.
- DHS adopts it.
- Trump says immigrants are “poisoning the blood.”
- The administration sharply reduces both legal and illegal immigration.
- Influential MAGA figures attack their own DHS secretary for merely acknowledging that legal immigration can benefit the economy and insist on “deportations first.”
The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court used the same kind of reasoning about the Roberts Court.
It did not rest on one case or one quote. It pointed to a pattern across voting rights, racial equality, campaign finance, presidential immunity, abortion, guns, and administrative law.
And on race, it was explicit:
“The Roberts Court sees only white.”
“The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.”
“That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design.”
Then it summed up the broader pattern:
“Rulings run in one direction, time after time. Weakening protections for those with less power. Fortifying those with more. The pattern speaks for itself.”
That is the point.
Any single fact may admit multiple explanations.
But when independent facts repeatedly align in the same direction, the burden shifts to the person insisting they are all unrelated.
At some point, the question stops being, “Could there be another explanation?”
It becomes, “How many exceptions do I have to invent before the obvious explanation is the better one?”
If your life depended on it, would you trust the explanation that requires the fewest exceptions, or the one that requires a new exception every time another fact appears?
Lol, I'm done with arguing against your AI. You keep posting multiple giant dialogs and paragraphs (bullets, bolding, etc) before I can even read your posts. AI...no one says Hawaii like "The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court"
Your use of AI is why this discussion has shifted so dramatically from immigration policy to "remigration" of anyone that isn't white.
Your AI failed you today...DONE.
Fair enough:
Here is what I took away from our discussion:
"civic ideal” - no idea what this means
assimilation - speaking English (although not constitutionally required, but wanted by the right), obeying the law, and civic engagement.
“American values,” "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
For example, the only concrete definition of assimilation I can identify in your argument is speaking English and following the law.
80% of the problem with mass immigration has been not speaking English and not following the law.
We’d need to parse that out.
A preference for a common language is one thing. Turning that preference into an immigration standard is another.
Neither the Constitution nor the founding documents define “assimilation” the way you’re using it, so I’m asking what objective standard you have in mind. Without one, the concept becomes whatever those in power decide it means.
I didn’t move the goalposts.
I asked you to define the terms that are doing the heavy lifting in your argument.
Until we agree on what assimilation, American values, and civic ideal mean, we’re likely talking past each other.