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40 sats \ 3 replies \ @Arceris 31 Jan \ on: TGIF: Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution Politics_And_Law

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….

The article claims that this only means children of diplomats are excluded, but the text is not obviously clear that that is the only exclusion.

You cannot interpret the words without the full context of the debates surrounding them.

And this is exactly how you make the determination on the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 31 Jan

I know that you need to see the records of the debates. As I noted, this is the pure, hardcore libertarian viewpoint without any equivocation or hesitancy. It just looks at the words in print and interprets them according to hardcore libertarian values. There is no nuance here. I happen to think that the meaning of the words was hammered out over a lot of debate time and may not mean the same as the libertarian interpretation has them meaning.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Arceris 31 Jan

Yeah, sorry if I came across as combative, was trying to agree with you 😇

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 31 Jan

No problem, I did not take it as combative. I just think that this is another case of the libertarians making the perfect the enemy of the good. They just can’t get it though their heads that sometimes pragmatism is necessary to get anything done, at all.