To follow up my last post A question about policy, this one was inspired by a comment made from an article on the internet (oof, don't even get me started...), regarding the 14th Amendment. The 14th, among other things, grants citizenship to all people born on United States soil. And this is being "abused" by immigrants, who cross the border only long enough to have their "anchor baby", and capitalize on the policy of allowing undocumented parents to remain with their citizen-child.
Now, validity aside, I just want to be clear: so because an Amendment is being followed according to the letter, via a literal reading of the words, it's being "abused" and it's "not following the intent of the authors" and should therefore be repealed. Okay, but who says the author's intentions? Isn't that going to be immediately and incredibly subjective?
One may argue that it wasn't the "intent" of the Framer's for the First Amendment to protect the Westboro Baptist Church, KKK rallies, violent, threatening online posts (these were tossed out), or any number of other examples. One could probably argue that the Second Amendment wasn't "intending" to allow for some paranoid doomsday-sayer to stockpile thousands of guns and ammunition for the someday apocalypse. It's fun. Our "right" to be able to walk around in broad daylight with a fully automatic rifle and 50-round clip is boisterously defended. But don't you dare think for a second you can have a baby here! It's a matter of national security!
It's always amused me, when the "intent" is used as a defense. We seem to be awful quick to assume we know what other people were thinking when we can't seem to even be able to do it for ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment