Reply #105: jeezus bleeding christ

[iverglas]

Dual citizenship is not a red herring, it's divided loyalty, plain and simple. And if you can't see that, you can't see it.

Dual citizenship is a red herring when THE ISSUE IS WHETHER A NATURALIZED CITIZEN MAY BECOME PRESIDENT -- because not all naturalized citizens are dual citizens, and any one who is can easily remedy the problem by renouncing the second citizenship if s/he wants to be president.

YOU are talking about dual citizens in a discussion of NATURALIZED CITIZENS. They are two different things. They are not the same thing. How much more plainly can I put this?

We don't need to socially engineer our presidency to make ourselves feel better. We just don't have to go find a Canadian, or an Austrian, or a person of any other nationality, to lead us and then shout "Ah HA, we're <<inclusive>>!".

Well hey, bully for y'all. I guess if anyone had been suggesting you needed to do any of those things, you'd have some sort of point aimed at something.

All I'm seeing is more of the "it's all about us" stuff I've already remarked on, and how the issue, in equality questions, is not just the interests of "us", the majority.

So dragging Canadian "identity" out and trying to equate it to American identity isn't really a valid comparison, any more than it would be to equate Canadian identity to, say, Kurdish identity.

Gee, if only I'd done anything that remotely fucking resembled that. Can you really not follow a conversation, or are you just pretending?

YOU SAID: you don't happen to believe in something like national identity ...

and I offered information for your assistance and to refute the false and baseless statement you had made, with some details for your edification. But hey, you go ahead and pretend I was doing something else.

As for your riff on 'a heritary head of state' (I assume you mean hereditary) <how gracious of you> well, the framers did go over all that when they were coming to terms with the document, and they decided against any sort of monarchy from the get-go.

They decided to retain the institution of slavery and not let women vote, too. What a bunch of wise old white guys they were. Did you imagine I was suggesting that you adopt a monarchy, though? When I said:

a heritary head of state, no matter how constitutionalized and common-person friendly, is really kinda passé, but a George Bush is really just too déclassé, and despite the various problems we do all still seem to like this idea of having some kind of head of state

? I can't imagine how ...

the system functions, and it functions fairly well.

Actually, your system functions worse than any system in any other liberal democracy in the world. It is unwieldy, extraordinarily corrupt, and concentrates more power in the hand of a single individual at the top than any constitutional monarchy, just for instance, has done for a century. It was a really good thing in its day, just like the Model T was. Henry Ford was a smart fella. Do you see us all driving around in Model Ts and saying Old Henry, he knew what we needed, we don't need no anti-lock brakes ...?

There IS no real controversy. Most Americans agree with me.

Ah yes, that's the standard by which to measure the rightness of a policy in a liberal democracy. Most of 'em seem to want to deny same-sex couples access to marriage and all the protections that go with it, and to interfere rather radically in women's reproductive rights, too. And if most of 'em decided to jump off a bridge ...

So to conclude: I haven't seen an argument in favour of the prohibition in question yet. Question begging, appeals to authority, appeals to public opinion ... no argument.

I'm done here.

Good for you.