George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 24 April 2019. A slightly edited version also appears in the 27apr19 issue of The Union.]
Perhaps no recent issue of national contention illustrates the differences of how our two polarized sides see the future direction of America than does the debate about whether the 2020 census should include the citizenship question. The original intent of the census had to do with redistricting and reapportionment. That intent was carried out with our census from 1820 to 1950 by counting American citizens, which then determined membership in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College for the several states. In the 20th century an accurate citizen count provided by the census was also used to determine the allocation of federal dollars back to the states under various programs that Congress legislated.
Later, a count of citizens was also required to redraw congressional district boundaries under the Voting Rights Act. To enforce that law, the so-called “majority minority” districts must be so drawn so that at least 50% of the voters – i.e. citizens over 18 – are members of the minority in question. Moreover, the one-person, one-vote principle requires that congressional districts contain essentially the same number of people. All of these requirements and more, that allow our republic to function, require a meaningful count of the nation’s citizens.
The fundamental question of apportionment comes down to how accurate citizenship data might affect the number of House seats and Electoral College votes. A recent Supreme Court ruling based apportionment on all “persons” physically present in a state as required by the Constitution. And here started the debate about what was really meant by ‘persons’, ‘inhabitants’, ‘citizens’, and so on. Lawyers and legal scholars David Rivkin and Richard Raile dissect all this in their piece entitled ‘Should Noncitizens Be Represented in Congress?’. The short form of the national sentiment is that the Right says no and the Left says yes.
Each side’s view is part and parcel of the opposite directions in which they see the future of our country. The Left sees America as part of a globalist world in which national borders essentially disappear, people will migrate freely and in perpetuity from here to there, and citizenship in a sovereign nation-state becomes as moot as the sovereignty of the nation-states themselves. The Right sees a future world of sovereign nation-states enduring in a global community, connected by peaceful, mutually beneficial trade and commerce; a community which sustains the rich diversity of cultures because each of them has a secure homeland in which people may pass on to future generations their treasured traditions, customs, beliefs, language, and arts. Such would be a world of ‘globalization’ as opposed to the one-world government of ‘globalism’.
Almost all countries today count their citizens for more than the reasons given above as globalization becomes the new world order in the community of nations. The forces opposing this in America declare and seek its ‘fundamental transformation’, the prerequisite of which is the demolition of our democratic republic and the rewriting of our Constitution, this so as to change the United States into a compliant region with a population that has turned its back on the country’s history and its European heritage. Today the most effective and rapid way to achieve this is through permanently porous borders, while blurring the distinction between American citizens, legal aliens, and illegal aliens who inhabit the land. First and foremost, what must be changed is the law stating that “anyone who enters the US unlawfully is subject to involuntary removal and thus cannot be considered an inhabitant in the constitutional sense.”
The precise mechanism for this fundamental transformation of America is to restructure congressional districts in a manner that amplifies the country’s leftwing voter base to create permanent Democrat super-majorities in both houses of Congress, as has already happened in Sacramento It is easy to see how that can be achieved by first creating publicized welcoming sanctuaries that invite and succor the millions of illegals pouring over our border, and then counting citizens and non-citizens alike to achieve the desired reapportionment before ultimately granting the vote to all residents. It is then that our republic will fade away to be replaced by a manipulable and manipulated democracy that will see little use in retaining any of the institutions and values that gave rise to America’s greatness.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] The careful reader will have noticed my use of ‘perpetuity’, ‘permanent’, and ‘permanently’. I include these words to facilitate the definition of the Left’s anti-Americans as those residents who strive daily for that fundamental transformation which in its process abandons, or more forcefully ejects, the institutions and values which have made America the desired destination or template for so many of the world’s billions.
Beginning with its core, today most of America’s Left are proudly anti-American. In that cohort their political party of choice is still the Democratic Party. However, that may soon change as the party’s confused traditional leadership continues to have problems with the party’s new and assumptive leaders who are all collectivists of the socialist cum communist hue. In the earlier days of 20th century America, being tagged as a socialist was the kiss of political death to the extent that in mid-century the American Socialist Party was forced to close its doors and meld with the Democrats.
Today, after almost three generations of progressive public schooling and its co-option of journalism, many Americans have no idea of socialism’s history and impact on the people in countries where it has been and continues to be practiced. Especially with the current denigration of capitalism, now in vogue, America’s main street looks at socialism as just another way to run a country that might alleviate all of our much-ballyhooed social aches and pains (racism, income equality, social justice, …). No one on the Left is telling these folks that embracing the politics of Bernie, Liz, and AOC will fundamentally transform America on its road to globalism. That kind of messaging is still a no-no (as witnessed also in these pages).
However, today the national emergency at our southern border makes it easy to apply a litmus test that allows the country’s middle-roaders to unambiguously identify the anti-Americans in our midst. These are people who first and foremost oppose secure borders, claiming them to be everything from racist, through ineffectual and illegal, to inhumane and discriminatory. To them the notion of porous borders – with millions of migrants of all types entering illegally – being a preamble to national suicide is anathema. The acid test one can always apply is to ask one of them what policies they have in mind that will stem the flow and return illegal border crossings to bygone norms. The anti-American has no answer to that question, nor does he consider the question to be important for the simple reason that the arrival of such masses of migrants is the new norm for a transformed America.
Currently, in the sense defined, every Democrat, either running for president or in their congressional leadership, is anti-American. Of course, they will not admit the label as they continue to foment and perpetuate the invasion of illegal aliens across our borders and into their unlawful sanctuaries once here. The astute observer need only ignore their talk and watch their walk.
[28apr19 update] Steven Frisch, the county’s pre-eminent leftwing intellectual, immediately took a swing at my Union column, and as usual, totally missed. (The man is my longtime, most enduring critic, and for that I am grateful for all the pedagogical opportunities his contributions provide.) He opens his latest critique with –
“The Constitution never directed that the census count citizens, it coulnted pesons, admittedly at times in a flawed manner, but it counted persons, and apportioned legisaltive seats based on that count.” (It’s apparent from his typos that he wrote and submitted this in some level of agitation. You can read his entire comment here.)
Frisch takes me to task on the Framers’ intent to base House representation on the number of Americans in a geographical region naturally implied that these Americans were to be citizens, a notion and term which at that time was in its infancy in our republic (see also its use in revolutionary France). There was no intent at the framing or later to apportion congressional membership on the basis of the count of foreigners, those who had no loyalty to the newly formed republic, nor the desire to establish their lives there.
The notion of formal citizenship at the end of the 18th century was therefore somewhat novel. And as Rivkin and Raile point out, the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution’s original draft was stylistically changed (by the drafters’ Committee on Style and Arrangement) to the more broadly understood ‘persons’ with the understanding that the original implication of citizenship remained unchanged. Of course, all these fine points, and the subsequent legal debate on the wordsmithing with respect to redistricting and reapportionment, which I subsequently reference, is missed or cynically ignored by those ideologically bent like Frisch. We can expect no more from his following.
The bottom line is that our Framers wanted the country’s population count to accurately form the legitimate basis for constituting its legislature. They were painfully aware of the porosity of America’s borders through which foreigners passed with little or no hindrance, many staying or conducting business for some time and then departing. None of these were people (men only) intended to be franchised and counted for federal elections, and even most local elections. That today this history has been mangled by progressive education into some kind of inclusive ‘y’all come and vote’ era is nothing but sinister fiction, imbibed daily for some years now by students that most likely included Steven Frisch.
So, the national debate on including the ‘citizenship question’ in the census continues. The outcome now slightly favors the Constitution and standing law that specifies it is the prerogative of the Secretary of Commerce (under which the Census Bureau resides) to determine the form and content of the census questionnaire. The portion of our electorate that endured Great Society education and today consumes lamestream media for its news, if that, is dismally ignorant of the relevant factors that impact this debate. And local thought leaders like Frisch are in place nationwide to assure that their minions’ horizons are not broadened.
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