(Thread) So this editorial is extremely problematic, and an attempt to clothe a fringe Radical Right theory with legitimacy. Don't believe the hype
Opinion | Citizenship shouldn’t be a birthright wapo.st/2mrJZEz?tid=ss…
Opinion | Citizenship shouldn’t be a birthright wapo.st/2mrJZEz?tid=ss…
2/ The author is a former Tr*mp staffer who teaches at Hillsdale College You might remember him as the guy who called the 2016 election "the Flight 93 election." You know: "charge the cockpit or die." I wonder why he's invested in getting rid of birthright citizenship. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
3/ He's also warned that without Trump, the US will go the "way of California," and Steve Bannon sees him as an outstanding intellectual. He's a creature of the Claremont Institute, which is the faux-academic greenhouse for Trumpism. More context: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… 
4/ The argument he makes, that we've been misreading the 14th amendment all wrong and that it really doesn't provide for birthright citizenship, is a mix of tortured "originalism" shaped to fit toxic racism, and just plain ol' lies.
5/Anton relies heavily on quotes from "Constitutional Scholar" Edward Erler, who is from the same racist circles, but who's been at this game a lot longer. Erler has devoted his career to attempts to add a constitutional gloss to extreme Right positions
6/ One of Erler's go-to moves, which Anton quotes extensively in the piece here, is to use IL senator Lyman Trumbull's words during the framing of the 14th Amendment to "prove" these framers did not conceive of the amendment granting birthright citizenship. But there's a problem:
7/ Erler totally cherry-picks the quotes from Trumbull, editing out and ignoring Trumbull's words *later in the same damn passage* that completely give the lie to Erler's interpretation. Garrett Epps (a *real* Constitutional scholar) has pointed this out: theatlantic.com/national/archi…
8/ Erler and Anton are trying to accomplish what Epps calls "DaVinci Code" intepretations of the Constitution: it's not what the document actually says but rather their fevered conspiracy-theorist fantasies projected onto it that really matter. And the Post is letting them do it.
9/ The argument that there is no constitutional basis for birthright citizenship isn't merely "controversial," or "contrarian," or "charged." It's flat-out bullshit. It's a willful misrepresentaiton of historical evidence to support a racist, anti-immigration prejudice.
10/ It is the equivalent of taking a flat-earther and letting them argue the "contrarian" opinion that all of our math, physics, astronomy, and empirical evidence is wrong and that the earth is shaped like a frisbee. The Post has done that here.
11/ We knew the Right was coming for birthright citizenship. Their "academic"-industrial complex has been mobilized. And they've managed to get the Post to bite on a completely vacuous theory and allow it to be presented as some scholarly consensus. This is ominous. And dangerous
Coda: Here's the book to read on the subject, from @marthasjones_ . I'm reviewing it now for Choice, and it is absolutely essential. cambridge.org/core/books/bir…
