As a White person with an ancestry in the United States that goes back before the country existed, I\u2019ve spent most of my life assuming the truth of American Exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I\u2019ve been critical of my country most of my life \u2013 but there was still this belief in some of our principles and maybe even the Constitution that let me think \u201cwe\u2019re different\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019ll get around to fixing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the things that kept that belief intact was birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n
I recall learning at some point that people who were born in Germany to parents who had come from other places to work there were not German citizens and I was appalled. I had always assumed that birthright citizenship was a given everywhere, but instead it appeared it was an exception.<\/p>\n
As in exceptional. As in one of the things that makes the United States exceptional.<\/p>\n
The grifter \u2013 who is back in the White House because no one with the authority chose to enforce another provision of the 14th Amendment that bars insurrectionists from office \u2013 wants to take away one of the key elements of American Exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t want the country to be exceptional. He just wants to do his performative powerful rich man routine and see how many people he can hurt in the process.<\/p>\n
Of the many things that man and his minions \u2013 or maybe his handlers, given the financial power of the broligarchs \u2013 are doing to destroy our country, this might not be the worst. Even the current Supreme Court might rule it violates the Constitution. It\u2019s certainly not the one that will affect me personally, given my ancestry.<\/p>\n
(The only people who have the right to tell me I don\u2019t belong here are those whose ancestors were here before the Europeans invaded, and that certainly doesn\u2019t include people like the grifter.)<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the one that stabs me in the heart. There\u2019s just something about the principle that if you\u2019re born someplace, you belong there.<\/p>\n
I mean, where else can you really belong but the place you were born? <\/p>\n
More than just an American, I will always be a Texan, even though I\u2019m very glad I\u2019m not living there these days. And I will not let the right wing misogynists running that state tell me I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always liked some lines from Robert Frost\u2019s \u201cThe Hired Man:\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
\nThey have to take you in.\u2019<\/p>\n\u2018I should have called it
\nSomething you somehow haven\u2019t to deserve.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat\u2019s the way I feel about the place where I was born. That\u2019s the way I think everyone is entitled to feel about the place they were born.<\/p>\n
Being born somewhere means you have a right to be there. It\u2019s not something you have to deserve.<\/p>\n
And they do have to take you in.<\/p>\n
I just re-read the poem and it made me cry. It always makes me cry.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never been a fan of the national borders and citizenship and residency rights human beings have invented over centuries to make sure a large number of people on this planet are always in a no win situation.<\/p>\n
I just know that in my gut I feel like having a home \u2013 in all its senses \u2013 should be a given.<\/p>\n
I hope the suits being brought against this nonsense succeed. I will support them. I wish I still trusted that the system would overturn this nonsense.<\/p>\n
Because it matters. The right to live where you were born matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a White person with an ancestry in the United States that goes back before the country existed, I\u2019ve spent most of my life assuming the truth of American Exceptionalism. Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I\u2019ve been critical of my country most of my life \u2013 but there was still this belief in some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[998],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-birthright-citizenship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3808,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions\/3808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}