Sunday, March 25, 2012

Citizenship in America

Citizenship in America is acquired in one of these ways: 1) born in America, 2) born outside America but taken appropriate tests to become a naturalized citizen, 3) or born outside America but then married an American citizen. In this blog post, I want to focus on number 1, which is called birthright citizenship.






Birthright citizenship has not always been the law of the land. It was established by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which was ratified by Congress in 1868. The first section of the 14th Amendment reads:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 
Recently, birthright citizenship has been questioned. For instance, Congressional Republican Steve King has called for an end to birthright citizenship because of illegal immigration. King is concerned about illegal immigration. In particular, King is concerned about illegal immigrants secretly coming across the US-Mexico border and having a child -- the child, because they were born in America, are now American citizens. King wants to do away with birthright citizenship because the children born in America make it easier for the parents who are illegal aliens to stay in the US. 


What do you think?


Should citizenship be determined by birth? Or should being born in America count for nothing? Should we determine citizenship by another standard? -- for example, citizenship could be purchased, or citizenship could be acquired by serving in the military, citizenship could be acquired by passing a test, citizenship could be acquired by doing public service, or citizenship could be acquired by measuring your net contribution to the society. These are just a few examples of the different ways that citizenship can be gained. 

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Why vote for US President?



Why should you vote for the President of the United States of America?



Most of you will never set foot into a city or county council meeting. In these forums, you generally have face to face access to policymakers that you directly elect. These men and women have a significant impact on essential aspects of your everyday life, particularly in areas like school funding, access to fire and rescue service, water and sewage policies, zoning, annexation, local tax rates, and so on. Yet, we hardly ever never rock the county or town council vote – indeed, in most cases, I bet county council debates hardly make it onto the radar compared to the hoopla surrounding the quadrennial presidential elections in the US.



The important point about these local elections cannot be stressed enough: i). You can go meet these policymakers and talk with them about issues of concern to you and your community and possibly persuade them on some matter; ii). They are directly elected by your vote and are therefore accountable to you and the coalition of voters of which you are a part.

In terms of the US president, however, the story is very different. The chances that you will ever meet the next US president (or any US president ever, for that matter) are slim to none – especially now with the intensified security practices surrounding the President following the events on 11 September 2001. Even when the fear of communist sabotage and the threat of Soviet nuclear weapons (which still exist, by the way) stalked Americans’ imagination during the Cold War, citizens were able to arrive early in the morning, wait in line outside the White House gate, and get an escorted tour of the public areas on most any day of the week. That type of open and symbolically more accessible attitude has evaporated over the past decade in regards to the President and the White House. In its place is an increasingly complicated, surveillance-intensive, and selective bureaucratic process that distances the office and the office holder from those that vote.

Even less likely are we, as average citizens living in Shepherdstown, WV, or any particular town across America, able to meet and meaningfully discuss, much less influence, the president on any issue of concern to you or your community.

On top of that, your vote, which millions of American citizens will cast in November, does not elect the president of the United States. To the surprise of many, no doubt, the US Constitution establishes an Electoral College [read here and here] with this authority. Who is the Electoral College? Robert Dahl, the distinguished professor of comparative democracy at Yale University, says that members of the Electoral College usually consist of a relatively unknown and partisan group of party loyalists.



The Electoral College, a fundamentally non-democratic and elitist feature of the US Constitution that insulates the president from the popular will, has created a dilemma for American politics that has played out on four different occasions in our history. Most recently, we saw the consequences of this Constitutional dilemma in the 2000 US election. In that instance, George W. Bush was elected to the highest office in the land because he won a majority of Electoral College votes; Al Gore won the majority of votes from American citizens, but lost the election. All in all, Dahl says that one out of every three US presidents has won with only a minority of voters’ support.

I want to bring the dilemma of our democracy home to you by asking you to reflect on your behavior.

Why should you vote for the American president? Or, if you think that you shouldn't vote for the US President, why shouldn't you vote? And, perhaps more importantly, why don’t you vote for the city and county council members? Do you know your council members?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

What is the right amount of individual freedom and government intervention?

On the blog this week we continue to talk about the libertarian political position. As we've come to see, libertarians basically espouse the view that individuals should have the maximum amount of freedom with the minimum amount of government intervention in their lives. People should be able to freely act however they choose as long as they are not harming someone else.

There are a number of politicians in Congress who identify with the libertarian view -- Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Jim Demint, and Bob Barr are four examples.

In general, libertarians argue that Americans are too dependent on the government for help and therefore not as free as they presume. Dependency is not freedom. And Americans are really dependent on the government and, worse, basically delusional about that dependence. That delusion is seen no clearer than in this survey.

A sample of Americans who were already dependent on government assistance were asked: "Have you ever used a government social program?" The table below shows two things: 1. the percentage of people who were unaware that they were dependent on government assistance 2. and the government assistance program on which they were in fact dependent.

Percentage of Program Beneficiaries Who Report They “Have Not Used a Government Social Program”
Program“No, Have Not Used a Government Social Program”
529 or Coverdell64.3
Home Mortgage Interest Deduction60.0
Hope or Lifetime Learning Tax Credit59.6
Student Loans53.3
Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit51.7
Earned Income Tax Credit47.1
Social Security—Retirement & Survivors44.1
Pell Grants43.1
Unemployment Insurance43.0
Veterans Benefits (other than G.I. Bill)41.7
G.I. Bill40.3
Medicare39.8
Head Start37.2
Social Security Disability28.7
Supplemental Security Income28.2
Medicaid27.8
Welfare/Public Assistance27.4
Government Subsidized Housing27.4
Food Stamps25.4

So, libertarians advocate less dependence on government. 

This means in house sex work should be made legal because criminalization is ineffective and consenting adults should be able to have sex with whom ever they choose without government involvement. 

According to Ron Paul, this means that the Transportation Security Administration (the people who search you at the airport before you board the airplane) should be closed because they are an "out of control organization" that "gropes and grabs" Americans and invades our individual privacy. Airline riders are dependent on the government for providing their security before they board an airplane and this infringes on their freedom.  


This also means for instance that during natural disasters, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and so on, the government should not provide aid. Ron Paul, for instance, recently said that areas struck by tornadoes and hurricanes should not receive government assistance to carry out rescue operations, rebuild, or to prepare for future weather disasters.

What do you think?

Do you think that Americans are too dependent on the government? If you we are too dependent, are there ever times when it is ok for the government to intervene -- like during disasters or attack by foreign country? If you believe we are not too dependent, does our dependence on the government limit our freedom? When is there too much government assistance and individual freedom is being limited?