7 ms·

For me "botn in the country" or "born a citizen of the country" does not mean much. This is like assuming that your birth status makes the person. Think minarc

For me "botn in the country" or "born a citizen of the country" does not mean much. This is like assuming that your birth status makes the person. Think minarchy, castes, ... You can be a naturalized citizen in live with your country, or a born citizen plain stupid and with worst interests in mind.

dylan604 2y ago
Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  > Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Not in the modern world it doesn't.
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country. When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Maybe because the policy exists that people have not so easily been able to get to the top position. Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office. It's an idiotic comment for an idiotic misunderstanding of why the policy exists
    - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
      You seem to put people in the category of "born here, so good" and "birn elsewhere, less good". Fair enough. If you are a supporter of, say, Trump you therefore say that Biden or Harris are much better than any other, naturalized citizen, as presidents? It's hard to see the logic here, probably because I am an idiot, but if where you were birn defines the man for you then fine - everyone has their opinion.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. i'm sure they were concerned that the king would try to undermine the new country the first chance he got by placing someone loyal to the crown to undo all of the work that led to the constitution. it's not a good better best situation like you seem to think. at this point, i really think the unwilling to see how attempting to limit the new nation from being led by a foreign operative would be so important to the survival of the new nation. only, new is now 200+ years old (yet still a babe in the woods to other national histories) so the "threat" seems lessened by people like you. i also started the entire thread by stating we have a foreign operative in place now, so if you can't read between those lines in who i didn't vote for then you're really just being deliberately obtuse about the situation is the only logical explanation i can see.
        vkou 2y ago
        > it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. Apparently, as of last year, the constitution also says that the president is actually above the law. Given that they've written it after having just gotten rid of a king, I'm assuming they also put that part in deliberately. Truly, their wisdom and foresight was boundless. It's an interesting document, but as time passes, its practical uses seem to become more and more limited. We're now at the 'people are getting disappeared into a gulag in El Salvador because the president decided they are criminals' stage, by the way. No judge, no jury, just an executive order that makes a person go away, and no mechanism to stop it from happening. (I don't actually have strong opinions about that provision. It's certainly saving us from, heaven forbid, a Musk presidency, but only by an utterly uninteresting accident of his birth. People like him aren't foreign adversaries, trying to subvert the country, they are domestic adversaries, who bear no allegiance but to themselves.)
- the_clarence 2y ago
  And yet elon musk an immigrant is currently the president
  - eru 2y ago
    At least he's an African American.
- eru 2y ago
  > Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me. Voters can take these things into consideration when casting their ballots. No need to make these choices for them.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I think recent events in the US make it quite clear that voters don't really consider the things that actually matter when electing a president.
    - eru 2y ago
      Sure, that's a defensible position, too. In that case, I suggest finding some obscure German house of nobles and putting them on the throne. Works reasonably ok for the UK.
    - Lanolderen 2y ago
      Choose your evil: Elect a dynasty to rule forever Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes Remain with the rule of the majority system Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt
      - eru 2y ago
        Well, you could at least move to Approval voting instead of first past the post. Or you could try sortition, which you haven't even considered at all.
        Lanolderen 2y ago
        The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It probably won't happen in my lifetime since governments aren't built to be flexible\agile but one can dream.
- n4r9 2y ago
  The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
  - eru 2y ago
    Well, formally the Prime Minister is just some random bloke appointed by king to help him run the country. The PM doesn't even need to be a member of parliament! Now the king, that guy can't even be catholic! And until recently, couldn't even be female with living brothers.
    - n4r9 2y ago
      Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. However, an MP does not even need to be a British citizen: an Irish or a Commonwealth citizen can become an MP and go on to command the confidence of the house.
      - eru 2y ago
        > Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. I hope it stays that way. The US had pretty strong traditions in politics, too, but they are increasingly being eroded. To give an example that's hopefully far enough in the past to be non-controversial: when they banned alcohol in the early 1920s, they felt that their constitution did not already explicitly give their federal government the power to do so. So they passed the 18th amendment to give the feds that power to specifically ban alcohol. Decades later, in the context of the war on drugs, everybody seems to take it for granted that the federal government can obviously ban arbitrary substances.
- vkou 2y ago
  > Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. This may have held true sometime in the 17th century, but it really doesn't in the 21st.

dylan604 2y ago

Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.

kennysoona 2y ago
> Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Not in the modern world it doesn't.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country. When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Maybe because the policy exists that people have not so easily been able to get to the top position. Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office. It's an idiotic comment for an idiotic misunderstanding of why the policy exists
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    You seem to put people in the category of "born here, so good" and "birn elsewhere, less good". Fair enough. If you are a supporter of, say, Trump you therefore say that Biden or Harris are much better than any other, naturalized citizen, as presidents? It's hard to see the logic here, probably because I am an idiot, but if where you were birn defines the man for you then fine - everyone has their opinion.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. i'm sure they were concerned that the king would try to undermine the new country the first chance he got by placing someone loyal to the crown to undo all of the work that led to the constitution. it's not a good better best situation like you seem to think. at this point, i really think the unwilling to see how attempting to limit the new nation from being led by a foreign operative would be so important to the survival of the new nation. only, new is now 200+ years old (yet still a babe in the woods to other national histories) so the "threat" seems lessened by people like you. i also started the entire thread by stating we have a foreign operative in place now, so if you can't read between those lines in who i didn't vote for then you're really just being deliberately obtuse about the situation is the only logical explanation i can see.
      - vkou 2y ago
        > it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. Apparently, as of last year, the constitution also says that the president is actually above the law. Given that they've written it after having just gotten rid of a king, I'm assuming they also put that part in deliberately. Truly, their wisdom and foresight was boundless. It's an interesting document, but as time passes, its practical uses seem to become more and more limited. We're now at the 'people are getting disappeared into a gulag in El Salvador because the president decided they are criminals' stage, by the way. No judge, no jury, just an executive order that makes a person go away, and no mechanism to stop it from happening. (I don't actually have strong opinions about that provision. It's certainly saving us from, heaven forbid, a Musk presidency, but only by an utterly uninteresting accident of his birth. People like him aren't foreign adversaries, trying to subvert the country, they are domestic adversaries, who bear no allegiance but to themselves.)
the_clarence 2y ago
And yet elon musk an immigrant is currently the president
- eru 2y ago
  At least he's an African American.
eru 2y ago
> Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me. Voters can take these things into consideration when casting their ballots. No need to make these choices for them.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I think recent events in the US make it quite clear that voters don't really consider the things that actually matter when electing a president.
  - eru 2y ago
    Sure, that's a defensible position, too. In that case, I suggest finding some obscure German house of nobles and putting them on the throne. Works reasonably ok for the UK.
  - Lanolderen 2y ago
    Choose your evil: Elect a dynasty to rule forever Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes Remain with the rule of the majority system Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt
    - eru 2y ago
      Well, you could at least move to Approval voting instead of first past the post. Or you could try sortition, which you haven't even considered at all.
      - Lanolderen 2y ago
        The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It probably won't happen in my lifetime since governments aren't built to be flexible\agile but one can dream.
n4r9 2y ago
The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
- eru 2y ago
  Well, formally the Prime Minister is just some random bloke appointed by king to help him run the country. The PM doesn't even need to be a member of parliament! Now the king, that guy can't even be catholic! And until recently, couldn't even be female with living brothers.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. However, an MP does not even need to be a British citizen: an Irish or a Commonwealth citizen can become an MP and go on to command the confidence of the house.
    - eru 2y ago
      > Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. I hope it stays that way. The US had pretty strong traditions in politics, too, but they are increasingly being eroded. To give an example that's hopefully far enough in the past to be non-controversial: when they banned alcohol in the early 1920s, they felt that their constitution did not already explicitly give their federal government the power to do so. So they passed the 18th amendment to give the feds that power to specifically ban alcohol. Decades later, in the context of the war on drugs, everybody seems to take it for granted that the federal government can obviously ban arbitrary substances.
vkou 2y ago
> Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. This may have held true sometime in the 17th century, but it really doesn't in the 21st.