You’ve got to love CatNats. “Resolved: That the United States government has a moral obligation to afford the same constitutional rights to all people on United States soil.” What they’re trying to say is that constitutional rights protections should (or should not) apply equally to citizens and non-citizens, but they’re so afraid of people going off-rez that they’ve provided a bizarro “all people on United States soil” concept to replace non-citizens that, well, just makes you love the English language. Realistically, though, it’s not the world’s worst topic, I don’t think, although personally I find it pretty one-sided.
A while ago we had a similar topic, and often debaters took this as license to argue that the right to vote should somehow be granted to non-citizens. This was, and remains, ridiculous. Simply enough, no polity exists of people who are not members of the polity, by definition. Only judges who left their brains at the door of the room could be convinced otherwise, but, of course, there were such judges. (I tended to use this as a litmus test of tabula rasa, myself. If your slate was wiped that clean, you were just too dumb for the room.)
If you don’t buy that (hmmm, that’s some clean slate there, pal), let’s look at that wording in the rez: “the same constitutional rights.” Now let’s look at the right to vote in the Constitution.
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof.” “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.” “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”
Maybe I’m missing something here, but every single iteration of the right to vote requires that a person be a citizen (although more loosely in the Senate requirement, where one must be one of the “people thereof” that state, which is tantamount to the same thing). That is, the power of the vote goes to citizens much like the power of being Commander-in-Chief goes to the President. One can’t simply claim this power willy nilly. I can’t say that since the Constitution grants someone the right of being CIC, everyone should have that right. To wit, you would have to amend the constitution to apply the right to vote to non-citizens, which means that clearly that right is not a "constitutional right" at the moment, which is what the rez is talking about.
However, the word “citizen” does not appear at all in the Bill of Rights. Duh.
The legitimate arguing of this resolution will be about whether the enumerated rights in the Constitution, i.e., the Bill of Rights, ought to be applied to all. (And, yeah, it’s on our soil, so the US can’t grant rights to people in Ulan Bator. Duh again.) There are plenty of people who feel that the answer is no. Non-citizen immigrants, suspected terrorists and felons are all among those whose rights are moot. Unfortunately, they’re a disparate bunch, and it’s hard to unify them in an argument. The illegal working at WalMart should be a different case than Osama bin-Laden who should be a different case than some drug dealer who was just released from prison. Normally I would look for the unifying factor to find debate material, but aside from their all being on the questionable side of rights allowances, there really isn’t one. So, good luck with that. Still, however, one or the other of these will allow for the best debates. I haven’t thought it through myself to know which ones, but illegals seem intuitively the ones worth arguing about on both sides of the rez.
We’ll see. I’m meeting with the Sailors Tuesday. I’ll be interested to hear their take on this, since two of them are heading to the CatNats Conflagration.
2 comments:
You said, the word citizen doesn't appear in the Bill of Rights. However, i have looked extensively at the Bill of Rights, and it does in fact not only say, Citizens, but citizens of the US. (Amendment 14, 15, 19, 24, & 26 to name a few)
The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments. I stand uncorrected.
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