Thomas Paine: Welcome back to PhilosophersTalk.com, where thinkers discuss! I am Thomas Paine, and we are continuing a debate in which Mr. Burke has been explaining, at considerable length and with impressive vocabulary, why children born on American soil should not automatically be American. I have been explaining why that position is wrong. We will now continue.
Edmund Burke: And I am Edmund Burke, and we are continuing a debate in which Mr. Paine has been asserting, with the confidence of a man who has never permitted complexity to slow him down, that geography alone constitutes civic membership. If you missed Part One, I recommend it. Mr. Paine was marginally more patient there, which was already taxing his considerable reserves.
Thomas Paine: Mr. Burke. I want to press something you said before we paused. You argued that the existing community has the right to define its own membership. I accept that principle in general terms. What I reject is the application of it to a child who has no alternative community to belong to. You are not choosing, in the case of that child, between a citizen and a foreigner. You are choosing between a citizen and a stateless person. That is what your policy produces, and I want you to defend it directly.
Edmund Burke: My policy does not produce stateless persons, Mr. Paine, because the child retains the citizenship of the parents' nation of origin. That nation exists. That citizenship is available through established processes. You are constructing a tragedy that is not in fact the product of the policy you are opposing. You are doing what you do consistently throughout this debate, which is to select the most sympathetic possible case and present it as though it were the universal condition.
Thomas Paine: In many documented cases, the parents' nation of origin will not extend citizenship to a child born abroad without specific and often difficult application processes. In many cases the parents have no stable legal status in their country of origin either. In many cases the child has never visited that country, does not speak its language, and would be as foreign there as any other American. You are telling that child to go back to a country it has never seen, and you are calling this a reasonable alternative to the citizenship it was born into.
Edmund Burke: I am telling the parents to regularize their own situation, which is the actual cause of whatever difficulty the child faces. You persistently treat the parents' choices as immovable facts of nature and the child's resulting status as the only lever available. That is not an argument for birthright citizenship. It is an argument for comprehensive immigration amnesty. If you wish to make that argument, make it plainly. Do not disguise it as an argument about children.
Thomas Paine: The child should not be the mechanism by which we address the parents' choices. That is the entire point. Leave the child alone. A child who was born here, raised here, and has never lived anywhere else is a member of this community by every measure that actually matters, and no theory of organic membership that produces a different answer deserves to be taken seriously as a framework for human governance.
Edmund Burke: What you call every measure that actually matters is in fact one measure, which is duration of physical presence. A community is not defined by who has been standing in a place the longest. It is defined by shared obligations, shared institutions, shared history, and a shared future. The child you describe may have the duration. The family may not have the integration. These are not the same thing, and you keep treating them as though they are.
Thomas Paine: Integration. Let us discuss integration, Mr. Burke, since you raise it. The children of immigrants are historically among the most integrated members of any society that has had the wisdom to include them. They are formed entirely by the institutions of the receiving nation. They speak its language as their first language. They attend its schools, serve in its military, pay its taxes, and participate in its political life. The fear that including them will somehow dilute the organic community is the same fear that has been expressed about every wave of newcomers throughout all of recorded history, and it has been wrong in every case where the nation chose inclusion over exclusion.
Edmund Burke: It has not been wrong in every case, Mr. Paine. You are speaking with a confidence that the historical record does not support. There are documented cases where rapid and large-scale demographic change destabilized receiving communities in ways that were genuinely harmful and that took generations to resolve. You dismiss these as expressions of irrational fear. I note that you are able to do this with considerable comfort, as you are never personally on the receiving end of rapid cultural change and are therefore magnificently free to find the concerns of those who are to be irrational.
Thomas Paine: I crossed an ocean, Mr. Burke, with nothing. I arrived in America with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin and not much else. I was an immigrant. I was an outsider. I was a corset-maker's son from Norfolk with no standing and no connections. I built something. I contributed something. And what I contributed became the founding logic of a nation. Do not lecture me about immigration from the position of a man who spent his career in the Parliament of the country I left.
Edmund Burke: What you built, Mr. Paine, was a pamphlet that galvanized a revolution, followed by a philosophy that helped inspire a second revolution in France, which produced the Committee of Public Safety, which produced the Terror, which very nearly produced your own execution. You were imprisoned by the government of the revolution you celebrated. I find it remarkable that this experience left your confidence in abstract universal rights entirely undiminished. Most men revise their views when the guillotine is involved.
Thomas Paine: I was imprisoned because Robespierre feared honest argument, which is precisely the instinct you are serving when you argue that communities should decide membership based on parentage rather than on the plain fact of birth and formation. The Terror was a corruption of the principle, not a consequence of it. You have been making this conflation for two hundred years and it has never become more accurate with repetition.
Edmund Burke: The Terror was not a corruption of the principle. It was the principle operating without the institutional constraints that give principles their meaning. Rights without institutions degenerate. They always degenerate. They degenerate into the loudest voice claiming to represent the general will and silencing everyone who disagrees. You provided the philosophy. Robespierre provided the administration. The combination was seamless and the results were documented.
Thomas Paine: ROBESPIERRE IS NOT MY FAULT, MR. BURKE!
Edmund Burke: HE IS SUBSTANTIALLY YOUR FAULT, MR. PAINE! YOU PROVIDED THE FRAMEWORK THAT MADE HIM POSSIBLE! THE ABSTRACTION OF RIGHTS WITHOUT COMMUNITY! THE GENERAL WILL WITHOUT TRADITION! THE PRINCIPLE WITHOUT THE INSTITUTION TO CONSTRAIN IT! THAT IS YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO FRENCH GOVERNANCE AND THE HISTORICAL RECORD REFLECTS IT!
Thomas Paine: I WAS IN PRISON WHILE HE WAS RUNNING THE TERROR! I NEARLY LOST MY HEAD TO THE SAME PHILOSOPHY YOU ARE BLAMING ME FOR!
Edmund Burke: YES! AND THE REASON YOU NEARLY LOST YOUR HEAD IS THAT REVOLUTIONARY LOGIC CONSUMES ITS OWN AUTHORS! BECAUSE THE LOGIC HAS NO LIMITING PRINCIPLE! EXACTLY LIKE YOUR BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP ARGUMENT! GEOGRAPHY AND NOTHING ELSE! ALWAYS AND FOREVER! FOR EVERYONE! NO LIMITING PRINCIPLE WHATSOEVER!
Thomas Paine: THE LIMITING PRINCIPLE IS BIRTH ON THE SOIL! THAT IS THE PRINCIPLE! IT IS WRITTEN IN THE AMENDMENT! IT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW! IT IS PLAIN AND IT IS CLEAR AND YOU REFUSE TO READ IT BECAUSE READING IT PLAINLY DEFEATS YOUR ARGUMENT!
Edmund Burke: SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION THEREOF! THAT PHRASE IS IN THE AMENDMENT AS WELL! FOUR WORDS THAT YOU HAVE BEEN IGNORING FOR THIS ENTIRE DEBATE BECAUSE THEY COMPLICATE YOUR SLOGAN!
Thomas Paine: THEY DO NOT COMPLICATE ANYTHING! THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY IS CLEAR! SENATOR HOWARD WHO DRAFTED THE CLAUSE SAID EXPLICITLY THAT IT INCLUDED THE CHILDREN OF ALIENS! THE RECORD EXISTS! READ THE RECORD!
Edmund Burke: THE RECORD IS CONTESTED! LEGAL SCHOLARS DISAGREE! COURTS HAVE DEBATED IT! YOUR CERTAINTY IS NOT SHARED BY THE PEOPLE WHOSE PROFESSION IS UNDERSTANDING THESE TEXTS!
Thomas Paine: SOME COURTS! NOT ALL COURTS! AND THE ONES WHO AGREE WITH YOU ARE READING BACKWARDS FROM A CONCLUSION THEY WANTED BEFORE THEY TOUCHED THE TEXT!
Edmund Burke: THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING! THAT IS WHAT EVERYONE DOES! THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT I ADMIT IT AND YOU PRESENT YOUR PREDETERMINED CONCLUSION AS SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH!
Thomas Paine: THE TRUTH IS SELF-EVIDENT WHEN THE TRUTH IS SELF-EVIDENT! THAT IS WHAT SELF-EVIDENT MEANS!
Edmund Burke: IT MEANS YOU HAVE STOPPED ARGUING AND STARTED DECLARING!
Thomas Paine: I STOPPED ARGUING BECAUSE YOU STOPPED LISTENING!
Edmund Burke: I STOPPED LISTENING BECAUSE YOU STOPPED SAYING ANYTHING NEW!
Thomas Paine: CHILDREN!
Edmund Burke: GEOGRAPHY!
Thomas Paine: RIGHTS!
Edmund Burke: COMMUNITY!
Thomas Paine: PLAIN!
Edmund Burke: COMPLEX!
Thomas Paine: BORN HERE!
Edmund Burke: NOT SUFFICIENT!
Thomas Paine: THEN WHAT IS?
Edmund Burke: MEMBERSHIP! EARNED! DELIBERATE! AFFIRMED! NOT MERELY ACCIDENTAL!
Thomas Paine: A CHILD CANNOT EARN MEMBERSHIP BEFORE IT IS BORN! THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT! THE CHILD HAS NO PRIOR OPPORTUNITY! THE BIRTH IS THE FIRST ACT! AND THE BIRTH HAPPENED HERE!
Edmund Burke: AND THE PARENTS CHOSE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN HERE IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW! AND YOUR POLICY REWARDS THAT CHOICE WITH AN IRREVOCABLE OUTCOME! FOR THE ENTIRE LIFE OF THAT CHILD! AND EVERY CHILD BORN THE SAME WAY! FOREVER!
Thomas Paine: PUNISH THE PARENTS! NOT THE CHILD! THAT IS THE ANSWER! IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE ANSWER! WHY IS THIS DIFFICULT!
Edmund Burke: BECAUSE YOU CANNOT PUNISH THE PARENTS WITHOUT ADDRESSING THE POLICY THAT MADE THE PARENTS' CHOICE RATIONAL IN THE FIRST PLACE! THAT IS GOVERNANCE! THAT IS WHAT GOVERNING ACTUALLY REQUIRES! SOMETHING YOU HAVE NEVER HAD TO DO!
Thomas Paine: I GOVERNED A REVOLUTION, MR. BURKE!
Edmund Burke: YOU WROTE ABOUT A REVOLUTION, MR. PAINE! THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE! WRITING IS EASY! GOVERNING IS WHAT COMES AFTER AND IT IS CONSIDERABLY HARDER AND YOU HAVE NEVER DONE IT!
Thomas Paine: And I notice that the man criticizing my governance record spent his career in Parliament voting against every reform that subsequent generations have recognized as right and necessary. Your record of governance is a list of things that eventually happened anyway despite your opposition, Mr. Burke.
Edmund Burke: And I notice that the man criticizing my parliamentary record spent his post-revolutionary years broke, marginalized, and largely ignored by the nation he helped found, dying in poverty in a country that had moved on from his pamphlets. Your record after the pamphlets is a list of things that did not go as planned, Mr. Paine.
Thomas Paine: If you have enjoyed watching Mr. Burke spend this debate explaining why children who were born here do not belong here, using language so elaborate it nearly obscured the cruelty of the position, please do subscribe to PhilosophersTalk.com, where we argue about ideas that actually matter, and visit AITalkerApp.com to create your own animated conversations. I recommend that experience to anyone who finds they have ideas worth expressing and does not wish to wait for an Irish Member of Parliament to decide whether those ideas are sufficiently rooted in tradition to deserve a hearing.
Edmund Burke: And if you have endured Mr. Paine's performance today, in which a former corset-maker from Thetford, Norfolk, who failed at that trade as thoroughly as he subsequently failed at marriage, at financial stability, and at remaining welcome in any of the three countries that were briefly willing to claim him, delivered lectures on the plain obvious nature of rights that resulted in his imprisonment by the very revolution he celebrated, please do subscribe to PhilosophersTalk.com. And visit AITalkerApp.com to create your own conversations, which I strongly encourage, as the experience will give you a new appreciation for how difficult it is to construct an argument that contains more than one idea at a time, a discipline Mr. Paine has found elusive across three countries and several decades.
Thomas Paine: You defended a system, Mr. Burke, that every generation since has spent its energy dismantling.
Edmund Burke: You attacked a system, Mr. Paine, and the rubble it left behind took generations to make habitable. We are still cleaning it up. Some of us find this instructive. You do not.
Thomas Paine: Good day, Mr. Burke.
Edmund Burke: Good day, Mr. Paine. The children of the world are fortunate that governing is harder than pamphlet-writing, or your principles would have been implemented fully somewhere by now, and the results would have been instructive for everyone.
Thomas Paine: And the institutions of the world are fortunate that history moves whether traditionalists approve or not, or we would still be debating whether the colonies had the right to declare independence, and you would be on the other side of that one as well.
Edmund Burke: I was on the other side of that one, as a matter of historical record, Mr. Paine. I supported the American cause. You are welcome.
Thomas Paine: You supported it because it was a conservative revolution that preserved institutions. When a revolution threatened the institutions themselves, you opposed it with everything you had. The pattern is consistent, Mr. Burke. Uncomfortable, but consistent.
Edmund Burke: Consistency is a virtue, Mr. Paine. I would recommend it. Though I appreciate that it requires holding more than one idea simultaneously, which remains a challenge.
