The most adamant opposition here often comes from FReepers I know to be otherwise conservative, but this is a very emotional issue because of having a foreign spouse, children born to a non-citizen spouse, being born abroad, et cetera. It's personal for them. They can't see the national forest for the trees in their own little backyard.
There have been numerous efforts over the decades to undermine the very legal understanding of the term that you, I and others share, that is in fact the historical understanding. If indeed all the personal emoting on this issue is correct and we are wrong, why have so many Bills been sponsored to change it? It would be wholly unnecessary.
Individuals in positions of Federal power, elected and otherwise, dislike the constraints imposed upon them Constitutionally. This is not a party issue, as the problem exists on both sides of the aisle. The political and bureaucratic classes dream of expanded influence, of a post-national existence, and imagine it to be oh so much better than the limited, deliberately hobbled Constitutional vision of Federal government.
The people of this nation, the posterity to whom the Founders referred, are the big losers. We're to the point that we're now being condemned, even labeled as potential terrorists. Unfettered immigration, legal or not, is intended to overwhelm what ability we have remaining to stop it. They're slowly but surely taking our country away from us, cheered on by myopic erstwhile conservatives boo-hooing because *their* little Honey Boo-Boo should be eligible for the Presidency by golly, no matter how bizarrely remote such a possibility might be.
Nothing is immune at this time. I appreciate discourse and accept change as a part of life, good or bad, but do not appreciate the dishonesty.
If the concept can't be changed or you don't like the connotations or whatever, the create a work around by simply changing the definition.
This is the technique I despise the most, whether with NBC eligibility, anytime abortion, and currently gay marriage and gun control, among others.
Can't redo the 2nd? Then redefine a gun to make it illegal or a magazine illegal or the round itself. Lie if you have to or don't have to, it's their end result that's important, not the integrity of the path to get there
They are masters at these techniques and use them against US, a group of people who are masters only of the moment, with an awareness of nothing more than the span of our own lifetimes and what we want, when we want it.
I don't have much faith we survive with this mindset against those concerted efforts with no viable resistance. They have won or soon will and the republic is dead. Then we get a taste of karma and reality and the consequences of stupidly ignoring history, like the spoiled prodigal children we are.
Beam me out, Scottie. Resistance is futile. We have embraced the decline and I don't want to embrace the destination.