Notes from a Disillusioned Democrat

Donald Trump advocates abolishing birthright citizenship, the US policy enshrined in the constitution that all people born in the US have American citizenship. Presumably, the reason for this proposal is to discourage pregnant women from crossing the border to give birth and to make it easier to deport undocumented persons from other countries even if they have immediate family members born here. I believe that ending birthright citizenship is a mistake because it may create a permanent underclass of people who are born in America but who do not fully belong to Amerca.   In the mid-1980s, I spent six months backpacking around Europe and spent a considerable amount of time in Germany. Germany at the time had a guestworker program because it needed laborers. Germany does not have birthright citizenship and had, at the time, only a very cumbersome and difficult procedure for acquring citizenship although the laws have been liberalized since then. What that meant in practice i...

  Deus Vult: Onward, Trumpian Soldiers Many Americans have reacted with disbelief to Trump’s cabinet picks. Matthew Gaetz, a man under a congressional ethics investigation for sex trafficking as Attorney General?   RFK Jr, the man who accused an innocent African American man of murder, as Secretary of Health and Human Services?   Even worse than these picks, though, is the decision to appoint Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Both men have swallowed the potent Kool Aid of Christian Zionism, an ideology that blends ethnic nationalism (for Israelis) and religious fanaticism. This ideology, when combined with their total lack of relevant qualifications to hold these posts, threatens the world with an even wider war than the one already raging. In his book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free , Hegseth makes his disdain for Muslims clear. In the first chapter, he criticizes Ilhan Omar, a Muslim, hijab-wearing member of Co...