The Study

I’ve been having a good-faith argument with a Trump supporter recently over whether Trump deserves to be suspected of having tyrannical ambitions. I’m presenting my argument here on the off chance it might be useful to you when addressing Trump supporters in your own lives.

And I think a lot of Trump supporters will welcome this, too, because it’s grounded in verifiable facts and not just “orange man bad!”-style thinking.

Defining Tyranny

First, let’s agree that Korematsu was an outrageous act of tyranny perpetrated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt stripped millions of Americans of their core Constitutional right to live freely in exchange for obeying the law. He had precisely zero authority to do this, and not even an obsequious Supreme Court could make it right. If we can agree on this, maybe we can agree on these next definitions:

• When a leader strips Americans of our rights by any means other than the rule of law, that leader is a tyrant.
• When a leader declares their intent to strip Americans of our rights by any means other than the rule of law, that leader has announced their tyrannical ambitions.

The Right to Be American

Next up: birthright citizenship in the United States. Under the Fourteenth Amendment,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Trump and his fellow citizenship-deniers like to claim that children of immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction [of the United States],” but that’s, well, bullshit, and five minutes of research will reveal it.

The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in 1868. Twelve years later Justice Thomas Cooley finished his law textbook, The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America. It was published in three editions, two in 1891 and one in 1898. Quoting from the 1898 edition:

The fourteenth amendment indicates the two methods in which one may become a citizen: first, by birth in the United States; and, second, by naturalization therein. But a citizen by birth must not only be born within the United States, but he must also be subject to the jurisdiction thereof; and by this is meant that full and complete jurisdiction to which citizens generally are subject, and not any qualified and partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some other government. The amendment, therefore, affirms the citizenship of children born within the United States of all persons, of whatever race or color; but it does not affirm the citizenship “of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory.”

Cooley’s Third Edition benefitted from a very recent Supreme Court decision, Wong Kim Ark (1898), wherein the American-born son of two Chinese nationals had his citizenship denied by the United States government on the grounds that his parentage meant he wasn’t subject to our jurisdiction. SCOTUS disagreed with exceptional vigor. Since Cooley’s final sentence quotes Wong Kim Ark, we know Cooley was keeping up with the latest jurisprudence: and since Wong Kim Ark is still the latest jurisprudence, Cooley’s remarks are still on-point.

Recap

Whew.

So let’s recap. We’ve done a lot of work defining and researching, so it’s time to summarize before moving on

• When a leader declares their intent to strip Americans of our rights by any means other than the rule of law, that leader has announced their tyrannical ambitions.
• All people born in the United States (save “children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory”) enjoy American citizenship as a blackletter right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump, In His Own Words

Now let’s look at Trump. In an Axios interview first shown on HBO on November 4, 2018, he declared openly that he was going to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants via executive order. He said it was in process and was going to happen.

In his 2024 re-election campaign he declared, “As part of my plan to secure the border, on Day One of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”

In his first post-re-election interview with Meet the Press, he repeated his intention to strip millions of a Constitutional right via executive order.

So this isn’t some gaffe or some half-baked thought. For at least six years, it has been Trump’s aim to—like FDR—violate the Constitutional rights of millions of Americans by executive order. To violate one of the rights most prized by Americans: the right to be American.

And so, my open question to Trump supporters:

The Important Question

How do you deny his openly and long-held tyrannical ambitions?

Sean had some kind words. They’re always appreciated. (Sean accidentally posted this under his real-name account on social media, so I’m omitting the header for the privacy of Sean and his family.)

I’ve known Sean Fenian since 2011, which I remember because I purchased my Mustang GT a few weeks before. He invited me to the real-world Fenian House for the Fourth of July and despite the distance I thought the voyage would make a perfect first road trip. We’d known of each other before then, mostly through some mailing lists, but that Fourth of July I arrived as a guest and left as a brother.

About a year and a half ago Sean decided he was going to take a stab at writing a novel, and asked me for some feedback. At that early point of development it was nearly unreadable, a gangly teenager who didn’t understand their own limbs and kept stumbling into furniture. So, I helped my friend: I told him what worked and what didn’t, I explained some of how police operations and law firms work, and sometimes rewrote a few paragraphs here or there.

I did that consistently for eighteen months and the next thing I knew I’d written a significant fraction of the novel and lightly dusted the rest of it with my ideas. I didn’t set out to be a co-author but it turns out I became one.

Anyway.

Sean’s in final production mode on Becoming Real and Because It Tells Me To. They’re off for a final look from a professional editor—both of us are of the mindset professional editing isn’t optional—and will be on Amazon most likely before Christmas.

More details are available at Fenian House.

After the drama of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election I distracted myself by banging out twenty thousand words in a week. That’s a lot of distracting. What emerged from it was a bridge between two larger novels, covering eight hours in the life of Arkady Golinov as he adjusts to living in the underbelly of Paradise.

I’m currently in the process of acquiring cover art for it. Until then, an art-free ARC is available in the Free Library.

The Free Library is meant for those who can’t afford my stuff on Amazon. All others are on their honor to pay list price through your preferred ebook outlet. It’ll be there once the cover art is done.