Posted on 04/27/2025 8:41:26 AM PDT by MtnClimber
There is something quietly revolutionary in the notion that America, the greatest constitutional republic ever devised, should allocate its political power not according to the number of its citizens, but rather by the raw number of persons who happen to reside within its borders. To speak plainly, it is a betrayal of first principles. If sovereignty belongs to the people, then surely it belongs to the citizenry alone. Yet today, states bloated by millions of non-citizens, including those in violation of our immigration laws, leverage their sheer physical presence to seize more seats in Congress, more electoral votes, and more control over the machinery of government. This distortion was no accident. It was a conscious, deliberate strategy pursued by the Democratic Party, a modern Tammany Hall that has exchanged ballots for bodies, citizenship for presence.
Had only citizens been counted after the 2020 census, Democrats would have lost at least ten seats in the House. Today, the House would stand with a Republican majority not of a precarious few but of twenty-seven seats. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of legislation, the survival of constitutional government, and the structure of American liberty itself hinges on this fundamental issue: who counts.
The Founders were not confused on this matter. When the preamble of the Constitution spoke of "We the People of the United States," it spoke of a sovereign citizenry, not of transient foreign nationals. "The people" were those who owed allegiance to the United States and consented to be governed under its laws. James Madison, that meticulous architect of self-government, spoke of representation founded on the "aggregate number of inhabitants," but it was understood that "inhabitant" carried a meaning inseparable from political membership, allegiance, permanency, belonging.
Nor was this understanding lost upon the generation that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the amendment's text speaks of "the whole number of persons in each state," this was a political compromise, not a philosophical revolution. It was understood that citizenship was the rightful foundation of representation, even if practical politics demanded a broader phrasing. Indeed, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment expressly penalized states that denied the right to vote to adult male citizens, revealing an underlying theory: political power should correlate with the citizenry.
This original understanding is supported, not undermined, by modern jurisprudence. In Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court emphasized that "the achieving of fair and effective representation for all citizens is... the basic aim of legislative apportionment." Not all persons, but citizens. Later cases, such as Franklin v. Massachusetts, confirmed that "persons in each state" encompasses a dimension of allegiance, a permanent tie, rather than mere presence. Thus, nothing in the Constitution compels counting foreign nationals who owe no allegiance and participate in no democratic process.
Why does this matter? Because the alternative is grotesque. In states like California, vast populations of non-citizens, many illegally present, inflate the number of House seats and electoral votes. The votes of citizens in Montana or Ohio are devalued, weighted less heavily than those of citizens living in immigrant-heavy states. This is not representation, it is distortion....SNIP
Citizenship was never a requirement for representation. Even slaves were counted albeit as 3/5’s of a person. That however does not mean only counting citizens is a bad idea. Why should citizens in high immigrant areas effectively get more representation in congress than citizens in low immigration areas? Doesn’t seem fair does it?
With our current Court? Worse.
I have mixed feelings about the filibuster but it is way past time for the majority party to take full responsibility for their agenda be it good or bad.
Good point!
That is why We the People should begin NOW to make our respective cities, counties, states and the FEDGOV DEMOCRAT FREE!
Let us enjoy these four more Trump years and the ensure that JD gets his eight years and JD’s Republican successor has another eight!
20 Trump years ought to be enough time to sort things out to the point that NO DEMOCRAT can be elected! Anywhere!
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