Philosophy Now Forum

mickthinks wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 11:46 am Indeed, the current Republican administration’s assault on American freedoms is such an obvious party-destroying election loser, it makes no sense for them to be pursuing this course unless they also have aready put in place a plan to prevent free and fair elections.

Indeed so. Unlocking all these new Presidential Power Ups, authorizing the man in the big chair to just not agree with the Supreme Court and say "fuck it, no due process for that guy" is the sort of thing that's definitely going to backfire unless they do something to make it illegal for the bad Dem guys to wield such unchallengeable authority.

Indeed, the current Republican administration’s assault on American freedoms is such an obvious party-destroying election loser, it makes no sense for them to be pursuing this course unless they also have already put in place a plan to prevent free and fair elections.

It has been said that Republicans are, from time to time, good at winning elections, but bad at the administration of power. I.e. holding on to or consolidating that power; extending it.

The recent blatant mistakes and bad management of their extraordinary opportunity could be presented as evidence of the theory. They achieved unprecedented support from unlikely factions within the electorate. And if the mistakes continue mounting will likely lose that marginal support.

It does not follow that they have a plan to eliminate elections. That is paranoid speculation in over-heated minds. Part of the disease of the present.

It has been speculated that the Democrat party participated in or allowed and encouraged the in-flow of millions of migrants because it would continue a demographic process favorable to the Democrats. While different, perhaps, from eliminating elections altogether, it is nevertheless evidence of the nature of the political and social games being played. Going right up to the edge of what is legal.

The present breakdown in social and political and cultural agreements, and the breakdown of the willingness to “play fair”, is symptomatic of conditions of “civil strife” — a precursor to more serious divisions. And both sides have been, are, and will play dirty.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:06 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 11:20 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 9:38 pm
Important point. But no particular jurisprudential point Flash raised was refuted.

I did that earlier. "Due process" is only useful for people who have some reason why they should be where they are. In order to make an appeal, one has to have some grounds. Exactly what would one's "appeal" sound like, if one has nothing to say?

According to interpretations of the law by US courts, all "persons" are guaranteed the right to due process.

What's the answer to my final question, there?

Imagine you've been picked up as an illegal migrant. You have a right to "due process." Okay. What's your excuse for being in the US, in a gang, selling drugs and prostitutes, killing children and soaking up the Biden benefits. How will you employ "due process" to your aid?

Let's hear the defense you would mount.

See, it's like if you come home, and there's somebody in your house. He's broken a window to get in. He's stealing your stuff, and he's assaulted your wife and children, and made himself comfortable in your easy chair, and is eating food out of your refrigerator. What's his reasonable defense for being there?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:23 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 11:20 pm I did that earlier. "Due process" is only useful for people who have some reason why they should be where they are. In order to make an appeal, one has to have some grounds. Exactly what would one's "appeal" sound like, if one has nothing to say?

Due process — in the American jurisprudential tradition — is due to anyone who finds himself in the United States.

That's not my question. My question is, what would your appeal sound like, if you're an illegal migrant? Let's hear the case you would use, in order to bring "due process" to your aid.

If you don't have any, then "due process" is moot. It can't do you any good anyway. In theory, you'd have a right to it -- but in practice, it would be useless to you.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 12:10 pm I ask Immanuel: Where do you get your facts and figures from?

Which "facts and figures"? Do you mean the deportation of illegals? You can go here, for example. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-m ... hly-update

So much stupid nonsense could have been prevented had Immanuel Can simply put his arrogance aside for once and watched the youtube video I offered him.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:18 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 12:10 pm I ask Immanuel: Where do you get your facts and figures from?

Which "facts and figures"? Do you mean the deportation of illegals? You can go here, for example. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-m ... hly-update

I guessed your source is is trump friendly one. I think we need advice on how to source disinterested statistical information and interpretation.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:30 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:18 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 12:10 pm I ask Immanuel: Where do you get your facts and figures from?

Which "facts and figures"? Do you mean the deportation of illegals? You can go here, for example. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-m ... hly-update

I guessed your source is is trump friendly one. I think we need advice on how to source disinterested statistical information and interpretation.

You guessed wrong. It's the government source. It's the same department that was in place when Biden was incumbent.

But let's have the information you consider relevant, instead. What's your allegation, and what's your source for it?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 12:46 pm It does not follow that they have a plan to eliminate elections.

Ah, you’ve mistaken my point. Naturally they won’t eliminate elections, any more than Putin has eliminated elections, or Erogan, or Kim, or Orban, or Xi.

They will engineer elections that guarantee success for the candidates of their choosing. The have gone a long way towards that goal already: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/ ... ction-vote

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:27 pm So much stupid nonsense could have been prevented had Immanuel Can simply put his arrogance aside for once and watched the youtube video I offered him.

I did. It was a cartoon summary. It didn't say anything we didn't already know. It just told us what "due process" entails, but not that it applies to non-citizens who are illegally in the country.

From the vid, I must assume you think that the "deprivation" is "of liberty." But it's not. For one thing, liberty is not guaranteed to apply to criminals, and illegal migrants are inherently criminals, having willfully violated at least one federal statute by illegally entering the States, their guilt being adequately established merely by their being where they are, without a visa, green card, etc. That's a criminal trespass, and one they know is criminal, since they chose not to enter at any of the official checkpoints or to seek normal immigration processes. QED, case closed.

Moreover, after deportation, a Venezuelan or an El Salvadorian gangbanger is being returned to his own country; what happens there is not under US arbitration, but rather the arbitration of the country to which he is native. So the US Is not violating his rights by sending him home. They're just putting him back where he was supposed to be in the first place, and where he used to live anyway.

So you're just not on point. Sorry.

But if you have an answer as to how a Venezuelan gangbanger can employ "due process" to prove he deserves to be in the US, I'll hear it. What's his defense?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:15 pm That's not my question. My question is, what would your appeal sound like, if you're an illegal migrant? Let's hear the case you would use, in order to bring "due process" to your aid.

I am not in favor of illegals gaining access and certainly not being able to finagle a way to remain. If there is to be immigration it should only be through legal application. And if the process is now too slow (it takes years I have been told) then the powers that be should speed it up.

The man in question, by hook or by crook, had a limited legal status. Fact. And he was deported illegally. That is the aspect of this case that has relevance: respect for the rule of law.

If there are to be millions of deportations of people who entered illegally in the last 4-5 years, let that go forward. And streamline the appeal process so that a minimum of consideration be given to each case. If they are illegal, they are illegal. Period.

But the processes must be protected. And it cannot be carried out extra-judicially.

I have no sound reason to invent the tale that a given illegal immigrant might tell. The judge will hear the BS story, dismiss it, and deportation will proceed.

I have shown here, dear Immanuel, the sort of straight thinking that I teach. Please, don’t go sideways on me again! It makes me very angry.

I would feel very proud of you if you would simply say: “Yes, Master Alexis! Thank you!”

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:49 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:30 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:18 pm
Which "facts and figures"? Do you mean the deportation of illegals? You can go here, for example. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-m ... hly-update

I guessed your source is is trump friendly one. I think we need advice on how to source disinterested statistical information and interpretation.

You guessed wrong. It's the government source. It's the same department that was in place when Biden was incumbent.

But let's have the information you consider relevant, instead. What's your allegation, and what's your source for it?

In the US today, it's a Trump government.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released operational statistics today for February 2025. CBP monthly reporting can be viewed on CBP’s Stats and Summaries webpag

mickthinks wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:58 pm They will engineer elections that guarantee success for the candidates of their choosing.

Each side attempts the same, through differing methods.

Tightening up the regulations to ensure that only authorized citizens vote is a proper and necessary endeavor, in my view.

I certainly could not come up with a good argument in support of relaxing regulations.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:04 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:27 pm So much stupid nonsense could have been prevented had Immanuel Can simply put his arrogance aside for once and watched the youtube video I offered him.

I did. It was a cartoon summary. It didn't say anything we didn't already know. It just told us what "due process" entails, but not that it applies to non-citizens who are illegally in the country.

From the vid, I must assume you think that the "deprivation" is "of liberty." But it's not. For one thing, liberty is not guaranteed to apply to criminals, and illegal migrants are inherently criminals, having willfully violated at least one federal statute by illegally entering the States, their guilt being adequately established merely by their being where they are, without a visa, green card, etc. That's a criminal trespass, and one they know is criminal, since they chose not to enter at any of the official checkpoints or to seek normal immigration processes. QED, case closed.

Moreover, after deportation, a Venezuelan or an El Salvadorian gangbanger is being returned to his own country; what happens there is not under US arbitration, but rather the arbitration of the country to which he is native. So the US Is not violating his rights by sending him home. They're just putting him back where he was supposed to be in the first place, and where he used to live anyway.

So you're just not on point. Sorry.

But if you have an answer as to how a Venezuelan gangbanger can employ "due process" to prove he deserves to be in the US, I'll hear it. What's his defense?

Your understanding of the matter is entirely at odds with precedent set by the Supreme Court.

Here's the lawshelf blog on the matter.
https://www.lawshelf.com/blogentryview/ ... ted-states

The phrase “due process” appears in two places in the Constitution. The first reference to it is in the Fifth Amendment which reads “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”[4] The second reference is in the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”[5]

The due process clauses guarantee fair procedures in government adjudications, such as trials.[6] They also limit government regulation that deprives people of rights, such as the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and those that can affect the ability to participate in the political process.[7]

Two Supreme Court cases dating back to the late nineteenth century have established that non-citizens, even those who are in the United States illegally, are also guaranteed due process of the law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.[8]

The first is Yick Wo v. Hopkins, where the Supreme Court had to analyze the constitutionality of a San Francisco ordinance that required all laundries in wooden buildings to obtain permits from the city to operate.[9] At the time, 89 percent of the city’s laundries were owned by people of Chinese descent and the board didn’t grant a single Chinese owner a permit to operate. The city’s sheriff arrested the petitioner, a Chinese immigrant who had lived in the United States for 22 years, when he refused to pay the fine for operating his laundry without a permit. The Court struck down the city ordinance, stating:

“The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: ‘Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality…”

Thus, the entirety of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to all people in the United States, not just US citizens.

Ten years later, in Wong Wing v. United States, a Chinese immigrant who had illegally entered the U.S. was found to have violated the Chinese Exclusion Act. A commissioner sentenced him to imprisonment by hard labor and deportation as punishment. After his conviction, the petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus to argue against his detention but was denied a hearing. The Court ruled that while government can forbid non-citizens from entering and can deport legal and illegal aliens, it was unconstitutional for the government to impose punishment without “a judicial trial to establish the guilt of the accused”[10] under the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of procedural due process prior to a deprivation of life, liberty or property. As used in the Fifth Amendment, “the term ‘person’…is broad enough to include any and every human being with the jurisdiction of the republic.”

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:09 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:15 pm That's not my question. My question is, what would your appeal sound like, if you're an illegal migrant? Let's hear the case you would use, in order to bring "due process" to your aid.

I am not in favor of illegals gaining access and certainly not being able to finagle a way to remain. If there is to be immigration it should only be through legal application. And if the process is now too slow (it takes years I have been told) then the powers that be should speed it up.

We agree on all of that.

But I'm not seeing what a defense of one of these characters would be.

I have no sound reason to invent the tale that a given illegal immigrant might tell.

Exactly.

Thank you for answering. However, since nobody can explain how they could ever use "due process" to justify their presence in the US, what utility does it have to them? And how can we be justifiably concerned about somebody's "due process" being removed from them? It's like the Lefties complaining that porpoises are being deprived of Teslas: one cannot be being "deprived" of something one simply cannot need or use.

They're illegally and willfully where they're not allowed to be, even if they aren't also committing additional criminal acts like drug-running, rape, child murder and theft...which many of them also are, of course, but is a separate issue.

I find it fascinating that the Lefties always want to complain about "process" things, but not about truth or results. Here's another example: they complain elaborately that government cuts are being done the wrong way...by which, it seems, they're not meaning inefficiently, not unjustly, and not without quite clear justification, but just...impolitely or not-nicely, in some vague sense. And this, they hope to ramp up to some sort of allegation of extremism. But what they do not dare to contest is the important issue: whether or not the graft, inefficiency and outright theft of public funds that has been the rule on Washington was actually going on. The evidence is far too elaborate that it has been, and to the tune of billions and billions of taxpayer dollars.

Now, you would think that Lefties, who claim to want Socialism, would be urgently concerned that government, which after all, they want to have total responsibility for the welfare of all citizens in all ways, should become the most efficient and streamlined it can be. Only in that way can property be most equitably and maximally distributed to all citizens, and all government bureaus deliver the most value to every citizen. The more money the government can efficiently channel, the more government benefits the ordinary American can have, right?

But the Dems don't care a fig for that: they want the waste, graft and inefficiency not only to continue but to expand...which is actually about the most elitists, anti-Socialist stand they could possibly take...at least, in theory. In practice, it's just business as usual for the Socialist state.