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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   29742 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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I’m not sure to what degree the founders would have contemplated an international crime ring that sells deadly drugs and enforces their terf with extreme violence. Sure they’re not a state in the sense of a flag, national anthem, and Olympic team, but on the other hand by such a measure neither are, Palestine, Islamic State, Tibet, or Transnitria. If members of a group affiliated with Hamas infiltrated the United States, then is the Alien Enemies Act out of the question? Palestine isn’t a state per the UN, so Hamas isn’t the head of a recognized government. So, could we do something here?

The same session of congress that passed the Alien Enemies Act also passed the Alien Friends Act (which expired and is no longer on the books) which authorized the President to deport any alien that “he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof”, so it seems like they contemplated a difference between insidious conduct that just happens to be committed by an alien, and an alien hailing from a hostile foreign nation.

I don't understand what the "founders" have to do with anything. We are not interpreting some obscure or abstract constitutional provision. The Alien Enemies Act is a statute passed by the Fifth Congress of the United States in 1798. It uses the words "government" and "nation." If Congress wanted it to mean something else they have had over 200 years to change it.

Given that they had direct experience with various forms of piracy, I think this claim is hilariously ahistorical.

Pirates had a defined status at the time- hosti humani generis, enemies of everyone, for whom jurisdiction didn’t apply.

Absolutely. And the AEA wasn't part of the response to them.

Sure they’re not a state in the sense of a flag, national anthem, and Olympic team, but on the other hand by such a measure neither is Palestine, Islamic State, Tibet, or Transnistria.

Definition of "state" under the Montevideo Convention:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Using that definition, Wikipedia includes Palestine and Transnistria in its list of sovereign states. The Islamic State and the cartels fail item b, while Tibet fails item d. (On the same page, Wikipedia does explicitly note that Palestine "has no agreed territorial borders", so one could argue that it fails item b as well.)

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