THE KNOW-NOTHINGS ARE ALWAYS WITH US:

Here is Trump explaining his proposal to Bill O'Reilly on Fox News: "We're losing so much to so many," including the jobs they're "taking" and "a literal crime wave." "We have to do something about it," Trump explained, because "we're losing our country." The plain meaning of the 14th Amendment -- which states that anyone born in the United States is a citizen -- won't be an obstacle to deportations because "many lawyers are saying that's not the way it is."

And then there was this exchange: "Do you envision federal police kicking in the doors in barrios around the country and dragging families out and putting them on a bus?" asked O'Reilly. "We have to start a process where we take back our country," responded Trump. "Our country is going to hell. We have to start a process . . . where we take back our country."

It is all fun and games until the mass roundups begin. [...]

It is not easy, but now necessary, to start examining Trump's joyful, spontaneous combination of ignorance and malice. Lawyers, of course, can be made to say anything. But they can't prove the 14th Amendment means something other than what it says. In the debates surrounding the amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Republican sponsors of these transformational measures affirmed that citizenship covered "children begotten of Chinese parents" as well as the children of "Gypsies" -- the hated immigrants of their time.

Radical Republicans embraced the principle of jus soli -- the grant of citizenship to those born on our soil -- for a reason. They wanted to constrain future political majorities from stealing the rights of children of any background. It is one of the most radical and wonderful things about the United States. If a desperate, impoverished, undocumented Guatemalan woman has a baby in Dallas today, that baby, when it comes to citizenship and the right to run for president, is Donald Trump's exact equal. And Trump can get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-quarters of state legislatures, to change it -- or he can lump it.

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