Sure as hell ain't Einstein on the beach

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"Fox & Friends" was doing one of its "Oh, What Has Become Of America, Alas" stories Thursday -- about a Washington DC suburb that decided this week to let noncitizen residents vote in municipal elections -- and so they turned for an opinion to a reliable expert on voting-related matters, Conservative Thought Leader Dinesh D'Souza. Mr. D'Souza knows all about clean elections, since he agreed to a guilty plea on felony election fraud charges in 2014. D'Souza happens to know he was REALLY prosecuted for telling the truth about Barack Obama's hatred of America, anyway. Oh, but he has strong thoughts about who should vote in municipal elections (people who've violated campaign laws) and who shouldn't (noncitizens who pay taxes and use services in a community):

Steve Doocy: Now to the state of Maryland where an important question is being asked: Can you vote if you're not an American citizen? Well, in the city of College Park, the answer is now yes. This week the City Council there voted in favor of allowing undocumented citizens the right to vote in local elections [...]

This is not unique to College Park because there are a number of localities in Maryland that have already voted to do this. What do you think?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, to me it makes no sense because of what citizenship actually means. Citizenship is a kind of bargain among citizens of a country. It comes out of a social compact with certain rights and responsibilities. For example, why would I fight for my country and die for you if you wouldn't be willing to do the same for me? So, this is a very reciprocal deal. And the whole idea of letting non-citizens vote, and shape the governmental process, that falls outside the social compact.

Earth to Outpost Dinesh: NON-CITIZENS SERVE IN OUR ARMY AND DIE ALL THE FUCKING TIME. THE FIRST COMBAT CASUALTY IN IRAQ, MARINE LANCE CORPORAL JOSE GUTIERREZ, WAS A GUATEMALAN IMMIGRANT WHO LIED ABOUT HIS AGE TO GET ASYLUM. Err. Pardon our shouty caps. But the point is, after his death, the federal government made it possible for Gutierrez to gain his citizenship posthumously. Maybe that's a pretty good example of the social contract, Dinesh. And why is military service somehow the example of good citizenship anyway? What does that have to do with the school board? Good lord preserve us -- is Dinesh D'Souza planning a remake of Starship Troopers?

The Great Minds continued, with Doocy offering the insane liberal viewpoint: "Sure, but Dinesh, you know the argument they make is, 'Look, these people are in the country illegally but they're paying taxes, they're impacted by the schools and emergency services. They should have a say in it.'" Good lord, that would be treating non-citizens as actual residents of a town, when in fact they should be shunned and treated like those with the plague, at least until you need yard work done or someone with an H1-B visa to make your computer network run. Fortunately, D'Souza's mighty mind was on it:

Well, I don't think they should because being non-citizens, they need to go through the citizenship path, become citizens, then they get the protections of being a citizen and they also get the benefits of being a citizen.

You realize that citizenship has nothing to do with whether people are paying sales tax, right? At least answer the loaded question, man.

Essentially what they're claiming is -- and you can see why the Democrats want this. The Democrats' interest in these people is their votes. And so the Democrats are more keen to get their votes than they are to get to send them to school or do any other things for them. That's the main political problem. There's a divergence between the interests of a political party and the fundamental meaning of citizenship.

Oh those devious Democrats! They want to take over our municipal elections with foreigners! We wonder if D'Souza's analysis might be affected at all if you consider that in College Park, Maryland, the Mayoral and City Council seats are all nonpartisan. (The city's Nominating forms have no spot for party affiliation, either.) Still, it's a thing D'Souza doesn't like, so Democrats must be behind it. The real question is, how does this make Democrats Just Like The Nazis?

As for the Fox News panic over all the foreigns voting in city elections? The Washington Post notes that in other Maryland municipalities that have allowed it, non-citizens aren't exactly flooding the voting rolls: In one town, only 33 people registered as city-only voters, and of those, only 12 voted in the one election that's taken place since the rule was adopted. In another town, an immigrant horde of 20 non-citizens registered.

Somehow, the Republic may survive. As long as the sanctity of the ballot box is protected from people who want to fudge campaign contributions.

[Media Matters / WaPo / Time / City of College Park]