At some point it becomes necessary to ask what, exactly, MAGA-style "conservatives" are conserving with their attempt to end birthright citizenship — because it's certainly not the Constitution, the legacy of the Republican Party or the preservation of the American dream.

This week, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on President Donald Trump's attempt to narrow the scope of the 14th Amendment by executive order, sparking plenty of emotional outrage among his critics — including a profanity-laced tirade by a member of Nevada's congressional delegation.

However, the president's attempt to rewrite a constitutional amendment by diktat should also be the sort of thing conservatives find objectionable, regardless of how they happen to feel about the policy itself. After all, Republicans who value the sweeping protections provided by the plain language of other constitutional amendments — such as that of the Second Amendment, for example — should be at least as indignant as the demonstrators who gathered in protest outside the court this week.

Of course, we don't live in an era where ideological consistency is a staple of partisan political movements. As a result, the sort of constitutional originalism the American right used to champion is apparently in short supply.

The silence from Republicans and conservatives was made even more stunning this week as Trump sat in the Supreme Court building, staring down the justices, while his administration argued in favor of eroding a constitutional amendment that was once a point of immense pride for his own party.

That's a sad departure from the reverence conservative Republicans once had for their party's role in passing such a critical civil rights amendment. After all, the 14th Amendment wasn't merely about cleaning up a few loose ends after the Civil War — it was instead about expanding the promises ensconced in our founding documents to those who had otherwise been deemed unworthy, undesirable or even subhuman by huge swaths of the public.

Indeed, the 1866-68 debates over the ratification of the amendment focused heavily on how the language would go beyond newly freed slaves in awarding citizenship. For example, when some worried senators noted that Chinese immigrant children might become United States citizens as a result of the amendment, Sen. John Conness (R-CA) proudly argued that such eventualities were something to laud, not lament.

"We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law," Conness told skeptics within his own party.

A mere 30 years later, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed Conness' understanding of birthright citizenship, ruling that, yes, even a child of Chinese migrants was a citizen of our nation by virtue of being born in America.

In other words, the 14th Amendment was a deliberate and purposeful effort to ensure that being an "American" wasn't some elite title reserved only for a precious few, but instead a sweeping and broad protection of equal treatment for as many people as possible.

Much like our history of robust immigration itself, the legacy that amendment created is a part of what makes our nation so exceptional — a perspective that much of the GOP used to understand before Trump's nativism swept through the party.

Ronald Reagan, for example, celebrated the way American citizenship was unique, specifically because it wasn't based on lineage. As he proudly declared in his final speech in office, "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American."

And that belief — the notion that embracing the world's "huddled masses" made us extraordinary — should naturally extend to the children of those who "crawled over walls, under barbed wire, through minefields, or risked their lives in leaky, makeshift boats" to share in our American dream.

After all, what use is there in "Making America Great Again" if we then seal the nation off from the rest of the world? What higher betrayal of American freedom is there than sending babies born on our soil back to the cruel oppression, poverty or corruption to be found in the distant lands from which their parents fled?

To be sure, there is plenty of latitude in our current system for improving immigration enforcement. A nation with borders, after all, has a right to protect those borders against terrorism, drug cartels or other foreign threats that would harm our citizens.

However, the war on birthright citizenship goes beyond mere enforcement of our borders.

Refusing citizenship to children due to the status of their parents is a profoundly dispiriting restriction of the American dream. This administration's attempt to do so with nothing more than a monarchical reinterpretation of a constitutional amendment is an affront to our democratic process. And if successful, the end result would be an abdication of our nation's historical promise to expand the liberty, opportunity and freedom for those who call America home.

If such lawlessly executed nativist policy is representative of modern-day conservatism, then the movement is clearly no longer interested in building a "shining city upon a hill" for future generations. Instead, it seems to be actively tearing it down to make way for some "big, beautiful wall" — or maybe to clear space for a ballroom.  

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichaelor on Substack @creativediscourse.