For many years after the establishment of the original Constitution, and until two years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress never authorized the naturalization of any but "free white persons."
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Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional [p675] Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.
We can't go back and change the past. Again, it is what it is. And the Minor court had a very salient point to keep in mind:
Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be. ... If the law is wrong, it ought to be changed; but the power for that is not with us.
Now I'm more confused than before. Pointing out that some of the Founders (as the Franklin quote in #66 did) may have been racist by intending the presidency for white children of white citizens (their "Kind") so as to demonstrate that attitude (citizens born of citizens, who were nearly universally white at the time) toward natural born citizenship is not the same as bushpilot1 advocating that the presidency, in the here and now, should be reserved for white European descendants.
I'm now unconvinced that bushpilot1 didn't get the bum's rush on this one. I've looked through about a dozen pages (so far) of their commentary history and I'm becoming increasingly leaning toward the opinion that if the Mods give a fair review of the posting history, bushpilot1 could very well have their banned/suspended status lifted.
If there are folks here that can point to comments made by this poster that definitively mark them as racist (and putting up images of African/Kenyan tribesmen to point up the lawlessness of the situation doesn't qualify in my opinion), then I'm perfectly willing to weigh that evidence. Until then, I'm not ready to "convict" them simply because they put up historical anecdotes, even anecdotes by founders that are racist by today's standards, unless it can be shown that bushpilot1 advocates such a philosophy. I don't think at this point, based on my admittedly limited knowledge, any fair-minded Mod will, either. Just my $.02.
I've Pinged the extra names (including those I can recall from memory as being "anti-birthers" in the hopes of bringing a broader knowledge base, and therefore hopefully clarity, to bear on the subject.