Posted on 08/14/2013 5:45:12 AM PDT by Perdogg
And you opine that I am begging the question. Like I said, you are good for amusement.
Oh, brother.
I understand your being embarrassed about the past claims you've made. I will do you the courtesy of removing your name.
No, I haven't. Have you?
What I HAVE read is an AWFUL LOT on the meaning of natural born citizen.
An AWFUL lot.
I've read the claims of birthers, and I've read a TON of historical documents, at least to the degree that they mention and discuss the meaning of the phrase. I've read entire court cases. I've read the writings of the birthers, and of those who have stated that the birthers are wrong.
When people have made a point referring to a historical or legal source, I've gone and read that source for myself.
I've read VERY EXTENSIVELY on BOTH SIDES of the issue. Have you?
The problem is that YES, pretty much everybody understood what the phrase meant, but virtually all of the historical evidence indicates that they understood it meant the exact same thing as "natural born subject," except for the difference between "subject" and "citizen."
And the historical evidence for this is very clear. I know you don't understand this. But once you have read extensively and honestly, you see that there is simply no case at all for the birther Constitutional stuff. Or at least as close to "no case at all" as it gets.
You seem to imagine that I picked my side and then argued it. I didn't. I simply went with the historical and legal evidence. And the more I've learned, the more it's confirmed things in the same direction.
I would've been happy enough to say it takes birth on US soil plus two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen if in fact there was the evidence to support the claim.
There isn't. It doesn't exist. Or, to be more accurate, the tiny bit of evidence that's out there that would seem to support such an idea is absolutely steamrollered by all of the evidence that says no, that's not true.
Perhaps you can point out exactly which of your quotes establishes that we adopted Vattel’s idea of citizenship for the meaning of “natural born citizen” in the Constitution.
ROTFL!!!!!
Oh, and by the way, one of your pet sources far from being authoritative; he was in fact a traitor to the Republic who resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate, rather than swear an oath of Allegiance to the United States of America. He also was a defender of slavery and a denier of the literal wording of the Constitution.
Well, I'd be interested in knowing which one. Please enlighten me.
Nathan Dane, the "Father of American Jurisprudence" and the man who wrote the first comprehensive treatment of United States laws, owned by every lawyer worth his salt in the entire country, and also the man whose proposal led to us having a Constitution in the first place, said the citizenship was real.
I think I'll go with Nathan Dane.
There isn't. It doesn't exist. Or, to be more accurate, the tiny bit of evidence that's out there that would seem to support such an idea is absolutely steamrollered by all of the evidence that says no, that's not true.<.i>
That's just pure BS.
Oh contraire, you're the one who gets absolutely steamrolled here.
George Washington Consulted the Legal Treatise "Law of Nations" during his First Day in Office
I’ve said many times that Vattel was given credence when it came to international law. He was a writer on the “law of nations.”
There’s not the slightest evidence the Founding Fathers paid the slightest attention to his ideas of citizenship.
Can YOU produce such evidence? No. All you can do is post stupid links saying the Founding Fathers consulted Vattel.
Well, we knew that already. They consulted literally dozens of other writers, too.
On the contrary, I am giving you the absolute, straightforward truth.
I'm the one person here who ISN'T BSing you.
Look, if the evidence for the stupid birther claim is so great, then why can't they find even one conservative of any stature to sign off on it?
It's all nonsense. I mean really. Pure, unadulterated nonsense.
No Jeffy that's totally not true and you know it.
Can YOU produce such evidence? No. All you can do is post stupid links saying the Founding Fathers consulted Vattel.
They are not stupid but your intransigence sure is.
Can YOU produce such evidence?
Chief Justice John Marshall in his opinion quoting someone we know.
"The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights."
And before you claim "natives' or "indigenes" does not mean "natural" like you no doubtably have before, we go with the dictionary and not you.
You really can't get around it because there it is, parents that are citizens and born in country. All else is obfuscation and BS.
Jeff, those are yet again just a load of self-serving falsehoods. The phrases, natural born subject and natural born citizen, are not and cannot be interchangeable synonyms, because they often arise from diametriavally opposing principles of law. England at different stages in its history has employed jus sanguinis, jus soli, and an assortment of modified combinations of the two to comprise its nationality laws. France has likewise used an assortment of combinations of these legal principles. The advent of feudal law had its varying impacts on these determinations of nationality and citizenship. Manmade law is subject to change, but natural law is not. As the very words signify, natural born citizenship is dderived from the unchanging law of nature and the principles of natural law.
A natural born citizen could conceivably be born outside the jurisdiction of the parents single sovereign, but in practice we have a most difficult time finding such a circumstance permitting this to occur. The reason is quite simple. Whenever a child is born into a circumstance where there is only one sovereign to whom the child must be obedient, absent an artificial and unnatural law made by man there can then be no other possible sovereignty in which the child can have citizenship at birth.
There were periods of time in which France only recognized jus sanguinis or a form of the ancient Roman principle of law for inheriting citizenship by blood relationship to the state. Person born in France in those times whose parents were aliens were themselves natural born aliens in France. Although such persons were born as aliens in France, there was put into place a means by which the person could claim and be considered as citizens of France from birth by being naturalized as a citizen of France at birth and owing an obligation of obediance the French sovereign. This is the same principle of naturalization of an alien at birth discussed by Sir Edward Coke in Calvin’s Case 1608.
Notwithstanding the erroneous assertions of the U.S. State Department’s foreign affairs manual to the contrary, U.S. recognition of U.S. citizenship for a child born abraod with a U.S. parent is based upon this ancient practice of naturalizing an alien child and/or alien born at birth. it is this conflation in terminologies and practices which has spawned so much confusion and controversy about natural born citizenship as well as many other issues of citizenship over the span of centuries.
Despite all, the natural born citizen clause still means exactly what it meant centuries ago, because it is iherently based upon the natural circumstances of the birth and not upon the changeable and changing application of the unnatural manmade common laws and statutory laws. As any legal and many general puropse dictionaries reveal, to be natural means to be absent manmade acts of law. Under the principles of the word origin and natural law, no manmade laws are used to determine the citizenship of a natural born citizen. By the inherent meaning of natural born citizen, the citizenship is determined the natural circumstances and not by the unnatural laws of man.
"(2) The Venus, 12 U.S. (8 Cranch) 253, 289 (1814) (Chief Justice John Marshall, concurring and dissenting for other reasons, cited Vattel and provided his definition of natural born citizens and said: “Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says ‘The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights’”);"
No Jeffy that's totally not true and you know it.
Of course it's true.
I invited you to cite such evidence. You can't.
If you have any evidence whatsoever that the Founding Fathers paid the slightest attention AT ALL to Vattel's ideas ON CITIZENSHIP, then cite it. And I mean his ideas for HOW THE UNITED STATES OUGHT TO DEFINE CITIZENSHIP, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A MEMBER OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED STATES ITSELF.
The absolute best anyone can come up with is the fact that Chief Justice John Marshall DID cite the Vattel "citizenship" passage in The Venus.
But he DIDN'T CITE IT FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRYING TO DEFINE WHAT AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP WAS.
He cited it for the purpose of quoting Vattel on the extent to which a country might regard one of its own citizens living in a foreign country as being - temporarily - a member of that country, versus his normal "character" as one of their own citizens.
And more specifically, what it meant for a person to LIVE, or have his DOMICILE, in a foreign land.
That's not a citation of Vattel for defining United States citizenship.
In fact, the person's citizenship was never in question. It was agreed by everybody that he was a United States citizen.
The only thing that was in question was the extent to which he should be respected as such, given that he was living among our enemies.
And THAT - the interrelationship of countries who are at odds, or at war, with each other, was something that was rightly touched upon by the "law of nations," or international law.
“Nathan Dane, the “Father of American Jurisprudence” and the man who wrote the first comprehensive treatment of United States laws[...]said the citizenship was real.”
There you go again with the slimy dishonesty. Dane’s publication makes no mention of “honorary citizenship” or discusses it, and we’ve already seen in this discussion how the allegations were proven to falsehoods. The fact remains there were no obligations of obediance to a foreign sovereign imposed upon the acts granting the honorary citizenships. Foreign citizenship is in conflict with U.S. law only insofar as ti entails an obligation/s to a foreign soveriegn in conflict with the duty of obediance to the U.S. sovereign citizens and their U.S. Constitution and State constitutions.
Simply not true.
In order for something to be a falsehood, it has to be false. As far as I know, I haven't said a single thing in this thread that's false. Everything I've said is true.
As far as self-serving goes, I really don't have a dog in this fight. I really don't give that much of a damn one way or the other.
Except that I DO insist that whatever our history and our law is, then we OUGHT TO RESPECT IT.
Which birthers absolutely do not do.
The phrases, natural born subject and natural born citizen, are not and cannot be interchangeable synonyms, because they often arise from diametriavally opposing principles of law.
Here you go again with BIRTHER THEORY.
History is not about some THEORY that you or some birther cooked up. Hey, the Founding Fathers said THIS! Oh, really? Did you get that from evidence, or just because it sounds good? Well, hang on. I'll find some evidence to back it up.
That's bullsh*t.
History is about WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY DID AND DID NOT DO AND SAY.
And in THIS case, as just one example, the State of Massachusetts used the two terms "natural born subjects" and "natural born citizens" in ABSOLUTELY THE SAME WAY, INTERCHANGING THEM BACK AND FORTH.
So apparently they didn't get the memo you sent out.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
To anyone who really understands all of the history, the birther claim is absolute and total bullsh*t.
It is time for you to put up or shut up. Proved the readers with the exact quotation and citation in which Dane uses the phrase “honorary citizenship” and then proceeds to define the phrase. If you fail to do so, we must conclude you made false statements while knowing you had no credible source to support or substantiate those statements, i.e. you lied.
It is time for you to put up or shut up. Proved [Provide] the readers with the exact quotation and citation in which Dane uses the phrase “honorary citizenship” and then proceeds to define the phrase. If you fail to do so, we must conclude you made false statements while knowing you had no credible source to support or substantiate those statements, i.e. you lied.
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