The Founders were not a monolithic whole. There were disagreements among the Founders on practically every substantive constitutional issue and many issues were resolved only by compromise. After all, “politics is the art of compromise” and many Founders were politicians. For example The Founders decided on direct popular election of the House of Representatives only and Senators were indirectly elected by state legislatures (The Connecticut Compromise of 1787). In 1913, the Founders’ plan for the structure of the federal government was abolished by the 17th Amendment and since then Senators have been popularly elected.
The Founders made it difficult, but not impossible to change their original thinking on any constitutional issue via the amendment process.
The Supreme Court said in 1875 that: “The Constitution does not say, in words, who shall be natural born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to determine that.”—Minor v. Happersett
Since 1868 and the adoption of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, only two classes of citizens have existed, born citizens and naturalized citizens. There is no category “natural born citizen” that is separate and distinct from “Citizen of the United States at Birth.” They are one and the same.
The category “Born Citizens” does make provision for persons born “over the sea” (as it says in the Naturalization Act of 1790) to be Citizens of the United States at Birth. That continues today.
[...] only two classes of citizens have existed, born citizens and naturalized citizens.Sorry, all citizens are equal under the law. You are mistaking qualifications required to be president with nonexistent classes of citizenship. A president must be at least 35 years old, have been 14 years a resident and must either be a Citizen from the time of the adoption of the Constitution or otherwise be a natural born Citizen (and must also be elected or succeed an existing president).
Just as no separate classes of citizens exist based on age, no separate classes exist based on how one became a citizen. All citizens are equal under the law. No citizens are more equal than others.
Regarding the eligibility clause, the founders were simply interested in ensuring as best as possible that our presidents be loyal, 100 percent red-blooded Americans who had lived here long enough and were old and wise enough to be immune to developing divided allegiances via the intrigues of foreign agents. The founders wanted a president who lived and breathed Americana, a "homey" if you will, that is, someone who just wouldn't have it in their blood to be anything else.
These are the commonsense obvious intentions of the presidential eligibility restrictions. The founders wanted only someone who had it in their very bones to put America first, not some untrustworthy, ill-intentioned, self-proclaimed "citizen of the world" such as aka obama, the foreign agent criminal identity fraud we are now suffering under.
Those who claim that the founders did not intend to block from the presidency a child of illegal aliens who was merely born here, then raised by foreign parents in a foreign land with anti-American values, who then merely returned for 14 years upon adulthood just to learn how to act American, are either insane or the enemies of America.
The eligibility clause was not meant to be a "progressive" post-modern, watered down nothing. It was meant to have real teeth that would keep out any but those who are exclusive, 100 percent red-blooded Americans without a whiff of foreign allegiances. It was fully intended to be a safe-rather-than-sorry clause that, in the interests of protecting the new republic, would exclude many people who might otherwise make fine presidents.