You may not see it, but Tounchen is playing an intentionally twisted game of semantics here, putting qualifiers on things that do not need to be qualified, like “prove” and “verify” and “believe,” which is classic LEFTIST LIBERAL DISINFORMATION. He repeatedly uses the term, “believe,” as a meaningless qualifier. Nobody can say what another person “believes” on any given day.
Think Clinton, vis-a-vis Lewinsky:
“I did not have SEX with that woman,” (Was Bubba defining SEX for the purposes of his impeachment proceedings, and did he BELIEVE that he did not have sex? A lie is a lie.).
It is the same old baloney that I got from the trolls who would say things like, “Well you haven’t proven anything,” and “You haven’t seen the document,” and “Only a forensic document examiner can do that,” and so on. His intent should be obvious, really, as he keeps setting up one straw man after another with the intent to have us believe that Obama was born in Hawaii.
EVERYONE knows the straw men of the Left in regards to anything that Obama is hiding. They begin something like this:
“Well, if X is true about Obama, don’t you think that Hillary would have known? Don’t you think that she would have done Y”
These are the “Don’t you think” rhetorical questions I mentioned in my review.
They are similar to Socratic reasoning where A is the premise, B is the qualifier, and C is the conclusion. Note how I use his actual statements below:
A. The State of Hawaii would not have knowingly issued a Hawaiian birth certificate to anyone born outside of Hawaii.
B. The President’s original 1961 birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii.
C. Therefore, the President was born in Hawaii.
Now, here are all of his “Obama was born in Hawaii” quotes [along with my comments in brackets]:
1. President Obama has published, on the Internet, a digital photograph of a computer-generated short-form Certification of Life Birth. [Premise: a Hawaiian document that says he was born in Hawaii +1]
2. The President’s original 1961 birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii.[Another premise +2]
3. Birthers do not dispute either of these two facts. [another iteration of the same claim +3]
3. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that President Obama’s original Hawaiian birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii. [another iteration of the same claim +4]
4. Under the laws that were in effect in Hawaii when Barack Obama was born, the State of Hawaii would not have knowingly issued a Hawaiian birth certificate to anyone born outside of Hawaii.[the Hawaiian straw man +5]
5. Under this Act, Hawaiian birth certificates were issued only to individuals who were believed to be born in Hawaii. [another iteration of the Hawaiian Hawaiian straw man +6]
6. A subsequent law, enacted in 1955, reaffirmed the fact that Hawaiian birth certificates were given only to individuals who were believed to be Hawaii-born. [another iteration of the Hawaiian straw man +7]
7. In 1961, the State of Hawaii would not have issued a birth certificate to Barack Obama unless the State believed he was born in Hawaii. [another iteration of the Hawaiian straw man +8]
8. Barack Obama’s original 1961 typewritten birth certificate undoubtedly says he was born in Hawaii. [another iteration of the same claim +9]
9. Barack Obama’s original Hawaiian birth certificate, by its mere existence, shows that the State of Hawaii believed he was born in Hawaii. [Conclusion: reached by knocking down all of the straw men. +10]
That’s TEN repetitions of the same argument, or nine too many.
I rest my case.
The author is not using leftist, liberal, disinformation techniques. You and I have a fundamental disagreement about that and we are likely not to resolve that particular dispute. The document is written in Q&A format which is commonly used to speak to readers who hold one or more opinions that are posed as questions. You pose their opinion as a question. Then you stipulate in the answer that even if they're correct on two points, the third point is still in doubt and cannot be resolved until some event takes place. It's a classic strategy to convince the reader to consider other possibilities. It's not disinformation by any stretch.
In every one of those statements, the author underlines the word "says" for emphasis, indicating that it is questionable.
It is true that Hawaii wouldn't have knowingly and intentionally issued a birth certificate for Obama if they didn't believe that he was born there. To suggest otherwise is to imply that Hawaii knowingly and intentionally issued fraudulent birth certificates. That's a key premise to set up the argument that just because Hawaii issued a valid birth certificate that doesn't mean that Obama couldn't have actually been born in Kenya. It helps to convince those who believe that Obama couldn't have gotten a valid driver's license, passport, college admission, marriage certificate, whatever, without a valid Hawaiian birth certificate. And there are those who dismiss the question of eligibility based solely on their belief that Obama couldn't have gone all these years without proper documentation.
That's the whole point. A valid birth certificate, issued in good faith by Hawaii, still doesn't resolve with certainty the question of where Obama was really born. Then the author goes on the make the point, that in the end it really doesn't matter where he was born because he had dual citizenship at birth and that is also cause for doubt about his eligibility.
If there is a Hawaiian long-form birth certificate, and that's a huge "if," then it likely does say that Obama was born in Hawaii. Otherwise there would be no purpose for Hawaii to hold it on record. Another concession on the author's part to convince the reader that while it may be true, it still doesn't matter.
Case not closed. It's a hung jury.
I think that Polarik is correct about this.
As I said much earlier, this article is useful for what it focuses on, but somewhat lacking in other respects. What it usefully focuses on is the history of the term “natural born citizen” in legal cases and influential writings. Even that may need a bit of tidying up or correction, but it is useful in itself.
It is not the immediate concern of this essay whether or not the COLB is a forgery. That is a vital question, but it is not immediately relevant to the discussion here.
What I think is needed is a bit of tidying up and cleaning up, and a little less speculation about what an “original birth certificate” which no one has ever seen may say, if it exists at all. Also, as I said in my earlier post, history suggests that Hawaii was not all that reluctant to grant birth certificates to Asians and others who were actually foreign born, because of the peculiar history of this territory/state, and because of the large number of Asian residents and prospective voters.
Polarik offers a few other corrections or suggestions in earlier posts. I think that Touchen should read those carefully and consider them. It still seems to me that he has a very useful contribution here, but that it needs some cleaning up and revision to separate speculation from fact and concentrate on the main point—the constitutional meaning of “natural born citizen.”
I haven’t read Polarik’s earlier post since it first appeared on this thread, but as I recall there was just one point he makes that I would also clarify. He says that the Constitution grants citizens the basic rights as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, including Life, Liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and defend yourself, your family, and your neighbors, and so on.
That’s true in a sense, that the Constitution gives us those rights, but the Founders actually said that the Contitution recognizes these rights as God-given and “inalienable.” So, one could argue, these rights cannot legitimately be taken away even by a constitutional amendment.
I think this argument can be worked out, since Polarik and Touchen are really focused on two different aspects of the birth certificate problem.