“I wasn’t touching on how a state arises, just remarking on the ramifications if a state does not arise.”
Actually, that is the whole point. It is not necessary to have a state in order for a society to have natural born citizens, natural born subject, or natural born members of any kind under the principles of natural law. Birth as a natural member of a group in a society is a natural principle extending backwards into the prehistoric ages and prehistoric cultures and long before the advent of cities, civilizations, and statutory laws. That is why Positive Law is disqualified from legislating its existence or its character.
“And nowhere did I say that the constitution created natural law.”
I did not say that you did.
“What I said was that the constitution expresses who will be considered citizens under it (the constitution).”
That statement is not quite accurate. The Constitution granted the Congress the power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Naturalization is the taking of an alien born person and conferring upon that alien born person some of the same rights and obligations already possessed by a person born in the jurisdiction of the United States with only U.S. citizen parents, who are actual natural born citizens. The Constitution is silent about the determination of who is a natural born citizen, because the Constitution and the Congress that legislated the Constitution do not have the power to legislate changes to the natural law governing who is a natural born citizen.
“That is not saying that the constitution creates them, any more than your words expressing what a natural citizen is, creates the natural citizen.”
Words must be used to describe what a natural citizen is, but those words cannot change the actual nature of a natural citizen or the natural origin of a natural born citizen. Compare it to the difference between a natural mother versus an adoptive mother. A child is natural born as the child of natural parents, but statutory law can create a legal fiction or legal pretense of an adoptive mother, who is not the natural mother. Likewise with the natural born citizen, where a child born within the jurisdiction with a natural mother citizen and natural father citizen can only have the same citizenship as the jurisdiction and the parents obedience and allegiance to that jurisdiction. I makes no difference whether the jurisdiction is the head father or the head mother of a a band of prehistoric hunter-gatherers or U.S. citizens on the Tennessee frontier in the 18th Century; one relationship is natural by circumstance of birth and the other is artificial and manmade by changeable rules and laws adopting persons not born into the family and natural duty of obedience.
“The subject at hand is qualification for president under the constitution, not qualification for president of the state of nature.”
The Positive Law of the legislated Constitution included a condition of natural law in the form of the natural born citizen clause as a mandatory requirement to qualify for eligibility as President. Furthermore, this mandatory requirement in the form of the natural born citizen clause is nothing unique to the experience of the United States, North American colonial, British, English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Swiss, Roman, ancient Athenian, or other legal doctrines in regard to public officers. All of these legal systems have applied the principles of natural law, the Law of Nations, and common law traditions to limit eligibility for public offices in their statutory laws.
And now allow me to be a pedant. I said "the constitution expresses who will be considered citizens under it (the constitution)." I did not say "the constitution expresses who will be considered natural born citizens under it (the constitution)."
Your exposition also overlooks the fact that not all persons born into a society or within the jurisdiction of a society are found to be citizens of those societies. See Vattel S:213, Inhabitants; and S:219, Vagrants; and S:227, Supplicants; as well as @:215, Children of citizens born in a foreign country, which operates in both directions, that is, the section also operates as "Children of aliens born in this country."
Ultimately, you have not settled on a source of law for defining NBC for US constitutional purposes. You are handwaving.