That does not negate the Founders' intent or the Law in regards to the requirements for President. I think it was unfathomable to them at the time, that Americans themselves would teach generations of their children to loathe their country and hold ideas anathema to themselves, liberty and their posterity.
Nation-state loyalties is what the Founders were familiar with and what had plagued Europe for centuries. That is what they were most concerned with as nation-state factionalism already existed in the young county at the time of the Convention.
What exists today is loyalty to ideology, which is the religion of most of whom are politically invested. When you have devotion to ideology, the rule of law is moot - because it can be waived or ignored to advance the ideology and it's causes.
In such an environment, we become a nation ruled by the whims and passions of the moment - no longer governed by the rule of law.
If we're going to play the game of precedents, then we lose our liberty and become no different than those who readily ignore the law and it's intent to push a political religion and agenda on the rest.
It is my opinion that people are trying to ignore the fact that the phrase "natural-born citizen" even exists in the Constitution by trying to invalidate it using classification of citizen as a red-herring.
I can follow the argument that one is either born a citizen or becomes a citizen via government approval. That's fine for defining who is a citizen of the United States. But it has nothing to do with the extra qualification that citizens must meet to become President. Just like the citizen requirement and the age requirement and the residency requirement, Presidents must also meet the "natural-born" requirement in a way that separates it from the Congressional requirement.
Thomas Paine wrote about this just four years after ratification of the Constitution in his 1791 book "The Rights Of Man," when he spoke of "foreignors" and "half-foreignors" being denied the ability to become a President. It's true that Paine fell into disfavor in his later years, but his writing in this book was contemporary with the Constitution, and he was known for speaking plainly for the American reader. I have yet to see other contemporary writing that defines the natural-born phrase. The closest that others present is the debate over the 14th amendment many years later.
-PJ
I agree. As I said, I want the Constitution followed even when its requirements aren’t achieving the desired results.