if that is the case, please explain why the founders included the phrase ‘natural born citizen’ in the Constitution instead of just ‘citizen’. why make the distinction? why was the office of the president singled out for this requirement?
and please, try to explain it without resorting to name calling. we’re no longer in junior high.
“if that is the case, please explain why the founders included the phrase ‘natural born citizen’ in the Constitution instead of just ‘citizen’”
Because there are also naturalized citizens.
Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884):
“This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.”
As discussed, natural born citizen is the American form of the well established legal term “natural born subject” used in English Common law.
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html
It is worth noting that the original draft of the Constitution allowed naturalized citizens to become President. The revision done in August tightened the requirement.