I mean you guys were really going after the meanings between two words...And the definitions I retrieved from Websters, don't get me wrong, I'm not getting on either of y'alls cases, but the definitions really spelled out some interesting facts...in post #68...
If you were to read the Constitution in a manner such like a piece of poetry...Try to develop some sense of rythm, tempo, or beat...Read it like it was meant to flow off the page, like melted butter on popcorn...
You would see the beauty of how that document was devinely inspired, and was meant to be a joy to read, no matter how dry some try to make the meaning of the words...
Citizen or People...Those words were carefully chosen and presented to mean something more than a dry/technical definition...
I do understand that it is important to know this document inside and out...And be able to apply it in the way it was meant from the beginning...
Getting bogged down in semantics tends to bring its relevance down to a level where people who wish to destroy its intent can do so much easier...
Thats what I understand that when I took oaths in the past to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, that it wasn't so much the document itself, that it meant more to me to protect and defend those people and citizens who live under its protections of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
Ok, I'm off...geesh...
As even the most rudimentary legal scholar understands, if a passage is unclear, then one must look to things such as committee hearings, existing case law, and yes, the dictionary in order to determine what the law means. In the case of the Constitution, one looks to the Federalist Papers or some other contemporaneous writing. There is nothing in the volumes of such work that indicates the Founders meant to conflate the meanings of the word "citizen" with the words "person," or "people." As I mentioned earlier, the text of the Constitution itself indicates that the Founders knew of the distinction between the terms, and meant to keep it. One is perfectly entitled to argue that the Constitution only applies to citizens, as long as one understands that, essentially, one is arguing that the Founders were specific in one regard but unspecific the other. In other words, they didn't know what the heck they were doing.
I don't mind pointing it out to catcalls from the peanut gallery . . . but one thing I did not address was the essential absurdity of the position: as if the Founders (even setting aside the issue of slavery, a debate that is well-documented), undertook from the start to create a document that was so limited in scope that it could not even address the notion that a post-Revolutionary American colonial might share the same rights as the British subject living next door. And again, assuming the argument is correct (that the Constitution only applies to citizens), one should wonder why none (or mostly none--this I have not researched) of the Founders envisioned three legal/court systems instead of two: Federal, State, and "whatever it is I want to call the one that adjudicates the rights of non-citizens."