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This ALL devovles to the Founding Father’s concept of “original intent”. Remember, a lot of these guys were educated and received their law degrees in England.

In framing the Constitution, they took the BEST of English Common Law and fashioned their own. They borrowed LIBERALLY from the Magna Carta and also from Blackstone, the leading British jurist of his time.

For example:

BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES ON ENGLISH COMMON LAW:

BOOK 1, CHAPTER 1

“... Rights are however liable to another subdivision; being either, first, those which concern, and are annexed to the persons of men, and are then called jura personarum or the rights of persons; or they are, secondly, such as a man may acquire over external objects, or things unconnected with his person, which are styled jura rerum or the rights of things ... The rights of persons considered in their natural capacities are also of two sorts, absolute, and relative. Absolute, which are such as appertain and belong to particular men, merely as individuals or single persons: relative, which are indigent to them as members of society, and standing in various relations to each other ... By the absolute rights of individuals we mean those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it ...

I. The right of personal security consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation ...”

SOUND FAMILIAR? IT OUGHT TO - THE FOUNDING FATHERS RIPPED BLACKSTONE OFF WHEN THEY WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!!!

Declaration of Independence:

” ... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ...”

As for “Natural Born”:

BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES ON ENGLISH COMMON LAW:

BOOK 1, CHAPTER 10

“... When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king’s dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty’s English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once.

Yet the children of the king’s ambassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects: for as the father, though in a foreign country, owes not even a local allegiance to the prince to whom he is sent; so, with regard to the son also, he was held (by a kind of postliminium [a restoration of rights upon return to one’s country]) to be born under the king of England’s allegiance, represented by his father, the ambassador. To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. St. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband’s consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it has been so adjudged in behalf of merchants.

But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.

The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien ...”.

The LAST paragraph shows how CLOSELY we mirror English Common Law by granting children of aliens (illegal or not) “natural born” status.

I submit that the terms citizen, citizen at birth, citizen by birth, and natural born citizen meant exactly the SAME thing to the Founding Fathers.

AND, by virtue of English Common Law, that McCain was a natural born citizen at birth - according to the Founding Fathers “original intent”.