Posted on 02/22/2010 12:37:24 PM PST by Kaslin
As President Obama's approval numbers continue to spiral downward, the left has purposefully tried to tie the increasingly popular small government conservative movement to the largely fringe "birthers". In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a birther. I happen to believe that President Obama was born in Hawaii and was therefore eligible to be sworn in as President of the United States on inauguration day. That being said, I can't help but feel a little bit of sympathy for the birthers. Ultimately, the rise of the birther movement is the fault of a deficit of curiosity about Barack Obama on the part of the media.
As a result of his lack of experience in both the private and public sectors, coupled with his relative youth, President Obama's personal records are extremely thin. There are huge gaps in what we know about Barack Obama, whereas previous presidents have been open books. The media normally seems to revel in uncovering the seedy and controversial side of every political figure, but they have never exhibited the same interest in President Obama. Every president has had embarrassing issues arise from their past, but President Obama's level of secrecy, meant to maintain his squeaky clean veneer, only serves to fuel speculation.
Since day one Barack Obama has maintained an extreme amount of control over his image. One of the most important elements of that image has been the narrative of his past. To this end Mr. Obama has written two book that serve as the primary basis for this narrative. The media, whose very purpose is to be inquisitive, seems all too willing to accept it without question. Both Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of hope received scant scrutiny or fact checking. For comparison, the Associated Press devoted 11 reporters to pore over every word of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue.
Another example of the difference in inquisitiveness that the media has shown for this president as opposed to previous ones can be seen by the 2004 investigation of President George W. Bush's military records. The search for dirt on President Bush was so fevered that some seemed willing to throw journalistic standards to the wind in pursuit of something that would stick. Distinguished careers were destroyed in the attempt to uncover details about President Bush’s past.
At the time Bush began his stint in the Air National Guard, he was 22 years old. When Obama was 22, he was still a student at Columbia University. An investigation along the same lines as the Bush Air National Guard investigation would be impossible because Obama has not allowed the release of his college records. Unfortunately, the media seems to be perfectly content with this lack of access to key events in our presidents past and for all intents and purposes considers the matter to be a non-issue.
The birthers are naturally being drawn to and are fueled by the alternative media because nearly all of the negative press Barack Obama has received, including his controversial associations from his past, has originated with these sources. While most of the media treated us to puff pieces during the 2008 election, investigations into Obama associates like Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers percolated and exploded almost exclusively out of traditionally conservative outlets and the blogosphere. Mainstream sources on the other hand fiercely fought to discredit these stories, even when these controversies deserved scrutiny and provided a rare insight into candidate Obama.
President Obama's secrecy about his past and the media's apparent lack of interest in it does not assume that they are colluding to cover something up, but it does leave plenty of room for people who are conspiratorially inclined to fill in the blanks. Seeing as the left increasingly sees the birther movement as an albatross to tie around the neck of their enemies on the right, we can most likely chalk up the media’s lack of curiosity to good old-fashioned left wing bias. But even if bias is to blame, it's only natural that some would confuse their lack of investigation to be evidence of malfeasance.
Presuming the media’s love affair with President Obama continues, we can assume that their lack of curiosity will as well. For those who profess such admiration for the President but don’t seem to care much about whom he was prior to his emergence on the public stage though the question remains: Are you scared of what you'll find?
Weak, stupid answer. Documents have survived. There’s no need for “time travel” You lefties are nuts, you know that?
Well, that is hardly a smoking gun, and if that is the “most direct evidence” then you guys may have a little problemo, should this matter ever get to SCOTUS.
Foreign influence could be money, family, campaign donations from over seas individuals, or overseas corporations, or a love of English literature, or going to college overseas, or having a foreign wife, or even sleeping with a foreign mistress.
But nowhere I saw does Pinckney say anything about not having a foreign paw, and wasn’t Chester Arthur permitted to serve as president???
parsy, who thinks you need to go back to the drawing board
Refute Professor Yinger. With links. From scholars.
Why would I refute Professor Yinger? I agree with him that the foreign child of a foreign parents born overseas is not a “natural born American citizen.”
Out of your own mouth.
Refute Professor Yinger using historical papers as he did to form his treatise.
They tried to oust Arthur. He also burned all his papers just before his death. Imagine that.
You're wrong and you know it. At the time of the Constitution, English law, Blackwell and Vattel all stated that a natural born citizen was born to TWO citizen parents. You have NOTHING to refute that except lefty sites and your opinion.
From Yinger:
In this letter, dated July 25, 1787, Jay wrote:
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen (emphasis in the original).(5)
The Founding Fathers were very concerned about foreign influence and went to great lengths to design a government that would be insulated from it.
Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us & insinuated into our councils in order to be made instruments for their purposes. Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services. He was not singular in these ideas. A great many of the most influential men in Massts reasoned in the same manner.(22)
Arthur burned so as not to be labeled a usurper.
LOL!!! And you know that how exactly?
I assume that you would contend that the reason Martha Washington burned all her correspondence with her husband George before her death was to keep George Washington from being labeled an usurper?
Well, he looks just like his mother, so I think that there is no question there. (And he doesn’t resemble BO Sr. at all.)
You’re grasping at straws. Use a scholarly article based on documentation from the era to prove that dual citizenship was Constitutional.
I am not grasping at all.
I need no scholarly article to point out that your prohibition of dual citizens being President is imaginary.
If it was not, you would have shown sombody the law at some point over the last two years.
And you haven’t.
AND, you focus in on one thing that it COULD be, and ignore all the other things which make the “most direct evidence” pretty un-direct, and then, after extracting that one thread, you wing it to Legal Theory Land, and without a trial, a decision, arguments pro and con, anything at all, you decide that what Pinckney COULD have meant by his statement, backs up your legal theory.
(And like you said before, you don’t listen to what famous people say? You may be right on that one!)
Like I have said before, the birthers self generate facts, evidence, and NOT legal theories, BUT INSTEAD legal CONCLUSIONS, and then work themselves into a lather over it.
parsy, who says there are better ways to entertain yourselves
If it was not, you would have shown sombody the law at some point over the last two years.
You haven't been here for two years unless you are a retread and been banned before.
Parsy, refute what Professor Yinger found with a scholarly article based on documents from the era. Your opinion isn’t enough on FR and you know it. Post a treatise that uses statements from the Founding Fathers that dual citizenship was not a concern.
Post an article based on records of the time that states that the Founders had no concerns with dual citizenship and foreign influence.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.