I’m sorry, but even this birther cannot let this error slip: you stated that for a person to be eligible both parents must be natural born citizens; I think you will find that they need to be citizens, even naturalized citizens, but not the most extreme, natural born citizens.
Hi old buddy, I’m feeling pretty fired up about this! [post 67]
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this one. I believe the Framers intended that BOTH parents be born here. That is what separates natural born from being born to naturalized citizens. You know your Old Testament. The concept is directly taken from the Hebrew Exodus.
It is not an error sir:
Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays de parents citoyens, . . .
The terms “natives” and “natural born citizens” are obviously English terms; used to render the idea convyed by the French phrase “les naturels, ou indigenes”: but both refered to the same category of citizen: one born in the country, of parents who were citizens of that country.
In the political philosophy of Vattel, the term “naturels” refers to citizens who are such by the Law of Nature, that is by the natural cirumstances of their birth — which they did not choose; the term “indigenes” is from the Latin, indigenes, which like the English, “indigenous”, means “begotten from within” (inde-genes), as in the phrase “the indigenous natives are the peoples who have been born and lived there for generations.” Hence the meaning the the term, “natural born citizen”, or “naturels ou indigenes” is the same: born in the country of two parents who are citizens of that country.
Vattel did not invent the notion “natural born citizen”; he was merely applying the Law of Nature to questions of citizenship. In fact the term first appears in a letter of the future Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, to George Washington during the Constitutional Convention, where the Framers were consulting 3 copies Vattel’s book to complete their work (according to the testimony of Benjamin Franklin).