“People are never without citizenship as you readily admit”
I don’t admit that. Firstly, you can be born where no government rules and to parents who have no citizenship. Cavemen, for instance, were never citizens of anything.
More importantly, people are without citizenship of nations that don’t yet exist.
“And you can’t be a member (citizen) of something before its creation.”
Yes, that’s exactly my point, right there. You cannot have been a U.S. citizen before ratification of the positive law that is U.S. Constitution.
“No, dumb ass,”
I know you are, but what am I?
“the U.S. existed prior to the current Constitution.
And if you knew what you were talking about you would know this...The Stile of this Confederacy shall be “The United States of America”.
And they are the same. The new Constitution was undertaken, and written, to address the deficiencies of the Articles.”
If the nation under the Articles of Confederation was also called the U.S., that’s good to know but unimportant for the current argument. When I say there were no U.S. citizens before the ratification of the Constitution, obviously I mean there were no citizens of the U.S. under the Constitution. If the union under the Articles of Confederation was also called the U.S., that’s hardly to the point. You are not a citizen of a country’s name; you are a citizen of whatever entity governs you.
I realize the Constitution speaks of “a more perfect union,” meaning that it is a continuation of a preexisting union. But the thing you are a citizen of is not the theoretically unbroken national entity running from the first continental congress to the U.S. as it stands today. You are a citizen of the nation created by the Constitution, as well as of the state in which you live. I know this because had there not been a Constitution, you could not have been a citizen under it.
Yes, the Constitution was written to address deficiencies in the Articles. But what does that matter, for our purposes? That doesn’t mean the nation created by the Constitution is the same nation as existed under the Articles. Certainly there was no legal continuity between the Constitution and the Articles, except that both were adopted by the same preexisting states. The Constitution’s ratification requirements clearly violated the Articles’ amendment process, and the Constitution was therefore illegal under the Articles. If there was a coup tomorrow and Obama wrote a new compact and held guns to the heads of governors to sign it, would you call the resulting entity the same thing as the constitutional U.S.?
But who cares. One, two unions, what’s the difference for our purposes? Say, for argument’s sake, that the Articles’ U.S. and the constitutional U.S. are the same, and that citizens of one are citizens of the other. What does that portend? Nothing, except that we push the intrusion of positive law back a few years.
That is to say, no one is a citizen of the Articles of Confederation/Constitution U.S. by nature. No one could have been a citizen of this nation before the positive law that was the Articles of Confederation aqcuired the force of law. It is not possible, again, to be a citizen of a nation that does not exist.
“I love how after-birthers try and manipulate the conversation and go about crying ‘I won’ when they’ve done no such thing.”
It’s a well established rule of the internet, at least, that when an arguer refuses to respond to something for reasons unprovided, it’s a pretty fair chance that they can’t respond. You’ve now responded, and not very well. We can nitpick all day on whether the Articles’ U.S. and the constitutional U.S. are the same, but since the Articles are also positive law that doesn’t speak to the disctinction between positive and natural law that you so recently averred was of primary importance.
Or did you not realize what you were saying?
Firstly, you can be born where no government rules...
Where has that ever existed? Even something so small as a tribe has a leader and, henceforth, government.
You cannot have been a U.S. citizen before ratification of the positive law that is U.S. Constitution.
Partly right. Articles of Confederation, but we've been over that. And, precedent that, as a member of a British colony people had British citizenship as you noted earlier.
And the positive law Constitution recognized natural law as you well know,
that being your recognition of the natural law to keep and bear arms.
But what does that matter, for our purposes?
To illustrate that natural law existed before any law was written. I thought you understood that.
If there was a coup tomorrow and Obama wrote a new compact and held guns to the heads of governors to sign it, would you call the resulting entity the same thing as the constitutional U.S.?
I'll take that as rhetorical. Nobody was forced to sign the Constitution just like nobody was forced to sign the Articles of Confederation. Coercion isn't principled and nothing based upon coercion is legal.
Yes you can have been, and all the "non natural born" Presidents were. The United States was not created by the Constitution. It's government underwent a massive reorganization, but the country had existed since July of 1776, nearly 12 years before the Constitution was ratified. The Constitution itself, in the very clause under discussion indicates as much.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
14 years before 1789 when Washington took office as President under the Constitution is 1775 thus the authors of that section must have thought the United States existed in 1775, else how could the first President have been resident in them?