Also, what I am stating is not at odds, at all, with what Paine said.
Show me that Rubio is a Citizen of ANY other country but the United States and you might have a small, minor point of agreement with Thomas Paine, even though your biased interpretation of his statement is not at all controlling in the matter at hand.
So was John Adams, your single cite. So we're 1-1, right? Are there other contemporaries of ratification whose words survive, or do we have to rely on the words of 14th amendment writers from 100 years later?
It's not about sole citizenship, it's about being raised by citizens to embrace the nationality of the home country. It's why the Preamble says "We the People of the United States, in Order to... secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
As I've said many times, the Preamble defines who the Natural born Citizens are. It logically flows from the Preamble.
"We the People" are citizens of the United States. "Our Posterity" are the natural born who follow -- the children of the People. The Constitution was "ordained and established" to "secure... Liberty" to its citizens and their children.
Whom else was the Constitution established to secure, if not the citizen People and their citizen children?
How else would the Founders attempt to secure the United States of America if not by limiting the qualifications for the highest office to the People and their Posterity that was the reason for establishing the Constitution in the first place?
That language seems plain enough to me. The whole Constitution must be read within the context of the purpose as stated by the Framers in the Preamble: the Constitution was framed specifically to ensure the country to its people and their children - the natural born of the country.
If you are an alien who becomes a naturalized citizen, you become one of We the People, and then your children that follow become the nation's posterity.
Natural-born citizens are the nation's "posterity" that the Constitution was ordained and established to secure.
...your biased interpretation of his statement is not at all controlling in the matter at hand.
Regarding controlling the matter at hand, it is interesting that Thomas Jefferson was not a Framer either (he was in France at the time), but his letter to the Danbury Baptist Minister's Association of 1801 is considered controlling on the matter of separation of church and state, even though he wrote it 12 years after ratification.
I don't think I have a biased interpretation of Paine's words. He refers to "half a foreigner." What do you think "half a foreigner" means? I think it means a person who has one parent who is a citizen and one parent who is not. Can you think of a different interpretation. Please show me how my interpretation is biased. Paine further writes that this person (foreigner or half a foreigner) is "never in full natural or political connection with the country." Why do you think he says that? Is it because the person is raised by a parent who is a citizen of another country, or is it something else? Again, please show me where my interpretation of Paine's writing is biased.
-PJ