Posted on 05/06/2013 7:09:31 AM PDT by Perdogg
Ted Cruzs address at the annual South Carolina Republican Party dinner Friday helped feed growing speculation that the freshman senator from Texas is eyeing a run for the White House in 2016 and raised yet another round of questions about his eligibility to serve in the Oval Office.
Mr. Cruz was born in Canada to an American-born mother and Cuban-born father, and was a citizen from birth but that Canadian factor puts him in the company of other past candidates who have had their eligibility questioned because of the Constitutions requirement that a president be a natural born citizen.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I have nothing against the Swiss.
But the notion that they know more about the United States Constitution than our own Founding Fathers is laughable at best. *That’s* what I was ridiculing.
But the notion that they know more about the United States Constitution than our own Founding Fathers is laughable at best. *Thats* what I was ridiculing.
Ah, the Strawman fallacy. You deliberately misstate what I said, and then attack what *YOU* said as being ridiculous.
The Swiss gained their independence from their Monarchical masters, several hundred years before we did. The philosophical basis of overthrowing a Monarchy and forming an independent Government was pioneered by them. Nothing in the English principles of law resemble it at all. To argue that the Principles upon which the US was founded come from English Law is what is ridiculous.
Our principles of governance represents a deliberate break from English law. It is the difference between a "Subject" and a "Citizen."
You are ignoring the rest of what Madison said. Madison said it was a general principle, but he also said that had South Carolina had a law explicitly stating what a citizen was, then it would have solved the whole problem before it got to the House of Representatives. Also, the issue was a matter of STATE citizenship, not Federal.
Beyond that, when Madison was President, he deliberately let the French Hold James McClure for a year and a half because a birth certificate from South Carolina wasn't sufficient proof of citizenship. You can talk about what Madison said, but what he did speaks far louder.
If I have misunderstood your position, I apologize. But if I was right, and you're still giving Vattel's opinions more weight than Madison's, it was no straw man.
You are falsely attributing that one sentence by Madison as being all encompassing and not considering it within the context of the rest of what he said. You are interpreting it as an Absolute as applied to Federal citizenship when it is a "general principle" and is being applied to state citizenship in a state which does not have a specific law to the contrary.
Madison also invokes William Smith's Jus Sanguinus claim in his very next sentence in which he says:
Mr. Smith founds his claim upon his birthright; his ancestors were among the first settlers of that colony.
William Loughton Smith:
"The Doctor says the circumstance of birth does not make a citizen-This I also deny. Vattel says, "The country of the father is that of the children, and these become citizens merely by their tacit consent." I was born a Carolinian, and I defy the Doctor with all his ingenuity, arithmetical or political, to say at what moment I was disfranchised- at what moment I lost my citizenship."
I have more evidence that Madison was not in Conflict with Vattel, but there is too much of it to post in one message.
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