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Unless someone wants to argue that we area ALL naturalized citizens, he would be forced to argue that there are distinctions among the quality of citizenship granted by the statute, not merely among the qualification conditions for citizenship, that are simply not present in the statute.

It's not clear what you're trying to say here. The relevant distinction is made between birth within the United States and birth outside of it:

"Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts." U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 702, 703 (1898).

8 U.S.C. s.1401(a) pertains to citizens born within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It's obviously just a restatement of the birth provision of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which principle is also set forth in the first sentence of the above quotation. Those persons are considered natural born citizens.

Other provisions of that section (subsections c, d, e, g, and h) pertain to various other classes of persons not born in the U.S. Those persons would be considered naturalized citizens.

So no one would argue that everyone described in section 1401 is a naturalized citizen. You're erecting a nice strawman argument.

I think either argument would lose if tested in a courtroom.

That everyone described in section 1401 is a naturalized citizen is an argument no sane person would make.

I'm not sure what other argument you have in mind here. Though it seems you're still trying to look at the statutes to answer the Constitutional question.

I can't comment without writing a book. Suffice it to say that the US Code trumps (sorry about that) Wong Kim Ark.

BTW, this is not a peculiarly Constitutional question. This is a question of how we will define natural born citizen, and I think that question has been answered by two events. The accession of Barack Obama to the Presidency despite his obvious lack of eligibility by the standard heretofore accepted, and two, 8 US Code, both 1401 - and 1101 (23) "The term 'naturalization' means the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, by any means whatsoever."

Not 'at birth'.