Greetings all birthers!
I must admit in recent months I have become, shall we say, increasingly receptive to the idea of “natural born citizen” defined as a person born of two citizens. It does seem to be a logical deduction. One thing still bugs me though, and I think a simple thought experiment will demonstrate my hesitancy best:
If this is true, then someone like Mark Rubio could not be eligible for the presidency. However also, it would also mean that say, a child born of two “citizen” crack addicts, born in the inner city, would be eligible.
Now I ask, does this make sense? Is this what the framers intended? How is it that a person of Rubio’s upbringing, an upbringing that is clearly rooted in American values is not eligible to be president, whereas some child born of two crack addicted “citizens”, where each parent would probably never be seen again in the child’s life, would be eligible?
The theory is that a person born of two citizens would be raised to be “more American” than someone not born of two citizens, right? IOW, such a person would be raised without any divided loyalties, right? Well, that sounds all fine and dandy in a sterile, argument of logic. But considering reality for a second, can it honestly be said that Rubio was raised “less American” than some person born of two parents who were never a part of his/her life? How can it be said that a child of two crack addicts is more patriotic, has no “divided loyalties”, when compared to a person like Mark Rubio?
The only “argument” I could see to “counter” this point would be to say, “Well, that baby could have been actually raised by two parents who were solid Americans”, but then that automatically defeats the “natural born citizen” rationale. After all, if what makes someone truly “American” is how they are raised, and not how they were born (i.e., not raised by crack addicts, but raised by good Americans) , then it’s irrelevant who actually gave birth to a person. Indeed, the only thing that would seemingly be relevant here is that a person is actually born in the US, thus enabling that person to be raised by Americans, not that “two citizens give birth”.
Input/rebuttals please. I’ve been mulling this over a while, and I don’t see any way around the above other than to concede that “natural born citizen” means simply someone born in the US or its territories, or born of two citizens if overseas, IOW, the common mentality definition.
I have a recollection of a discussion from high school about “divided loyalties” that I did not recall until the memory was triggered by discussions here. I can't say how others minds work but there are a lot of things that I haven't thought about for a long time that come back to me when someone or something gives me a nudge. Usually it is my wife who is trying to get me to remember something that I told her that I would do, but often it will be my parents, my siblings, my friends, or coworkers. They will ask if I remember something that we had done and at first I will say no, but as they give me more detail sometimes a vivid memory will come back and I will wonder why it took so much prompting.
Not having actually been around over two hundred years ago, all we can do is examine writings from the times that would indicate what was being discussed by the framers of the constitution. Also useful are books and letters that would indicate what the common knowledge of certain terms were at that time. Whether or not our own contemporary experiences and prejudices allow us to agree with those discussions is hard to say. It is clear to me that there were differences of opinion back then just as there are now.
I was taught that the framers were concerned about “divided loyalties” and put safeguards into the constitution to prevent monarchs or others from being able to have undue influence over our president. I was taught that Natural Born Citizen had more meaning than just a person born within the geographical borders of this country. I do not believe that a baby whose parents are here illegally is automatically even a citizen, let alone a natural born citizen constitutionally eligible to be president.
You start with ignoring the Constitution and the historical records which indicate how the term ‘natural born citizen’ was generally construed in the eighteenth century, then you want to play argument from the exception ... and you’ll no doubt wonder why folks can’t convince you.