>>> I shouldn’t have started with a blast at the general sophistication on this kind of issue and apologize for doing so. <<<
I thank you for your gesture of goodwill.
The reason that anything at all, is getting done, or may get done, is because people are taking action. They are moving the proverbial atomic particles, that are standing in their way or aligned against them, clear the hell out of the way! In other words FORCE! Why? Because Soebarkah is playing the Chicago way. Ya’ don’t bring a stick of bubble gum to a knife fight, and ya’ don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
I’m not a learned scholar, nor do I play one on TV, so I don’t pretend to be one here either. I do know that NBC applies to only two elected positions, out of a population of over 300,000,000 people. Were our population to swell to 600,000,000, 900,000,000, or 1,200,000,000, the NBC clause would still only apply to just two people or two elected positions. TWO! T-W-O! TWO! Not native citizen, not naturalized citizen (or statutory) but natural born citizen. It’s not complicated!
I don’t have the exact NBC clause verbiage memorized, but born in the good old US of A (cue the Springsteen hit) of citizen parents. Well, yer’ parents have to be citizens AND every human (at least for the time being) has two parents at one time or another. Using a little lawyerly vernacular there (thank you very much.)
Finally, allegiance to our country. Is it too much to ask for a little loyalty? Exhibit ONE: See the effect in the ‘One’ residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Now you may be thinking or I may have proven that I am a simpleton, but I think I get WHAT THE FOUNDERS MEANT by the institution of the NBC clause. I hope that I haven’t been too loquacious for today’s readers.
;o)
freepersup
Loquaciousness doesn’t work for me either, FreepersUp. And longwindedness is a deterrent to being read by busy FReepers.
I will just add a couple thoughts to the discussion:
What will happen if and when the US Muslim population becomes really significant? Would it be wise to give the constitutional stamp of approval to a candidate who was born in the USA of non-citizen Arab or Pakistani parents? Wouldn’t that make you just a wee bit uneasy about that fellow’s deepest loyalties?
I maintain that the Obama situation is very close to that. And, if you believe a writer and investigator like Dinesh D’Souza (I do), Hussein’s loyalty is very much to the Third World in general and Kenya in particular, with the US and the UK seen by Obama as former colonial powers and adversaries.
I believe the Founders were contemplating something like that happening in their day when the US was a new and fragile republic, only with possible European loyalties being their concern. So, what to do? Put the NBC clause in the Constitution, based on the Vattel definition: of US born of citizen parents. Still no guarantee of allegiance to America but at least a giving the country an additional element of assurance.
To conclude, as a Tea Partier and a non-lawyer, I am interested in returning to originalism and trying to determine the Founders’ intent. Court precedents may control outcomes to litigation now but the object is to eventually replace the liberal judges who dominate the legal system today with their convenient and self-serving “living document” theory of the Constitution with strict constructionists who dedicate themselves to a Constitution which can only be changed by the amendment process. Creativity and originality should not count in constitutional interpretation.
It may take a lifetime to effect such changes, and the education of lawyers will also have to change but why not go for it? What has squishy liberalism done for us other than to send America to the edge of complete societal disaster?
Courts reverse themselves all the time. Putting conservative jurists on the bench might result in some key reversals and a return to a truly free constitutional republic.