I get so tired of people making things WAY more complicated than they really are, in order to justify their efforts in “analyzing” and “investigating” issues to death.
Using the Occam’s Razor approach to looking at this issue makes it VERY CLEAR and VERY SIMPLE:
(a) the wording in Vattel’s book on the Law of Nations is simply: “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”
(1) This phasing equates “NATIVES” and “NATURAL-BORN CITIZENS”.
(2) It DOES NOT equate “NATIVE-BORN CITIZEN” (a term coined at a later time) with “NATURAL-BORN CITIZEN”.
(3) It uses the plural for “parents” AND does NOT say “... of fathers ...” (or mothers for that matter) but RATHER “... of parents ...”.
(4) It SPECIFICALLY, as was the societal custom of the times, confers the father’s GENERIC citizenship onto his children.
(b) Rampant sexual irresponsibility was the exception rather than the rule in those times, and the assumption, fairly made, was that most children (particularly “respectable” ones) would be born of TWO parents, ONE MALE and ONE FEMALE.
As to the impact of these points:
(1) The phrase of qualification in the US Constitution is “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; ...”
(2) The implication, using Occam’s Razor, is that if one was a citizen of the US at the time of the adoption, they qualified. NOBODY after that unique group was to be viewed as qualified unless they met the NBC parameter.
(3) In ANY CASE, the father’s GENERIC citizenship (NOT any NBC status) passed to the child, which trumped any possibility of NBC status if the father was an alien at the time of birth (as in OB’s case).
(4) If a child had two parents, the child was an NBC, IF and ONLY IF, BOTH parents were US Citizens at the time of birth. Since no single parent births were possible at the time (ie no artificial insemination was available), then the status of BOTH parents was ALWAYS the determining factor. Sorry, but in spite of any compassion for “it’s not the kid’s fault” position, back in those times, a child born out of wedlock with an unidentifiable father was hardly likely to be seriously considered for POTUS.
Anyone whose mother AND father were not US Citizens (either NBC or Naturalized) at the time of one’s birth IS NOT an NBC. PERIOD.
(Albeit, I can’t get my brain around the impact of test tube people with TRULY unidentified fathers ..... DNA testing, piercing sperm bank privacy, dead guys, multiple parteners, rape, yada, yada, yada ... it’s truly a mess, but we should at least adhere to what IS well and simply defined)
Besides ALL of this, WHY is it so difficult to find competent candidates whose lineage cannot be called into question?????????????
Could there be an ulterior motive to breaking down yet one more protection in the US Constitution that was included by overt, conscious action on the part of the FFs?????????????
Blackstone was and is far more important.
Blackstone does not agree with Vattel.
YOU have decided what you want and who you do and do not want, and you and other radical birthers are attempting to corrupt our legal system to support your views.
There is nothing “conservative” about radical birtherism.
There are two types of citizenship:
Natural Born
Naturalized
It is YOU and the very small number of radical birthers who wish to complicate this matter.
No NATURALIZED Citizen may become President.
This is all that was ever intended.