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Those like myself, may hold audience to ideas, we neither have experience, nor an education capable of disputing the arguments refined here or those sifted from, the history of the Constitution.

notted, you may not have experience or education, but you can check the things said on both sides, and objectively, dispassionately weigh and see which check out, and which don't. And I encourage you to do exactly that.

Are we, (I), sovereign? Having rights independent of the will of the state?

Here's what our Founders believed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

You asked:

Am I to believe that, I, a sovereign citizen, should not be included in the determination of what constitutes that meaning?

There are several considerations that I think are relevant to your question.

First, when the Framers wrote the Constitution, they were writing what was (they hoped) to become the fundamental law of the new country. They had very specific meanings in mind for each phrase that they wrote. They had specific rules in mind for how the country was going to be run, and they put those rules before the People, in the hope that the People would approve those rules.

I do not believe that they intended for later generations to come along and simply interpret those rules to mean something very different from what they originally mean.

If a Constitution can simply be reinterpreted later to mean something different, then it's not really a solid law. It would simply be whatever a popular vote wanted it to mean at any particular time.

That said:

1) I think they intended to write, and did write, the Constitution in language that you and I and the rest of our citizens could understand. In this way, they intended to include all interested citizens in the Constitutional process. (I will come back to this point in a moment.)

As you rightly said:

The Constitution is written in relatively simple language and can be understood by contemporary citizens, it does not strike me as a code to be deciphered by a sibyl, but plainly spoken to those, like myself, who wish to participate in self-governance.

2) They provided a means whereby We the People could CHANGE the rules that were in effect. They provided a means whereby We the People can CHANGE the Constitution. And we've done so before, on more than two dozen occasions.

3) I do not believe they intended to give us a government-run nanny state. This is basically what birthers are arguing for: That the Founders did, or should have, restricted We the People from EVER using our judgment to elect someone whose parents weren't citizens at the time of their birth.

This idea certainly seems nanny-statish to me.

And in fact, the god they worship (Monsieur Vattel of Switzerland) was a nanny-state kind of guy. He believed and taught that the government should be able to control religion. Vattel believed and taught that the government should essentially regard the talents and skills of the country's people as an asset belonging to that country and that government, and that they had a perfect right to use force to prevent a valuable skilled worker from leaving the country. Vattel believed and taught that only the elites and the military should be allowed to keep and bear arms. No Second Amendment rights for the riff-raff such as you and me.

So the idea of restricting the People from EVER choosing a President whose parents were non-citizen immigrants seems to be of more or less the same spirit.

Now, to return what I mentioned earlier.

There are two possible ways a term such as "natural born citizen" could be looked at.

It might have a technical, legal meaning. And it might have a popular meaning.

You've already noted that the Constitution seems to be written for the People to understand. Others, including the US Supreme Court, have made the same observation. In fact, to my understanding, it is the official position of the Supreme Court that the Constitution is generally written in understandable language. Yes, there are a few legal terms in it. But on the whole, it's written to be understood by you and me.

So we would expect "natural born citizen" to mean what most people understood the term to mean.

In fact, if there is any difference in meaning between what the writers of the Constitution intended, and what the people in the States who ratified the Constitution thought they were approving, which meaning is in force?

I think it should be clear that the meaning that was voted into law was the meaning as understood by those who ratified the Constitution. So we could well ask, again: What did those who ratified the Constitution understand the term "natural born citizen" to mean?

There's not the slightest SHRED of evidence that they did. But even if they had, the Constitution wouldn't mean what the writers said it meant, in some smoky back room.

It would mean what the people who VOTED IT INTO LAW believed it meant, and what they believed they were voting into law.

Most words and phrases don't change that much over the course of a couple of centuries.

In fact, a lot of people today still read the King James Bible, in the exact same words that were written over 400 years ago.

That's getting close to twice as long ago as the Constitution.

And yes, a few words - a very few - have changed their meaning somewhat.

For example, "conversation" now means what you say. Apparently, in King James' day, it included your actions as well as your words.

But (aside from some minor variations such as "thou" changing to "you," and the fact that we dropped the -eth's and -est's from the end of verbs - those changes are few and far between.

So if we want to know what "natural born citizen" meant to most people in 1787, it probably meant pretty much what most people think it means today.

And if you stop and ask 100 people what it means, the vast majority of them will say "Gee... I guess it means 'born a citizen,'" or "Gee... I suppose it means 'born in the US.'"

Some people will tell you that anyone born in America can grow up to be President.

Now because of all the recent birther propaganda, you might get a FEW people who would say they think it takes citizen parents.

But if you have asked the question 10 years ago, to 100 people, I doubt you would have found more than 1 out of the 100 who would've said it took citizen parents.

So that kind of common sense tells us that "natural born citizen" probably meant "born a citizen" or "born in the US."

Now, again: We have, possibly, two kinds of meanings. A legal meaning, and a popular meaning.

If these two meanings should be at odds, then we have a conflict.

But the fact is, virtually every legitimate legal authority in the early United States who ever spoke on the issue, and certainly all of the most authoritative ones, said "natural born citizen" and Presidential eligibility meant "born a citizen," or "born in the United States."

So there IS no conflict between the legal and popular meanings of the term.

I've probably gone beyond your original question. But I hope I've said some helpful things.

Let's suppose for a moment that those who wrote the Constitution sat in some smoky back room and said, among themselves, "Ha! We don't mean here what most people understand "natural born citizen" to mean. We mean what this Swiss guy Vattel thought a citizen should be."
There's not the slightest SHRED of evidence that they did. But even if they had, the Constitution wouldn't mean what the writers said it meant, in some smoky back room.

It would mean what the people who VOTED IT INTO LAW believed it meant, and what they believed they were voting into law.

Justice Scalia agree with you on that point:

"The Second Amendment provides: 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931) ; see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824). Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation." - District of Colombia v. Heller (2008)

Vattel's twenty-first century fans got themselves into this mess by their felt need for a philosophical platform that would permit them to continue to believe that the United States doesn't really have a president. Vattelism is designed to discourage the rest of us from lumping together those who say, "there is no president" with those who say "there is no gravity" or "Elvis is not dead." The more interesting question is why some people are psychologically unable to just accept the reality that, like it or not, Obama is the president and that, on two separate occasions, the voters and their electors have chosen him and implicitly determined that he meets the constitutional qualifications.

If Cruz should run, all this crazy research will be passed on like a runner's baton to crackpots on the left who may even "improve" on it. But, those who actually choose our presidents (voters/electors) are not likely to be persuaded by any of this nonsense.

And, that's all that really matters.