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Well, I think the NBC clause (coupled with the residency clause) has an obvious purpose - to ensure that presidents are selected from a pool of candidates who have political connections to the United States through heritage and experience. That is a good thing. Unnecessarily limiting the pool of available candidates to exclude candidates who were citizens at birth and who have spent their lives in this country does not further the purpose of that provision.

So, if your argument for such an unnecessarily narrow and precise definition requires that we learn French and study eighteenth century Swiss philosophy to understand what you're talking about, you're precise and narrow definition is in trouble. The people of this country don't fear that they might elect Prince Charles to be our president.

Ted Cruz is as American as any of us!

Ted Cruz - 2016

“Unnecessarily limiting the pool of available candidates to exclude candidates who were citizens at birth and who have spent their lives in this country does not further the purpose of that provision.”

Unnecessary? I have to laugh on that one, because the Founders viewed lmitations of this character as absolutely vital to the survival of the Rpublic. They were certainly right to do so. They had just been subjected to centureis of dynastic wars which often featured absolute rulers who were imposed upon them from above from a society who often did not even speak their language.

for examples, look at: the Danelaw, and King Canute; William the Conqueror; the assortment of English monarchs raised abroad from engalnd; King James; the Scottish succession; the hanoverians; the British efforts to subvert the United States from the Revolutionary War to the American Civil War; the French and Austrian installation of Emperor maximillian of Mexico; and so forth.

At the endo of the American Revolutionary War, the unpaid and very ill supplied and ill kept Continental Army attempted to get George Washingto to allow them to cron him King of the United States. To his eternal credit, George Washington put down those ideas quickly and forcefully. The soldiers of the Continental Army were so furious and angered by the Continental Congress and its failures to pay their back wages and uniforms, they were in enough of a mutinous mood to lynch members of Congress. Under these conditions the members of Congress were ever mindful of the danger of some monarch’s heir coming to the United States and garnering enough support to be installed as the monarch of the United States or one of its seperatist parts.

Given the way in which a british King abdicated his throne to marry an American divocee and the way Winston Churchill’s mother was a U.S. citizen until her marriage, the necessity for careful control of who has access to the command of the armed forces and executive branch of our government is not to be underestimated.

“So, if your argument for such an unnecessarily narrow and precise definition requires that we learn French and study eighteenth century Swiss philosophy to understand what you’re talking about, you’re precise and narrow definition is in trouble. The people of this country don’t fear that they might elect Prince Charles to be our president.”

narrow? Now that is a strawman argument if there ever was one. The definition of natural and natural law are about has broad a definition as there ever can be. Start with Black’s Law Dictionary, ballantine’s Law Dictionarythe merriam-Webstaer Dictoinary, the Oxford Dictionary. Then go to the foreign language dictionaries, French, German, Russian, italian, Spanish, Japanese, and you name it. The legal concept of a natural law being a condition in which manmade law is and must be absent are one of the broadest and most universal legal concpets out there.

Furthermore, this nonsense being spouted that this is all nothing more than a wild “birther theory” is nothing more than derogatory abuse being used to obfuscate the observable truth it is all based upon a chain of historical practices extending backwards to the Roman Republic and earlier. If you doubt thiss then look for yourself at Calvin’s Case in 1608 and follow the changing English and French nationality p practices back into the 14th Century. While doing so, never forget how this is all about who has the power and the obligation to do what in the society. That is precisely why there has been a millenials long struggle between the legal philosophers and their efforts to “discover’ natural law and the more down to Earth powers that be employing mandmade laws often contrary to the results of natural law.

So it still is today, as the Socialists-Communists of the EU utilize the governments to deny the citizens of the member nations the right to vote for and against membership in the EU. It is the same old struggle in Europe, but just different players donning different robes to conceal their grabs for dictatorial powers.