Posted on 02/05/2016 8:15:25 AM PST by Yashcheritsiy
A lot of sound and fury has been generated in the past month concerning the natural born citizenship requirement found in the Constitution as a requirement for holding the office of the presidency. The issue has been around since Obama's first run for that office, though it was largely ignored at the time by the media and the political establishment. More recently, Donald Trump stumbled (quite by accident, I presume) into actually mentioning the Constitution when he raised the issue with regard to his competitor for the nomination, Ted Cruz.
Now, the purpose of this present essay is not to rehash all the arguments for or against either Barack Obama or Ted Cruz being natural born citizens. Likewise, I do not intend to cover in great detail what exactly is a "natural born citizen," other than to note that the general run of the historical arguments that I have seen, from earlier English common law down to Blackstone and then through the statements of our own American jurists and commentarians, seems to be that the primary issue concerned with natural born citizenship is that of the place of birth, what is termed jus soli, or "law of the soil." There is a strain, represented best by Vattel, but also found within American legal thinking, that also includes the citizenship of the parents when deciding who is natural born, but that seems to be a secondary and minority opinion among the early jurists and statesmen, many of whom were alive and flourishing at the time of the Founding.
My concern at present is to investigate why we have this requirement in the first place. What is the point to it? Is it something we should be spending so much time and energy discussing, and if so, why is that the case? The reason for asking this question is because there are many out there who don't think we should even have this requirement anymore, that it's outdated, outmoded, and completely out of step with our modern, immigrant-soaked society.
To begin looking at this, let's first examine what the role of the president in our government was (and is) supposed to be. Essentially, when you boil down what Article II of the Constitution says about the presidency, you see three general areas of competency – acting as a check on the other branches through the veto and judicial nomination powers, molding American foreign policy through the treaty-making role, and serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Needless to say, each of these roles is quite important, and the abuse of them – as we have abundantly seen in recent decades, but especially in the last seven years – can cause a great deal of harm to this nation. The Founders and the generations immediately following well-understood that the safety and prosperity of America depended on ensuring that our leadership was devoted to the United States and did not have divided loyalties.
In 1803, St. George Tucker stated,
"That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence..."
James Kent, the "father of American jurisprudence," observed in his Commentaries,
"The Constitution requires (a) that the President shall be a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and that he shall have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and shall have been fourteen years a resident within the United States. Considering the greatness of the trust, and that this department is the ultimately efficient executive power in government, these restrictions will not appear altogether useless or unimportant. As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States, ambitious foreigners cannot intrigue for the office, and the qualification of birth cuts off all those inducements from abroad to corruption, negotiation, and war, which have frequently and fatally harassed the elective monarchies of Germany and Poland, as well as the pontificate at Rome."
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1840 in his own commentary on the Constitution,
"It is not too much to say, that no one, but a native citizen, ought ordinarily to be intrusted with an office so vital to the safety and liberties of the people."
The reasoning behind the natural born citizenship requirement is obvious – it was designed as a means of preventing foreign influence from taking root at the highest level of the Republic's government, in the office in which subversion could wreak the greatest damage. While it would be deleterious for one or a few congressmen to be subverted by a foreign power, prince, or ideology (such as is, for example, Rep. Keith Ellison from Michigan), and while the corruption of a justice of the Supreme Court would have far reaching effects, none would be as dangerous as putting the command of the military and the power to make treaties with foreign nations into the hands of one who was in the service of a foreign power, especially a hostile one.
We should recognize that, no matter how sincere an immigrant to this nation may be in their affections for this country, nevertheless, they still have divided loyalties. In many, many cases, their families are still home in the "old country." They often send money and information about America back to their native lands. Most importantly (and quite naturally – I am not condemning them for this at all), a piece of their heart is still often with the land of their nativity. My personal experience is that in nearly all cases of immigrants to America that I have known, they sooner or later will refer to their old homeland with "...in my country..." There is still a divided loyalty – which is to be naturally expected.
This is why a positive affirmation of the wisdom of and need for the natural born citizenship clause as a requirement for eligibility to be the president is even more important now than it ever was. With so many people from so many places around the world, there is a weltering pot of divided loyalties to every place on earth. As the object of immigration is (or at least should be) to increase the prosperity and strength of the Republic by allowing those who will be beneficial to us to join our body politic, it only makes sense that the highest office would be withheld from first-generation immigrants, while their natural born citizen children – born here on US soil – would be as eligible as the scion of a family of Blue Bloods. In a sense, immigrants are "proving themselves" to have an enduring loyalty to this land by setting down their roots and truly making this their home, and that for the generations following them.
We also would be wise to strengthen, rather than dismiss, our fidelity to this requirement because of the fact that in our globalized, shrunken world, there are simply so many more foreign actors out there with whom our nation comes into contact, a proportional number of whom will necessarily be hostile to our nation, for one reason or another. There are a couple of hundred official nation-states, dozens of competing ideologies, and even non-state actors who would love the opportunity to influence, or even control, American foreign and military policy.
The best way to ensure that this doesn't happen is to scrupulously guard the natural born citizenship of those we elect to this highest office in the Republic. We've already seen the damage that a president with foreign ties and dubious loyalties to the United States can wreak, even should he be a natural born citizen. All the more reason to increase our vigilance to reassert this necessary and wise requirement and to raise it back to its former sanctity in our governing system.
What other parts of the Constitution do you think are frickin’ nutz?
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That part that blacks are 3/5’s of a person comes to mind.
Many other parts that have needed 27 Amendments may not be frickin’ nutz, but they did need changing, right?
Sadly, Cruz seems to have decided to go full Obama becoming a constitutional scholar who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the Constitution or the original intent of its founders. That type of duplicitous behavior has made me question Cruz and his principles.
Living in Florida, I already knew Rubio was a two faced lying traitor. I had hoped much better from Ted Cruz, but those two seem to have so much in common.
A conservative needs to be willing to conserve the precepts of this nation or they are no different from the libs trying to destroy it. The Constitution is not a living document with its meaning to be twisted depending upon the desires and vagaries of time. The founders gave us a method to change what we don’t like in the Constitution. Those who seek to change the Natural Born requirement know full well they would not succeed if they were honest about why they want the change and had to abide by the Constitution to do it. It is just unfortunate that the republican party didn’t see fit to make certain the people who are seeking the presidential nomination from their party were actually qualified under the Constitution as originally intended. NWO globalization strikes again.
See my post here, especially when I talk about my nephew's wife and her birth in Germany while her father was stationed there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3393127/posts?page=138#138
What’s the point of amending the Constitution if you can simply ignore it? That’s what Obama does. And anyway, if you can ignore it, then what good will it be to amend it? That can just be ignored too.
The purpose of the provision is to guard against someone having divided loyalties. Does anyone really think that Ted Cruz has ever considered himself a subject of Queen Elizabeth?
From US State website, on dual nationality, as linked from the US consulate in Canada~
“The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. nationals may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist nationals abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person’s allegiance.
However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries. Either country has the right to enforce its laws, particularly if the person later travels there. Most U.S. nationals, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport does not endanger U.S. nationality. Most countries permit a person to renounce or otherwise lose nationality.”
So it isn’t just a loyalty issue.
Lol, the inability to tell me when he was naturalized can only mean one thing. That is if logic matters to the Trump cultists, which it has been shown over and over logic, facts, issues don’t matter to them.
Thanks for playing and proving my point.
It is automatic. It is not a naturalization process.
Who knew so many so called conservatives are low information or more commonly , I don’t care about information if it doesn’t help the Donald,
I do notice Trump at any time could go to court and seek to have Cruz thrown off ballot as ineligible. He can afford to waste the legal fees.
Why doesn’t he????
The question answers itself.
It’s a phony issue being pushed by a phony candidate and believed by only the willfully ignorant or total cultists.
Reality, however, is not the strong suit of those who join the mad rush after one savior then another or they'd realize how dangerous a precedent other than the one I stated sets is. Such folks don't care, though, they want what they want right now and don't care about tomorrow which is exactly how we got into the mess we're in right now.
Have a nice day and keep strokin' yourself if that makes you happy.
Hmm, it is so plain and clear............I wonder why the Donald doesn’t go into federal court and have Cruz declared ineligible under the Constitution.
The answer is obvious, only nit wits and Trump cult followers actually believe he isn’t a naturally born citizen.
Trump knows he would be wasting legal fees and made to look like a fool.
But the cultists just nod their head and say isn’t Trump brilliant.
Someone who tosses around "cultists" is out of anything reasonable to say, thanks for letting us know you have nothing reasonable to say.
If all the natural born citizens running for president were socialists/communists and I could put a Syrian in power that was devoted to the principles that America was founded upon I would not hesitate to do so. Not a chance, but just saying.
Lol, doesn’t want to know him out of race yet.
Do the cultists really buy this garbage?
Why doesn’t Rubio sue? Carson? Bush? Christie?
I guess they all love Ted and want to keep him around.
Riiiiigggghhht.
You believe what you like, doesn't matter to me one way or another except when it cheer leads setting bad legal precedents. There you go with cultist again, what's the matter with you ? No one can disagree with you unless they're a cultist ?
I don't support Princeton/Harvard lawyers no matter what office they run for. They drank the Kool-Aid or they wouldn't have made it through that rat maze. You like those folks running the government and believe your lawyer is better or different than their lawyer, then knock yourself out. That hasn't worked for the past hundred years but it's bound to work sooner or later if you just keep smashing your head on the wall.
You can read. You can read that law, I didn’t write it. It was written by our Congress. I posted it for your information. The word Naturalization is used. I did not put it there. This is not about Trump or indeed, Cruz. It is about the meaning of a word and our law.
There is no question to be answered. None. You can read it for yourself, or you can chose to stick your head in the sand. I don’t write the law. I don’t interpret them. I take it at face value.
If you are willing to do research you will became informed. Until then you will simply have an unsupported opinion. You will KNOW things that you have not learned.
You have a brain.
Why isn’t Trump suing to get Cruz off the ballot if he doesn’t qualify?
You have a brain.
Anyone with a brain can figure out the answer.
Because Cruz is not going to win.
Coming out of Iowa everyone is saying Cruz cheated, except his Kool-Aid drinkers.
Iowa was Ted Cruz’ peak. He will lose in New Hampshire and South Carolina. He didn’t even get a bump in the polls afer Iowa.
Everyone says he cheated.
Really?
How did he “cheat”?
This should be good.
I must respond that you also have a brain. Do ask yourself why YOU do not research this for yourself?
I have spent hundreds of hours, years before Cruz was even a glimmer on the horizon, studying and researching this particular topic.
But you, you KNOW. You know more than I. You know more than some of the most respected historians and Constitutional originalists. You interpret the laws passed by our Congress to not mean what the words clearly say. And you dismiss utterly the laws of the country that Cruz was born in.
Anyone with a brain can figure you out.
Still no answer on why Trump doesn’t sue.
I will try another way.
If Cruz is not a naturally born citizen, at what point in his life was he naturalized?
Natural born citizens don’t require naturalization and those not born citizens require naturalization.
When was Cruz naturalized???
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