Who Is A Natural American And Who Is Not?
Who Is A Natural American And Who Is Not?
( Who can be President and who can not?)
The children of every tribe and nation come into this world as new members of their parent’s group. They are born into it. They are natural members who will one day marry and have children who also will be new members of the group. And so it goes generation after generation. That’s how groups are populated and achieve self-perpetuation.
The children of members of a nation are its natural members. They are born as members. As a rule, essentially all who are born members are also natural members, but in out-of-the-ordinary circumstances, a child could be a born member but not a natural member.
If the daughter of the Chief became pregnant by a warrior of her tribe, their child would be born as a natural member, -or a natural born member. But if a warrior from another unrelated tribe were to be the father of a child born to the chief’s daughter, that child would not be a natural member because it was not fathered by a member but by an outsider. Yet it would be a born member because it carried the chief’s blood and therefore would not be rejected as an outsider or alien. A born member was a member from birth, -in contrast to an adult becoming a new member by sacred rites, rituals, and initiation processes required for outsides who wished to join the tribe.
All of the children of the tribe, except that one, would be natural, tribe-born members. But the child of the outsider would only be a born member, -not a natural born member.
The same rule applies to a larger tribe known as a nation, and to a larger membership known as citizenship. In a nation, those born to its citizens are citizens also, and naturally so because citizens naturally reproduce citizens. They were born into the nation as its new natural members. From birth, and by birth, they are born natural citizens, -or natural born citizens. The order of the words is unimportant. Both have the same meaning.
All natural citizens are citizens automatically and are not required to undergo processing by inspection, licensing, testing, genealogical review, genetic history review nor any review & permission process of any kind. Their national membership is natural membership and is theirs by birth.
In America there is no law that grants citizenship to natural Americans. There never will be such a law because it would be outside of the authority of Congress to make such a law. The only authority that Congress was given in regard to citizenship was that of passing laws governing the making of citizens out of foreigners, -naturalization laws.
Those laws cover any child who had a foreigner for a father. A foreigner cannot father a natural American, but for a long time, a foreign woman, married to an American man, could give birth to a natural American because she would no longer be a foreigner due to “naturalization by marriage”.
By marrying an American man, a foreign woman historically would have become an American automatically. All she would need to prove her citizenship was her husband’s birth certificate and her marriage license. And that is how they did it and that was the practice for a very long time.
The founders of our nation put a restriction into the Constitution that forbids anyone from serving as President if they are not a natural American. They can serve in any other high office in the land, except for the one that puts into one’s hands all the power of the combined command of all United States military forces. They realized the danger of the power of the presidency being in the hands of a man who was born to and raised by a foreigner who retained allegiance and devotion to a foreign King. Therefore only one born to an American father was eligible to be the President. He would come into this world owing allegiance to no one and therefore his only allegiance would be to his country and its Constitution.
This is all common sense, and it was common knowledge in the era of the revolutionary war, which saw the treachery of General Benedict Arnold, -the first and worst traitor in American history. Our founders did not want any chance of such treachery ever being committed by the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army and Navy. So they required that he be a natural born citizen (making him 100% American from birth). Anyone who was not 100% American at birth and by birth is not constitutionally qualified to serve as the President. That is the clear command of the Constitution. Only a constitutional amendment can lawfully alter it. But the lazy, cowardly, apathetic and corrupt excuses for protectors of our republic have instead chosen to simply ignored it.
Their covers for doing so are the wide-spread misconceptions that simply being born on U.S. soil magically makes one an American citizen, and also that any and every citizen, aside from those not born on U.S. soil, is allowed to be President. Both are provably wrong and it does not take a genius to comprehend the facts, nor does it take a legal scholar, lawyer, or judge to explain what the meaning of “natural” is. John McCain was born being a natural American even though he came into this world outside of the United States. It was his birth to an American couple that resulted in him being a natural citizen of the United States, and not an immigrant or foreigner, or citizen by statute.
Comprehending the idea of being born as a natural citizen comes naturally to everyone. It is as common-sensical as knowing that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning. It is not a legal concept because it doesn’t come from human law, it comes from Natural Law, -the natural law and natural right of membership by birth, -not membership by the laws of men.
The clear simple truth of who is a natural American, -or “natural born Citizen”, is not something that requires a law degree to understand, nor does it require reference to comments, opinions, rulings, quotes, or quotes of quotes by past legislators or judges or Justices of the Supreme Court. Any child can grasp it. It’s meaning has not changed since it was written. All that is gained by thinking that it is a matter of law, or common law, or monarchical philosophy is to confuse that which is not confusing.
It was not written to be read by legal scholars but by the common men who would be charged with deciding whether or not to ratify the Constitution which contained it and all the other elements of a totally new form of government.
So who is a natural American? Essentially everyone I know and probably everyone you know because we are all natives of America, -born to native parents. But being the melting pot that America is, many here are not natural Americans. After the fall of South Vietnam, there was a massive influx of new foreigners into America. None of them were natural Americans, nor even Americans of any type. But they became Americans via a mass naturalization by law.
Their children thus were born to new American citizens and therefore were new natural Americans, but that wasn’t what happened to the massive influx of Cubans resulting from the Muriel Boat Life. Their land was just off-shore a ways. They were still Cubans, -citizens of and devoted to their homeland, unlike the Vietnamese immigrants who were homeless, nationless refugees. They were allowed in because of their proven loyalty and connection to America during the long war.
So the Cuban immigrants were not granted American citizenship. They had to procure it the normal way, via the naturalization process. Any child born to them before they became naturalized Americans would not be born as a natural American but as a natural Cuban because they were still Cubans, -or were ex-Cubans in a nationality Limbo.
Only children born to Americans are natural Americans, all others who are citizens are so only by the consent and mandate of the people of American via law, policy, and procedure. That can and does include permission granted from birth (automatic naturalization) when a child is born to lawfully allowed permanent residents of the United States. Just like natural citizens, they are subject to the jurisdiction of the national government. Therefore the assumption is that their children will grow up in America as Americans and will be integrated into the nation as citizens just like the millions of children of immigrants that came before them.
But children born to non-immigrant foreigners who are not subject to the limitations and requirements placed on citizens and immigrants, nor to the political jurisdiction of our government, are not natural Americans and therefore cannot be President of the United States.
Barack Obama was just such a child because his father was in America solely as a Visa card foreign student and therefore remained subject to his own government, Great Britain. Therefore the location of his son’s birth is irrelevant to the issue of his eligibility to be the President because one’s place of birth is not at all connected to natural citizenship nor to who one’s father was.
Then how could he have been elected President? Because there is no neutral entity that has the responsibility of insuring that the candidates for President are actually qualified. The Senate has responsibility but that is only after the election. The Constitution stipulates that if the President-elect is found to not be qualified, then the Vice-President shall be President until a new election shall elect a qualified President.
But Senator Obama’s fellow Senators were not about to require that he be constitutionally qualified because they would have been called racists, and that would be like the Scarlet Letter painted across the chest of their public image.
So they allowed him to be unconstitutionally swore into office and they will allow it again if the States of the nation allow him on their ballots and he wins the election for a second time. To make a gigantic mistake in judgement or a sin of omission one time can just barely be tolerated. But how does anyone tolerate it twice? Hopefully, the guardians of the state’s ballot will be awake this time and will be unafraid, like Gandolf, to command the unqualified candidate, “You shall not pass!” Will they find the courage? We’ll have 50 chances to find out.
by a.r. nash feb. 2012 http://obama–nation.com
h2ooflife 
As a psychotherapist/counselor with a background in philosophy I see what I believe is an error on your part. To begin with infants are extremely sensitive in ways which adults really can not grasp. They have long ago left behind them the rich sensuous life of a small child. In a very nomadic society where people move from one state to another every few years most have lost the sense of place and the importance it plays mostly unconsciously in their lives. For example I grew up in a small town in Central Nebraska. Even now at almost 70 I experience the pull of that environment. It gives one the sense of ownership that never occurs later in another area no matter how long one lives there. The surroundings of childhood are welded to the child. Hence, the importance of being born in this country. I dispute McCain’s claim to being natural born on the grounds that he was born in Panama and his first experiences were with that atmosphere both externally and internally. It was not insignificant.
In addition children evoke in adults their childhoods and draw from them their early experiences. I remember this distinctly. My grandfather with whom I spent a good deal of time was partly raised by an Irish grandmother though his parents were American. My grandmother with whom I also spent a good of time had an English father. When or if he became an American citizen I do not know. I was quite aware as a child of the Irishness of my grandfather and the Englishness of my grandmother though they were patriotic in a way no longer possible.
On the other hand I married a woman both of whose parents had family going back to the early seventeen hundreds. The difference between herself & me was quite noticeable regarding many things. Needless to say she was ultra American. Just as I was barely one–my ancestors having arrived here less than 100 years before my birth whereas hers had been here over 300 years at hers. These are the sorts of noticings that were once common place in this country before say the 1960’s.
So we have a society that can not grasp why a president would be required to be born in the land of two citizen parents because we have shifted to a society based on “science”. A society that won’t be satisfied until we are all understood neurologically! This perspective does not even really see the problem.
And then we have the NEW WORLD ORDER keen on eliminating nations and nationality. Perhaps they are the bigger factor. What better then than someone like Obama. And by the way what counts is that Britain regards Obama as a national and not the USA laws.
So this whole subject is really elementary. Apuzzo and Donofrio have both done an excellent job. Why dispute it? The important thing according to the Founders and Constitution is that a president have the strongest possible roots in the country of which he is president. Obama’s are very weak; McCain’s might have been strong enough but why open the door to outside influences by fudging?
You’ve missed the forest for the trees. You’ve used language that has no place in a logical determination based on principle. It is irrelevant how good a job Apuzzo and Donofrio have done, -all that matters is that they have not done a wholly accurate job. When it comes to the Presidency of the United States, there is no room for error, and they have made a huge one. See my newest treatise; Natural Citizenship vs Citizenship by Conversion.
I don’t understand how you can read what I’ve written and not experience your logic-center becoming convinced by the logic of what you’ve read. Instead you relate to that which can’t be quantified as surely being a part of some formula that no one can articulate as any kind of logical principle. Feelings of nostalgia for their childhood home is what helped give us half a million deaths in the Civil War. How many tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented if Robert E. Lee and his fellow Generals had not turned their back on their nation and it’s melting pot premise but instead retreated to their own background and waged war against their fellow Americans?
America is not about racial background, ethnic background, foreign-nation background, religious background, but is about only one thing and that is what we read in the Declaration of Independence. Remove those principles and the basis of America is gone. In combat overseas no one is identified as a person belonging to this niche or that group, but belonging to an idea that we all hold to and swear our life, liberty, and well-being to, -to preserve and defend. That is why the oath of federal office, for everyone right up to the President, does not involve swearing allegiance to anything under Heaven other that the Constitution of the United States. It is presented by our founding fathers to us their descendents as the sacred ground on which our whole house is founded. It is not the nation or the government or one’s home state or region that one swears to preserve, or that engenders faithful allegiance to the Constitution. Rather it is the principles of unalienable rights bestowed by the Creator. The pledge of allegiance itself is a mistake because it should say; “I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, and to the Republic which is founded upon it…”
“McCain’s [roots] might have been strong enough but why open the door to outside influences by fudging?” Why should we? Because the choice is not ours to make. It was made the the authors of the Constitution and the 13 States that ratified it as the supreme law of the land. Where does anyone get the idea that we have a say in the matter? That kind of thinking is what has put our nation in the toilet, constitutionally speaking. Every legislator, judge, and President thinking that they have the right to interpret things as they see fit. An what they’ve seen fit is the opposite of the constitutional republic that our forefathers designed for us.
My impression was that you considered McCain a natural born citizen. Rationality and logic are not the highest phase of the mind. Reason makes a good servant but a bad master. As regards the Civil War the South was in the right legally. To preserve the Union was a weak excuse for all the destruction that occurred.
Poets are doctors of the soul (Novalis). The language I use is designed for people and not computers or people aping them.
You are a dogmatist. I am not.
Actually I’m just like you. A poet, a songwriter, a composer, a lyricist. My efforts in the presidential eligibility arena a 100% focused, as they should be, on what the truth is and what the truth is not, regardless of how people may feel about it. There is only one approach to legal matters and that is the mind of Spock. Everything is irrelevant if it isn’t relevant. I’ve shone light on that which is accurate, -true, and therefore relevant. There is far too much fog of subjective thinking on the subject and my aim is to see the fog blown away so reality can be seen. One cannot see the objective truth while wearing the glasses of subjectivity.
Very nice piece, Adrien. Although I looked carefully, I don’t see where it conflicts with Mario’s position.
Are you saying that an opinion that says that anyone born in American is a natural citizen is the same as saying that only citizens born of citizens are natural citizens?
I’m saying only children born in the country of citizen parents can be natural born. I believe both you and Mario agree with that. If you don’t, then I misread your work.
Wow! You have very much misread what I’ve written because I have constantly exposed the fallacy that natural birth and natural citizenship have anything whatsoever to do with geography and political boundaries. Please read what I spent the day writing:
An Erroneous Definition of Natural Born Citizen https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/erroneous-nbc-definition/
It lays out the logic behind the truth and the error so that all is made crystal clear.
I must say that for someone who complained about the language I use yours seems unduly convoluted and wordy. But worst of all you grant McCain natural born citizenship simply by parentage. By fiat accompli. I think you would do better to drop the tone of the fanatical preserver of truth and justice as well. Good luck.
One should not say that I “grant” McCain natural born citizenship. Nature provided that by the circumstance of being the off-spring of citizens. One should never think in terms which would lead to describing a natural citizen as being such “simply by parentage”. To think that natural citizenship has any basis other than parentage is to not understand the basis of natural citizenship. In the political realm as well as in nature, parentage is absolutely everything. Everything devolves from or is derived from who one’s parents are, and only secondarily, where one was born if one did not have citizen parents.
As for the civil war, I agree with your analysis of the rights of secession and the lack of any right of invasion, but bad decisions were made with too much self-confidence, and those bad decisions began with the South attacking a U.S. fort. It reminds me of how the bombardment of England began. Neither side was bombing civilian targets until one day English bombers couldn’t make it to their target and so they released their bombs to get rid of them. Unfortunately they fell on the population living below the drop area. The Nazis mistakenly assumed that that was deliberate, when it wasn’t, so they retaliated with civilian bombing of their own. And so the whole previously “civilized” war devolved into a nightmare of total war. That was what the Nazis waged against the despised “primitive” Soviets, but hadn’t thought they would employ against the civilized British whom they held in esteem. The law of unintended consequences.
Your impression of the wording of my writing was considered as an honest impression, and so I re-read this essay: NATURAL CITIZENSHIP vs CITIZENSHIP BY SUBSTITUTION for maybe the 7th time, -not just looking for spelling errors but for less than ideal phrasing. As a result I found much that I was able to improve and simplify or clarify. So thanks for an honest observation. When one doesn’t have a proof-reader, one lacks feedback before posting.
Since the Civil War was the most devastating event in American history I think it deserves an additional remark or two. Firstly, none of the enumerated powers vested in the government provide for the invasion and destruction of a state that decides to leave the union. Secondly, regard for the 9th and 10th Amendments should have been kept in mind. Imagine a woman who admits in court that yes she did kill her husband and two children as well as burn down the barn but she did this to keep the family together. Would you as a jury member regard this an excellent defense and find for her acquittal? Finally no colony would have ratified the Constitution if the Civil War had been flashed before their inner vision. The purpose of the nation was not a terrible civil war. These men knew of the English civil war and would have done all in their power to prevent one in the country they were founding. Lincoln like many presidents exceeded the limits of power vested in the Executive Branch.
I must disagree about McCain. For whatever reasons I do believe that the Founders intended that persons born to citizen parents in a foreign nation had to be naturalized. And that the US President must not due to foreign birth have a tie to a foreign power. Had the person been born in England to American parents he would be a natural born subject of England. So the requirement for US as place of birth was to remove any conceivable loyalty to a foreign nation. I believe I have heard of persons traveling in France who happened to be born there to American parents who were forced to join the French military. So you can see how a foreign birth would be something the Founders wanted to avoid. You probably know about the impressment of American sailors into British naval service related to this matter.
One’s foreign birth does not result in having a tie to that foreign country. If the birth took place a few feet over the border and the parents never returned to the neighboring country then there is no conceivable connection to that nation except in fertile imaginations. As for an English birth, the policy of the Crown and Parliament to make all born on British soil natural born subjects was rescinded in the latter half of the 19th century.
The person you heard of who was forced to join the French military was the son of Americans who were also born and raised in France. Their children are not Americans unless their father has lived in the United States. So his children were in fact French citizens, -dual citizens of both countries but with France having a greater claim on them.
As for the British impressment of naturalized Americans which led to the War of 1812, that was a policy that the U.S. was diametrically opposed to since we believed in the unalienable right of self-expatriation.
None of the reasons you’ve stated are a basis to believe that the founding fathers felt it wise and fair and justified to disenfranchise an entire class of normal natural born citizens who were born to parents who were public servants and far more proven to be patriotic than their domestic counterparts. Several of the founding fathers served overseas for significant periods of time as foreign Ambassadors and they help write the Constitution. So the view you defend would argue that they wished to disenfranchise their own children who happen to have been born during their foreign service. Does that make sense?
Read Leo Donofrio at naturalborncitizen wordpress on this. It comes the LAW OF NATIONS which was a favorite book for the Founders.
Read my explanation of the major logic error on which Donofrio and Apuzzo base their erroneous assumption. An Erroneous Definition of Natural Born Citizen https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/erroneous-nbc-definition/
I will check what you have suggested. Both attorneys you mention go by THE LAW OF NATIONS–have you looked into that? In any case what matters is what the Founders considered “natural born”. They may have just had reasons to want a birth also in USA. Thanks for the responses.
arnash–Here is the resolution. I believe both Donofrio and Apuzzon would agree with you regarding natural law; but both would say that positive law can be used to increase the presidential requirement to not only citizen parents but also birth in the nation. To remove this latter stipulation would require an amendment,
Personally I can see how birth in the land would strengthen the person’s tie to the nation. Despite the modern/postmodern appearances America is still a rather primitive nation. Any country that sets about fighting unnecessary wars with plenty of citizen support and at enormous cost of life and money is pretty foolish. And yet the nation is ready to throw the Constitution away on the grounds that it has become a more advanced place. Actually I would say it has regressed a great deal since WWII.
I don’t believe you’re grasping the true significance of constitutional authority. It can’t be changed by simple majority legislation. Nothing about the constitution of government of the United States can be altered without an amendment. The presidency is one of the elements of the constitution of our government. Congress is another. If Congress had created the Constitution then they could have written it so that they could amend it without a super-majority vote followed by a state-by-state ratification. But instead, it was the Constitution that created Congress, as well as the presidency.
To require birth in America would be a slap in the face to every natural American born on geography that wasn’t part of the United States. Congress has no authority to define the birth-place scenario of presidential candidates nor regulate it for American citizens. All natural citizens are the same. There’s no constitutional difference derived from birth location because natural citizenship is not covered by the Constitution. It’s covered only by the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, just like the right to Life, Liberty, and Property. It can’t be granted, rescinded, altered, regulated, nor limited by birth circumstances because it is under no regulation whatsoever other than parentage. That freedom from human manipulation is one of the elements of something being “natural”.
What if in their ignorance, nonetheless, the Founders meant by “natural born” what I claim it does? What then? Surely you will not deny that the Founders may very well have used an expression gotten from the LAW OF NATIONS to mean born of citizen parents in the land. I appreciate your wanting the Constitution to embody your idea–but it just may not do that. There is nothing illogical about wishing your president to have both birth in the land and citizen parents. As for birth in some other locale–well, the parents need to stay home until they have the baby!
If the founders meant to include native-birthplace, all one need do is show where they made that clear and it would be acceptable to me as being what they intended. But in all the quotes that I’ve seen, only one ever made a connection between loyalty and place of birth, and that may have been after the Constitution was already ratified. So nothing is left except pure unadulterated natural law. I’ve just completely the final word on the subject and will not post it, along with a page of my replies to Mario Apuzzo. As for what one wishes for in a President, those who wrote the Constitution were incapable of wishful thinking in regard to it. They were strong bold men hardened into steel-like resolve by a long and very dangerous war that could easily have cost them everything, but they were willing to take the risk for the sake of freedom. If you had your neck stuck out so far for so long you also would be one who only says what he means and means what he says. They were warriors, they were veterans, they were survivors, but they weren’t wishful thinkers. They were realists. Either they wanted a domestically born leader only, or it didn’t matter to them. There was no middle ground. If they wanted one then why is there no evidence of that? Why is there only evidence that they didn’t care? It’s true that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence but natural law is the only thing to go by and in it where a creature is born is totally irrelevant to what kind of creature it is. Not relevant at all. Same with natural citizenship.
“But natural law gives a government the right to make positive law for the safety and happiness of the people it serves which can abrogate that natural law. For example, in natural law, the strongest survive and take possession of all they can. But not so under positive law, which factors in other elements such as laws that protect life, liberty, and property which affect whether and how a person should survive and what a person can possess.”
Put more elegantly by Mario Apuzzo at his blog.
Natural Law is the law of the principles of nature, and of being, and Man’s relationship with the designer of Nature and the world Man inhabits. One of those principles is that of the natural rights that flow from those principles and origin. Behavior.in nature does not involve any immutable principle that is a natural element of how societies are organized. Behavior can be in violation of the natural rights of others and occur solely for the sake of self-benefit. Such behaviors do not constitute any pattern adaptable to the rules of human society but are in conflict with them.
If you are right about this, then why do you think both Donofrio and Apuzzo persist in their ignorance? Surely they must have gotten the idea of birth in this land from some where as did the Supreme Court Justice in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875). When the latter says “it has never been doubted . . . ” this is one way of saying that it is common knowledge. How do you suppose this idea of birth in the land ever got to be so generally known when according to you the Founders intended no such thing? I am not myself by any means a scholar in legal matters or American history–but I do know that Supreme Court rulings were always poured over by attorneys and law professors, and there would have been an uproar if the Justice in the above mentioned case were simply spinning a fantasy about a subject of such grave importance. So account for the mistake of Donofrio and Apuzzo and also the 19th Jurist. I do not think you will succeed–but good luck. And by the way, Vattel in the famous 18th century classic LAW OF NATIONS makes the same claim as those mentioned here. And once again we have with him a highly regarded authority. Well, you have a big job ahead of you.
Those two attorneys have staked-out a plot of legal ground that is equivalent to a corner which they’ve painted themselves into. The have made a logic error so elementary that it would be a huge blow to their considerable egos to have to admit to such an almost obvious mistake.
I don’t have a big job ahead of me to explain that error. I have a big job behind me because I’ve already explained it in exquisite detail exhaustively. But it seems like you are living in some kind of alternate reality in which all that I’ve written does not yet exist. I can’t read it for you. That is up to you. I can’t understand how you can pretend that the questions that you ask haven’t been thoroughly answered. But if you would like the clearest explanation possible, then read what I took the day to write, “The Things of Nature and The Nature of Things”. It will explain everything, answer all of the doubts and make you an expert on natural law. A Nash
Two comments: you do not address the Supreme Court Justice in what you would consider his delusion; and secondly, a question: is some one born in this country to non-citizens a citizen in your opinion– if so, why; if not, also why?
I still can not grasp why you deny positive law. Maybe you could explain.
It has occurred to me that you are treating language the way a mathematician treats mathematical language. For example, if pi occurs in an equation we do not have to argue with ourselves or others about its meaning. 3.14 . . . . Unfortunately, words like natural and born are not so tied down. In fact as you know words change their meanings over time. Your are assuming that the expression natural born can only mean what you have determined it meant for some persons. Obviously it did not mean that for Vattel. Or the Justice in the Minor case. Or the two attorneys we have been discussing. What I would like to suggest is that there are two disputes. One is that you claim the expression needs to mean X; and they are saying the Founders used it to mean Y. Now there is no reason why it can not mean Y. If you had been present at the time you could have argued for your meaning and saved a lot of trouble. Right? Sometimes, especially if one has spent considerable time in a hot humid room, one may use a phrase without due consideration. Given the disputes that occurred back then perhaps they were simply glad to get something down . . . The real and only question now is are the persons who claim natural born in the Constitution must entail birth in the land right or wrong; this is not a philological question. A dictionary will not help. Time travel would. Or documents from that time like Jay’s letter. Or what legal experts around the time thought. Or in the decades that followed. It is a historical question. So far everything points to the born in the land usage however wrong that usage may strike you. You will need to find ample historical documentary proof from the time of the Convention and thereafter in the 18th and 19th century to really convince anyone who has looked into this. Many hours in archives.
In short if someone in your car says turn right when they mean turn left . . . and you follow the exact words you will go the wrong direction. This happens.
I don’t get how you are not getting it. You talk about opinions and I talk about facts. You talk about ideas of what someone said which have been misconstrued and mis-characterized. I show by reason and natural law and the laws of language that serious errors of discernment were made, how they were made, why they were made, and show in crystal clear terms what those errors were, but you address none of that reality. I could almost swear that you didn’t even read what I wrote because you’ve greatly mischaracterized it as being nothing more than my opinion about other’s opinions when my entire approach has been to not reply on opinions. I’m still waiting for you to present some facts that I can agree or disagree with. I hope you will read what I spent the day writing. You will be personally interested because you are an element in it.
In the absence of a time-machine, the best and only source of authority is the English language and the actual meaning of words. Words have backgrounds and they do not change over thousands of years. The meaning of that everyday subject “the weather” doesn’t change, -the meaning of natural doesn’t change, the meaning of born doesn’t change, the meaning of membership doesn’t change. The meaning of words is the only authority to which one can turn because all other voices are not authorities over the English language and its meanings. Everyone is an expert on the meaning of common words and everyone can observe nature and describe it. No one needs an expert or authority to tell them what they already know.
My upcoming final treatise is titled: Angels, Nuns, and Natural Citizenship (Naturalization into Heaven, Baptism into Citizenship, and Conversion into Freedom). If it doesn’t make everything clear for you then nothing on Earth possible can.
You are having a problem with simple logic, -the same problem that Donofrio and Apuzzo suffer from. Anyone who has taken Philosophy 101 and understood its simple straight-forward laws of logic will understand what I’ve pointed out perfectly. But they’ve failed Logic 101 and I’m just trying to open their eyes to the erroneous presumption they fallen into. You asked: “How do you suppose this idea of birth in the land ever got to be so generally known when according to you the Founders intended no such thing?” The first part of that question is unrelated to the second part.
Birth in one’s own country is almost universally the case, almost every American is born in America. But not every last American is because some are born elsewhere. The presidency has nothing to do it that fact. If we were ruled by a communist committee that fact would be unchanged so don’t drag the presidency into the discussion. What a natural American is isn’t defined by what anyone wants the President to be. It’s the other way around. What the President is is defined by what a Natural American is and what a Natural American is isn’t dependent on the presidency even existing. I’ve shown exactly what natural membership is and what it isn’t, and I’ll soon show again for the last time. It will make everyone an expert.
I have a degree in Philosophy from Stanford University. You have not answered my simple question: Is it possible that the Founders meant by “natural born” born in the land of a citizen father? Of course, it is possible as it dose not violate any logic( pink elephants are possible as well). Now is it probable? If so then what is the evidence? If not, then what is the evidence for that? Please try to address these questions.If you want to persuade me you will first have to answer my requests. I am not at this stage interested in what ought to have been the case, what the Founders ought to have written. I merely want answers to the two or three above questions.
You seen to think that because of your thinking the Founders had to mean what you think they should have meant. But as I tried to convey by my simple example, people do not always use the best language or terminology. And the Founders were certainly free to use “natural born” as they saw fit. You also have not addressed the same usage by Vattel whom they were inspired by and reading during those years.
Give it another try now. You must face the fact that the Founders could have meant by “natural born citizens” exactly what the two attorneys claim. True, perhaps they did not–but you have to prove that. You have not so far proved to me that you know what Madison for example had in mind. A letter for example of his with what you think he meant would be great. Good luck.
P.S. I can tell that you are very attached to your ideas. Fine. However, other people such as the Founders may well have (given their experience and educations and times) had very different concerns in mind. I believe they did. Try to make your response very dry and succinct. Just answer each of my questions.
We all have to face the fact that anything written, the authors of which are no longer living, will always run the risk of being “obscure” or ambiguous. Sometimes during a normal conversation someone says something you do not quite understand or catch. Hours later you find yourself wondering what did they mean. Then sometimes you ask, and they say: Gee, I really don’t know what I meant. There you are. Spoken or written. You probably are familiar with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. “The moving finger writes/ and having writ/ nor all our pity and wit/ erase a single jot of it.” We will never know for certain what was meant. Here is some relevant info:
–No single individual wrote it. Twelve of the thirteen states sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention to revise the Articles of Confederation and the entire convention worked on it. After the political questions were hashed out a ‘committee of style’ was formed to put the ideas into formal words. It is generally accepted that Gouverneur Morris created most of the actual wording included in the final draft from the Committee of Style.—Wiki-answers
So while Madison composed the Constitution, Morris was in charge of style and finding the actual wording. And so . . . Since we are talking about two words –natural born–it is your job to show what those words meant at the time to those men at the Convention and to those men who voted to ratify the Constitution. This is a research project. No amount of study of natural law will substitute. No amount of reason will do either. You have to have documents which prove that Madison and Morris and the others all meant what you claim. Otherwise, it is just imagination on your part. I hope you see my point. Consider the Bible. Scholars for centuries have argued and debated the meanings of almost every single passage, every single word. Take the Latin phrase: E pluribus unum. For some it means simply from 13 colonies one nation. For others it is an occult message which some detest and others relish. Yet the words are very clear in Latin. From many, one. Again the Latin of Virgil is not the same as the Latin of Aquinas.
Finally if you are right you should have no great difficulty finding among the archival memory all sorts of proof for your position. But absent that you will have to concede to the attorneys because they have documented their position.
You’ve made several unfounded assumptions. The first is that the meaning of the phrase was unsettled and confusion could result if an effort wasn’t made in writing to cut through the confusion or ambiguity and present “the true” meaning. That is an assumption that has no basis and there’s nothing to substantiate it. I make the logical presumption that everyone knew exactly what it meant and so there was no need to write the obvious which everyone already knew. Therefore there would be no record of discussion because the issue would never have arisen. There will be no documents of discussions that never happened. Hence, nothing to research.
My position is that no one has any standing in defining the meaning of natural born citizen and therefore only Reason can be trusted to provide an explanation. I’ve followed Reason to all of its logical conclusions, so now the ball is no longer in my court, it’s in the court of those who would cling to their erroneous conclusions without justification. Refute the irrefutable logic of Reason or accept it. There is no other sane position one can take.
It’s jarring to read something that makes perfect sense, like your comment, but then to run into its finally statement which is totally unhinged. It shows me that your reasoning ability is still evolving. You said “you will have to concede to the attorneys because they have documented their position.” It’s apparent that you don’t know what documentation means.
I once read an interview with an elderly famous extremely prolific and complex poet. He said that he used to say that only he and God understood his complex compositions and wording. But now, he said, only God understands it. But the meaning of commonly understood words doesn’t come with complexity and confusion, or else the framers didn’t really know what they were doing, and I would argue just the opposite.
Read the two compositions I wrote today. They will show why there is no counter to the reality that I present. Facts are facts. Opinion can’t trump facts.
You’ve misread my attitude completely. I don’t care whether or not the two attorney’s assumption is correct or not. I don’t care if the founding fathers view a natural citizen only as one native-born. I agree that that is a possibility. But I’m trying to get everyone to recognize that the attorneys have based their declaration on a faulty, illogical reading of Vattel’s statement. They can’t see their error but it’s clear to see for anyone who cares to read my expose of their error. The truth needs to reign and replace error. the prestige of anyone involved in the issue is irrelevant. No one can be defended, only the truth of the matter matters.
You wrote: “And the Founders were certainly free to use “natural born” as they saw fit.” You need to grasp the truth of the matter. That view that they were free to uses words in an arbitrary manner is utterly false. They had no right nor assumed any to redefine the meaning of words, especially not in a document as fundamental and historic as the Constitution. Every word and statement had to be clear and understood by everyone because everyone had to vote on it.
The mean of nbc was not confusing nor ambiguous to them. It did not mean whatever they wanted it to mean. It meant what it meant long before the Constitution was written. It’s meaning hasn’t changed to be malleable for our times.
“Now is it probable? If so then what is the evidence? If not, then what is the evidence for that?”
There is no evidence that I know of on either side, -at least none that I can recall. There shouldn’t be any evidence because the only issue ever raised would have been the issue of having a foreign father, not where the child was born. It only exists now because I eventually came to recognize the error in the attorney’s so-called “definition”.
The best evidence in favor of the logic that I’ve pointed out is the Naturalization Act of 1790 which totally agrees that natural citizens can be born anywhere, domestically or abroad.
Which view is correct doesn’t change Obama’s ineligibility so one needs to ask oneself “who has their professional reputation on the line?” I don’t have a professional reputation to defend at all costs. To me the cost is to the process of logical thought.
“I make the logical presumption that everyone knew exactly what it meant and so there was no need to write the obvious which everyone already knew.” Except Vattel, one of the most significant and important 18th century authors whose book as I have mentioned was extremely popular among the educated. It is said that Washington was reading his book on the day of his inauguration. Sorry but your claim that reason alone will suffice sounds itself like an Age of Enlightenment thought which I feel does not do the job.Tell me why Vattel who lived at the time did not share in what you believe he ought to have.
“your claim that reason alone will suffice…” Please support your claim that I’ve made such a claim.
“Tell me why Vattel who lived at the time did not share in what you believe he ought to have.”
That question is equivalent to this one: “Prove to me that you’ve stopped beating your wife.” Show me where Vattel states anything contrary to the common logic that I’ve merely pointed out.
So present Vattel’s statements and your critique and show exactly where the attorneys’ erred.
That request is equivalent to saying to Darwin, -after he had published The Origin of Species”, “Mister Darwin your theory needs corroboration, so you must write a book detailing your beliefs and the reasons for them.”
For you to call on me to write that which I’ve already written, in multiple versions from multiple angles, is either…no, no one can be that dumb. I’m left strongly suspecting that you have made it your job to put a responsibility-trip into my head which would make me feel beholden to answering your personal demands to answer questions that have already been answered over and over, and that you do so for the sole purpose of keeping me occupied with writing in a redundant manner so that I spend no time sharing across the internet what I’ve discovered and realized.
By the way Darwin’s theory had lots of problems leading to neo-Darwinism which itself has numerous problems. So tell me where you deal with Vattel.
“Vattel, in his masterpiece legal treatise, The Law of Nations or Principles of the Law of Nature, in Book I, Chapter XIX, analyzed citizenship and related topics. The Founders knew that Vattel defined a “citizen” simply as any member of society. They also knew from reading Vattel that a “natural born Citizen” had a different standard from just “citizen,” for he or she was a child born in the country to two citizen parents (Vattel, Section 212 in original French and English translation). ” –Mario Apuzzo. What I have been requesting from you is a refutation of Vattel. Wherein you prove that Vattel is wrong or the like though that would not change what the Founders thought and did.
As regards natural law we have to keep in mind that it is the product of the human intellect.Yes, they hoped to derive this from a true source in nature . . . but human nonetheless. Reason is a good servant but a bad master.
I notice your responses are never factual. You never cite anything. You demand faith from the reader in something hidden. Yourself, presumably.
“What I have been requesting from you is a refutation of Vattel. Wherein you prove that Vattel is wrong” Why is it that of the 3,500 views of my blog, no one else has asked me to prove that which I’ve already proven. Your blind pretense that I’ve yet to write that which you’re expecting me to write again for the fourth time is not a credible pretense, and it’s not believable that anyone could be so stupid as to not know how stupid your request is. So why do you persist in making it? As I said, it must be an attempt to keep me writing the same thing over and over so that I’m too occupied to share what I’ve already written.
The quote is nice–but it seems irrelevant since the Founders followed Vattel; and what I thought we were about was determining what they meant about presidential qualifications. All you have accomplished as far as I can see is a criticism of that. You have determined by referring to natural law that they should have meant something different by “natural born citizen”. Am I correct?
And I am critical of your diminishing the importance of where a person was born and his/her early environment which plays such a great role in one’s growth and adult life. Why you take this position is unclear. But I think you greatly underestimate its importance; and the Founders obviously took a position similar to mine. I would definitely prefer a president born in Kansas all things being equal to one born in China or Africa or Europe to citizen parents, since the latter’s early impressions will be of an alien land. Place of birth is at least equal to and in some cases of greater influence than citizenship of parents.
“Why you take this position is unclear.” Just why you are unclear is unclear. It would seem that you have extremely short term memory, as if you read something that I’ve written and immediately forget what you just read. All I can recommend for someone with your problem is to re-read what I’ve written several more times. Then all of your questions will be answered.