A great many Americans, including a substantial number of my own readers, remain confused about the question of who is and who is not a \u201cnatural born\u201d citizen, eligible to serve as president or vice president of the United States. They remain doggedly convinced that Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio are all eligible to serve merely because they were born on American soil.\u00a0 That simply is not the case.\u00a0 From the comments I have received in response to a recent column titled, \u201cAmending the U.S. Constitution by Fiat,\u201d it appears as if some either read much too quickly, or are a bit lacking in reading comprehension skills.<\/p>\n
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution tells us, \u201cNo 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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.\u201d <\/em>\u00a0It\u2019s pretty straightforward.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it appears that when many read those words they are immediately struck by a strange form of dyslexia.\u00a0 What their brains register is a clause beginning, \u201cNo Person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President\u2026\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n The qualifications related to the age of the president and the number of years of U.S. residency are not at issue\u2026 they are quite straightforward and leave no room for misinterpretation. It is the status of the candidates\u2019 citizenship that causes problems for many people\u2026 many of whom read the clause as if the legislatures of thirty-eight states had just approved an amendment dropping fourteen words from the middle of the presidential eligibility clause.<\/p>\n Clearly, the use of the word \u201cor\u201d early in the clause tells us that a natural born<\/em> citizen is someone entirely different from a mere citizen<\/em>.\u00a0 That was true on June 21, 1788, the day the Constitution was ratified, and it is still true today; the provision has not been amended.\u00a0 The term \u201ccitizen\u201d encompasses a broad range of citizenship categories, including \u201cnative born,\u201d \u201cnatural born,\u201d and \u201cnaturalized.\u201d\u00a0 The term \u201cnatural born\u201d refers to a specific sub-set of citizens.<\/p>\n When the Founders met in Philadelphia in September 1787 to approve the final draft of the U.S. Constitution, a deep-seated animosity toward all things British colored every aspect of their daily lives.\u00a0 So is it even remotely conceivable that, just five years and eleven months after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the Founders would have produced a Constitution that would allow an individual holding dual US-British citizenship to serve as commander-in-chief of the Army and the Navy? It is a preposterous notion on its face.\u00a0 To believe that they would have done so requires a willing suspension of reason.\u00a0 Yet, that is precisely what those who use the terms \u201ccitizen\u201d and \u201cnatural born citizen\u201d interchangeably would have us believe.<\/p>\n To illustrate, let\u2019s pretend that we are present at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on a cold winter\u2019s day in January 1789. It is just seven months after the people of New Hampshire voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution, making it the official law of the land. The third session of the Continental Congress has just been called to decide who should be selected to lead our new nation as president of the United States.\u00a0 The Constitution required that the man they selected had to be either a natural born U.S. citizen\u2026 or\u2026 a citizen of the United States on the day that the Constitution was ratified, at least thirty-five years of age, and a resident of the U.S. for at least fourteen years.<\/p>\n If those who drafted Article II of the Constitution had insisted upon the same qualifications for president and vice president as they had for members of Congress and members of the federal judiciary, including members of the United States Supreme Court, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution would have begun, \u201cNo Person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President\u2026\u201d <\/em>In a nation of 4 million people, nearly every male citizen over age thirty-five would have qualified.<\/p>\n But if the Framers had produced a document that began, \u201cNo Person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President\u2026\u201d <\/em>they would have been presented with an insoluble problem because, in 1789, when the first president of the United States was elected, the only natural born citizens in the entire country\u2026 those born after the signing of the Declaration of Independence to U.S. citizen parents\u2026 were less than thirteen years old.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the authors of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution had foreseen the problem and, realizing that there could be no thirty-five-year-old natural born citizens during the earliest years of the republic, provided language making it possible for those born prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to parents who were not U.S. citizens, to serve as president or vice president.<\/p>\n It is not as if the country did not enjoy an excess of strong and capable leaders, men of major accomplishments. General George Washington, who led the continental Army during the Revolutionary War, was available.\u00a0 He was born in Wakefield, Virginia on February 22, 1732, forty-four years before the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 Eighty-four-year-old Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention and one of the most prominent men of the time was available.\u00a0 Franklin was born in Massachusetts in January 1705, and lived most of his life in the U.S.\u00a0 George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention who came to be known as the \u201cFather of the Bill of Rights,\u201d was available.\u00a0 Mason was born in Virginia on December 11, 1725, and lived his entire life in the U.S.<\/p>\n However, none of the three were \u201cnatural born\u201d citizens because they were born to parents who were subjects of King George III, but who became U.S. citizens on July 4, 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed. And since the Framers had foreseen the problem and had provided a \u201cgrandfather\u201d clause to cover the situation, all three were made eligible under the Article II, Section 1 language reading, \u201cor a citizen of the United States<\/em> at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In fact, none of our first seven presidents\u2026 Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, or Jackson\u2026 were natural born citizens. Martin Van Buren, our eighth president, born to U.S. citizen parent at Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782, six years after the Declaration of Independence, was our first \u201cnatural born\u201d president.\u00a0 Every president since Van Buren, with the exception of Republican Chester A. Arthur, whose Irish father was a British subject at the time of his birth, and Democrat Barack Obama, whose Kenyan father was also a British subject at the time of his birth, has been a \u201cnatural born\u201d U.S. citizen, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.<\/p>\n Those who doggedly insist that all that is necessary to be a \u201cnatural born\u201d citizen is to be born on American soil, regardless of their parents\u2019 citizenship status, have an obligation to explain why the Framers were so careful to distinguish between the terms \u201ccitizen\u201d and \u201cnatural born citizen\u201d while setting out the qualifications to serve as president of the United States.<\/p>\n Why did the Framers make that distinction? Although it is impossible for parents to know beforehand how their children will ultimately develop, we can all agree that the most influential factor in a child’s upbringing is the parenting he\/she receives as a child, and that the cultural, philosophical, political, and religious influence of a child\u2019s parents fundamentally establishes the direction of his\/her future conduct and intellectual development.\u00a0 It was that hope of parental and environmental influence on which the Framers pinned their hopes for a Christian nation comprised of Godly citizens who would be capable of maintaining a constitutional republic.<\/p>\n What the Founders feared most, and what caused them to limit access to the presidency only to the \u201cnatural born,\u201d was the fear that a future president\u2026 during his formative years and during the years in which he was developing intellectually\u2026 would be exposed to an environment or a foreign political ideology that might cause him to reject the values and the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. No president has been more emblematic of the worst fears of the Framers than the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania, Ave., Barack Hussein Obama.\u00a0 His father was a Muslim and a black African socialist; his mother was a left wing socialist flower-child; his stepfather was an Indonesian Muslim, subject to Sharia Law; his grandparents were dedicated socialists, perhaps communist sympathizers; his father figure during his teen years, Frank Marshall Davis, was a nationally known Communist Party writer and propagandist; the people who were instrumental in launching his political career in Chicago were radical Weather Underground terrorists who had participated in the killing of U.S. law enforcement officers; and his religious mentor during his post-college years in Chicago was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an America-hater of the first order.\u00a0 Nothing good can come from a lifetime of exposure to such people, so is it any wonder that he has dedicated himself to \u201cfundamentally transforming\u201d the government and the culture of the greatest nation on Earth?<\/p>\n Anyone wishing to take up the challenge outlined above might also wish to enlighten us by preparing a comprehensive list showing how Barack Obama\u2019s governing principles mesh with governing principles contained in the U.S. Constitution.\u00a0 After eight years of Obama rule in the White House, it may help us to decide which poses the greater danger: a) a competent socialist who knows exactly what he\u2019s doing and why he\u2019s doing it, or b) an incompetent socialist who hasn\u2019t the foggiest notion of what he\u2019s doing or how it might impact the greatest nation on Earth.\u00a0 Of the many unknowns surrounding Barack Obama, this may be the most profound.<\/p>\n Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College. He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green Country.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A great many Americans, including a substantial number of my own readers, remain confused about the question of who is and who is not a \u201cnatural born\u201d citizen, eligible to serve as president or vice president of the United States. … Continue reading