The flaw in this thinking is two-fold:
1. If they let this one go by, what's to stop someone from ignoring, say, the 4-year term limit for president? We've already seen the Article I power of Congress to determine when it is in recess be ignored, as well as the Senate's advice and consent power subverted with unconfirmed "czars." What's next? Suspend habieus corpus? Eliminate Amendment 5 rights of due process?
2. Ignoring the natural-born requirement may not affect the current status of elites, but it will affect the posterity of the nation. That is why I also post the Preamble, because a nation's posterity is its natural-born children. They are the next generation who carries forward the culture that defines being an American. When the Framers said that they established the Constitution to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to... our posterity," they meant to create a nation that can be handed down to their children, and their children's children.
Today, the only "blessing" that our elites (liberal and Republican) are "securing" for our "posterity" is the burden of massive debt that is being accumulated by the elites in order to sustain the high station of the elites.
They see how willing the elites are to twist plain-language meanings of the law, as well as to use fear and intimidation against those who call out their abuse of constitutional powers. They figure that if the law won't apply to the elites, then why should it be applied to them?
What we are seeing with the Occupy protesters is the beginnings of a push-back because they see that the behaviors of the elites is hand-cuffing the next generation from being able to exercise the same freedoms to pursue their own interests that the elites enjoyed when they became of-age.
The Occupy protesters are misplaced in their anger against corporations and banks because of partisan political interests, but that also serves the interests of the elites to maintain their station. Instead of calling out Democrats for conspiring to hide the lack of Constitutional qualification for Obama, Republicans are being encouraged to make good on Obama's qualification by offering up equally unqualified candidates of their own, like Marco Rubio or Piyush Jindal. The Occupy protests are the pressure that Democrats are putting on Republicans to comply, with the unspoken threat of unleashing the "99%" with cries that Republicans hate women, or Republicans want dirty air, or Republicans are taking your jobs away.
In 20 years, Nancy Pelosi will be dead, Harry Reid will be dead, Mitch McConnell will be dead, but the Occupy protesters will be in their early 40's, with a good 40 more years to go.
The elites in the United States have squandered the posterity of this nation, and the posterity knows it. And it started with an abused definition of what it means to be "ourselves and our posterity" and how that weaves throughout our entire constitutional republic.
What Paine shows us is the honesty of the debate that took place in 1791, and is a reflection of the dishonesty of the same debate that is taking place today, 221 years later.
-PJ
That is an excellent reply. Thank you. I hadn’t considered that angle on the Occupy Movement. It makes a lot of sense. As for ignoring rules, isn’t that what the modern iteration of liberalism is all about? Ends justify the means, and if the means involve trampling rules, laws, customs and traditions, so be it. The sad part is that the GOP goes along, but you explained that in spades. I couldn’t agree w you more.
I used to imagine the Dems were in DC to represent liberals, and the GOP represented conservatives. Then came the Amnesty Debate, and the hours I spent on the phone to DC. I learned the hard way that my GOP Senators, Chambliss and Isakson, are there to represent themselves and the DC Ruling Class/Elite. They really resented my objecting to their wholesale sellout on Amnesty. Isakson’s office even lectured me on objecting to their direct line to the ‘hispanic’ community [it was the only line I could get through on; I had to endure a lot of spanish babble, but then Isakson’s office always picked right up]. I was lectured that English isn’t the official language. If I could have gone through the phone, the twit who told me that would have gotten an even more strident earful.
My congressman is, if possible, even more corrupt. When I wrote to him re: Obama’s Eligibility, Kingston took just enough time off funneling earmark $ to the improvement of his personal beachfront property to tell me to get lost. These people are insufferable.
So yes, it makes sense that the DC GOP would do anything necessary to avoid the Eligibility issue. On that we completely agree.
What I’m wondering, though, is about rank and file FReeper conservatives who buy the ‘patch of dirt’ nonsense. Sure, we have plenty of liberal trolls. They get banned by the dozen, but they brag on their own sites about how many screennames they have, and how they just keep signing back up to harass us indefinitely. You learn to spot them and deal w them accordingly, so it’s no big deal.
What I can’t fathom are actual conservatives who buy into the idea that the Framers wanted the half-foreign offspring of America-haters in the WH. (Because if they didn’t want that, they could easily have restricted the WH to the offspring of US citizens (which, surprise surprise, is EXACTLY what they did).) How can they contemplate the stupidity of such an idea on the part of the Framers and take it seriously??? It’s insane.
Conservatives can look at Obama, who is behaving exactly as any offspring of America’s haters would behave, and behold the wisdom of the Framers. Still they claim to believe he’s just what the Framers wanted. That’s where I’m hitting a brick wall. What’s up w these ‘conservatives’? Are they really that clueless...or is there something afoot that I’m not perceiving? It really makes no sense.
You don’t have to answer, PJ. You took a lot of time on your prior answer, and I really appreciate it. Maybe it’s just not possible for you or I to understand why conservatives go full metal liberal on this one issue. Maybe it’s something only they themselves will really ever understand...if even *they* fully understand it.
Meanwhile, your Paine discovery is just too good to be true. I cannot and will not stop thanking you. It was a game changer in the best sense of the phrase. Just keep posting it, please. It needs to be prominently placed on every Eligibility thread. Sooner or later, it will start to sink in.