Natural Born Citizenship: An archaic presidential qualification

I rarely agree with liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, but she’s recently penned two pieces that actually make sense. Though Marcus is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, she acknowledged a couple weeks ago that Donald Trump’s threat to go after the Democrat frontrunner for enabling her sexually predatory husband was perfectly legitimate. Now, as Ted Cruz is under attack from Trump (and some on the left) for being born in Canada, she’s sensibly calling for the end of the presidential natural-born citizen test.

I heard a lot about this test from a young age. My father was born in Czechoslovakia and grew up in Germany, moving to the U.S. when he was ten. He arrived in the magical “linguistic window” so that he spoke American English like a native and still retained his native fluency in German. He served honorably as an American naval officer in World War II and after that held several federal government jobs that required a high security clearance. Yet, as he rarely tired of telling me, he could never become president.

Marcus gives a brief historical rundown of the particulars of how this rule came to be, focusing on fears in the early republic that unscrupulous foreigners would run for office and try to undo the radical American experiment in freedom and democracy. That, she claims, as have many others, is no longer really relevant in a strong and stable nation of immigrants. It leads to odd anomalies as to who can or can’t become president, based on nothing but the accident of birth.

It is also worth noting, if for no other reason than historical interest, that this rule might be dubbed the creole addition to the Constitution.

Before anyone misreads the author, I don;t think he is calling for anyone to DISREGARD what the constitution says today.

I think he believes it is time to change this part of the constitution via the normal constitutional process,

I don’t think it archaic. Fourteen years of living here is nothing if one is dedicated to the destruction of the US. Look at Obama. He barely lived in the US and his loyalties are to anything but traditional United States value and culture.

If it is ended by amending the constitution, or even simply defined adequately via amendment, fine.

But no leftist approach of ignoring it will work.

This is an interesting progression. Now that those who have questions about Cruz's "natural born citizen" status are concerned about a real problem, and aren't comfortable with ignoring it, the argument turns. Now the argument is "who cares".

We should care. Globalism is out of control. We should not give up anything that shreds our Constitution and the intent of our Founding Fathers.

“Marcus gives a brief historical rundown of the particulars of how this rule came to be, focusing on fears in the early republic that unscrupulous foreigners would run for office and try to undo the radical American experiment in freedom and democracy. That, she claims, as have many others, is no longer really relevant in a strong and stable nation of immigrants. It leads to odd anomalies as to who can or canâ€™t become president, based on nothing but the accident of birth.”
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Right-O...
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“...that unscrupulous foreigners would run for office and try to undo the radical American experiment in freedom and democracy...”
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I’m sure that could never happen here!!!!!

Liberals want to do away with our so called archaic first and second amendment rights when we exercise them.

$crew them and anyone else who seeks to destroy our constitution!

The Globalist crowd has destroyed the Constitution.

America will no longer be governed by people born on US soil and of US citizen parents.

The bar for POTUS keeps getting lower.

Won’t be long before we have one world leader dictating to all. Born anywhere in the world.

There will be no US law. Only international law.

It blows my mind that so many here are willing to disregard this just so Cruz can get in..completely forgetting what a nightmare and quigmire has been the reign of the Muslim Dictator and his Iranian puppetmaster

President is a unique position. I have no problem requiring the individual be born in this country and even raised in the country and having lots of pride in the US and less sympathy/pride in some other country. Being raised in another country makes it more likely that someone has divided loyalties (e.g. Obama). We can’t guarantee anything but I think for President we should be able to find one individual out of 300 million who has less risk of divided loyalties from childhood.

Of course the left is doing their best to make sure anyone raised in the US does not have pride in our country and we’re better of with a President who’s never been to the US than someone raised in a lefty environment.

That is exactly why the framers required a natural born citizen status to be President i.e. the child of two citizen parents. There should be no doubt that the president has only allegiance to the United States. Among so many other policies where Obama rejects the United States interests Obama rejected the Keystone pipeline for years and just recently approved financial support for an oil pipeline in Kenya the home country of his father.

RE: It blows my mind that so many here are willing to disregard this just so Cruz can get in.

The author is not telling us to disregard the constitution. He is arguing that this portion of the requirement for Presidency should be amended.

RE: $crew them and anyone else who seeks to destroy our constitution!

Let’s make one thing clear.... amending is not destroying. It is following the process provided for by our very same constitution.

The founders sought to provide via the Constitution a protection against an Obama, someone whose loyalties were lodged elsewhere. However, they did not contemplate that society would evolve from a royalty based loyalty to a ideology based loyalty. Therefore we find no such language in the Constitution and our belief that the natural born citizen clause defends us against traitors is but a chimera.

The author isn’t the issue. It is posters on FR.

I loathe Obama but I looked at his British citizenship - or lack thereof, with an objective eye.

Same with Cruz.

What really scares me and has me pondering is this question:

Why are so many pundits AND even the DNC Chair coming out in favor of Cruz and many claiming it is settled law? Has the Cabal leader put the word out? Something seems fishy with so many people completely ignoring the fact that this is not settled law.

To quote Donald Trump, “You either have a country or you don’t.” Succinct, to the point and true. If we’re going to let the melting pot become a catch all for just anyone who wants a piece of it(which we are pretty close to doing); then we don’t have one.

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