Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Distracted by...The Constitution

I was reading some more insane rantings about the supposed qualifications of the Presidency (I don't know why I do this to myself) and I see there is now a new thread developing. Not only is President Obama supposedly not eligible because he wasn't born here, but now "people" (is it correct to call non-sentient beings people?) are saying that even "if" he was born in Hawaii, he's still not a "natural born citizen" because his parents weren't both born here. Yes, somehow it's gotten around that the U.S. Constitution says that both your parents have to be citizens in order for you to be the President. Here's the rant that set me off:

"He is not eligible because he was not born of TWO PARENTS BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH as required by the Constitution."

Uh, those words appear no where in the Constitution. Here is what it says, and ALL it says, about eligibility:

"No 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."

You can look for yourself at www.archives.gov if you want. Notice that the writers do not define "natural born" in any way, and that there is no mention whatsoever of parentage. I hope I do not need to explain that at the time the Constitution was written there were few 35 year-old men whose parents would have been born in the U.S., if any, a fact that would remain true for many years. Herbert Hoover's parents weren't born here, and he was president in the 1930s. Someone responded to the above rant with this true statement:

"LOL!!! Hey genius, there have been SEVEN Presidents with only one parent who was born an American Citizen.Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama. You are beyond a fool, and all of you 'birthers' are completely insane."

I fail to understand why people insist on quoting or paraphrasing a document that they clearly have not read, even though it is readily available online. (It just occurred to me that this is true of both the Constitution AND Obama's birth certificate!)

Okay, that's enough of this nonsense. I have facts to digest for my history class.

1 comment:

  1. Your second-to-last paragraph could apply to Christians and the Bible as well.

    ReplyDelete