A Message To The Nation...

...On This Long Holiday Weekend

It must be picnic time.  My kitchen is infested with ants...

On a more sober note.  (Before the weekend kicks in in earnest.)

On this Independence Day holiday weekend in particular, I will say this - and insist on this, until I am red, white and blue in the face.

The term, a 'natural born citizen,' as mentioned in the Constitution, as an eligibility requirement for the office of the presidency.  What would the constitutional Framers have meant by it.  What was their understanding of the term at that time.

And when one looks into the historical record, it is there, for all to see - who have eyes to see - as plain as day:

the definition of the term as codified by a Swiss scholar named E. de Vattel in the definitive tome of the day on such nation-building matters, his 'The Law of Nations':

"The natives, or natural born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens..."*

So, that is what became one of the eligibility requirements for the office of the presidency in the newly aborning nation of the United States of America - and for that particular office only; reflecting their concern that the occupant of that office, who would as well, then, become the Commander in Chief of the nation's military forces, had NO DUAL OR OTHERWISE CONFLICTING LOYALTIES OR ALLEGIANCES OR INFLUENCES.  Had SOLE ALLEGIANCE to the United States.  And that has remained one of the eligibility requirements for that office ever since; and will remain so, absent a constitutional amendment to the contrary.    

And that eligibility requirement was extended to the office of the VP  later - logically enough, inasmuch as the occupant of that office might ascend to the presidency - by constitutional amendment.  The only way that the Constitution can be changed, in its fundamentals.

None of this is rocket science.  The only rockets involved are those that, by their red glare, an earlier generation of Americans saw that their - our - flag was still there.

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

I hope so.

I certainly hope so.

For our American ancestors' sake.

For our sake.

And for the sake of the world.


On this Independence Day holiday weekend in particular, amidst all the activity, may you take a moment to slow down, stop, and take heed of what the activity is, and the festivities are, all about.

Really.


Be rightful, and responsible, heirs.  And that is my message to the nation, at this special time.

Special. In more ways than one.


P.S. I encourage everybody not to leave food out on hot days.  And especially not on holidays.

--

* Some apologists for error try to argue that the Framers were gong by English common law.  But that speaks of natural born subjects.  Those men were no longer subjects.  They were freemen - sovereigns in their own right.  And damn proud of it; especially after a long and bloody War of Independence to be able to claim it.  No; they were clearly going by American common law, aka Natural Law.
   A sub-subject that I will go into with anybody interested, or otherwise.  But not here.  This is just to make a comment on the State of the Nation.
   The sorry State of the Nation.  In the hands of a generation of its citizens who have lost their way.  Amidst all the distractions that have been laid out for them to lose their way in, and by.