Kin, Skin, & Sin (Doug Wilson)

 Wilson is wrong on his current position that "There is no such thing as race / There is only the human race", but otherwise and overall this is a good take on all this.

Firstly, the English word 'race' isn't *about* skin-color or ancestry or even about biology; it is about different ways of categorizing things or animals or people. That for about the past 150 years (i.e. since Darwinism took over the minds of the "progressives") we most commonly use the word to denote the broad continental origins of various ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that the word is not so narrow in its designations.

Secondly, if you're distinguishing an Englishman from a Welshman, or an Igbo (called 'Ibo' in my youth) man from a Yoruba man, you are distinguishing these men based on their ethnicities -- for which distinctions the word 'race' has historically been used.

But, what does ethnicity mean in a country like America? In the South Bend Indiana of my mother's youth (i.e. nearly a century ago), it mattered immensely whether one was "Polish" or "Hungarian". Or, it mattered not at all, if like her people, one was simply what is now disdained as "WASP". In my own youth in South Bend Indiana, some people just had difficult-to-pronounce family names.

The ethnicity of a black American and the ethnicity of a white America are singularly 'American'. Yet, sometimes, we do need to recognize the broadly continental origins of a person's ancestry.

While 'English' or 'Yoruba' are ethnicities, 'white' is not an ethnicity and 'black' is not an ethnicity. 'European' is not an ethnicity; 'African' is not an ethnicity; 'East Asian' is not an ethnicity; 'American Indian' is not an ethnicity. And so on.

And yet, there are recognizable differences -- generally unimportant, but sometimes critical -- between a person of primarily European ancestry and a person of primarily (sub-Saharan) African ancestry. To blind ourselves with the one leftist lie that "There is no such thing as race" is as foolish and potentially harmful as to blind ourselves with the other leftist lie that "All there is is race".

Kin, Skin, & Sin | Doug Wilson

Again, with the "Natural Born Citizen"

 It's getting to be that time again, when politicians who are not legally entitled to seek the US presidency will nonetheless seek the US presidency.  It is up to *you*, as US citizens and electors, to understand why these politicians are ineligible and to *refuse* to support them in their illegal quests.

The US Constitution *requires* that the President and the Vice-President of the USA be natural born US citizens.

But, what does "natural born US citizen" mean?  What requirement or requirements does one have to meet in order to be a "natural born US citizen"?

Some people -- generally Democrats or other leftists, but also GOPers who want to obfuscate the fact that their favorite politician is not a natural born US citizen – will say, “The Constitution does not define the term ‘natural born US citizen’”, as though that means anything; and with the generally unspoken assertion that the term therefore means nothing, or they will explicitly say that therefore we cannot know what it means.  Same difference.  But, this pseudo-argument is absurd in at least three ways:

1) The US Constitution defines almost none of the terms it uses. One of the few terms it does define is ‘treason’, and that is because it is redefining the term more narrowly than it had been understood since 1066.

2) To say that since the Constitution doesn’t define some term it uses, and thus that the term’s meaning is unknown or obscure, is to say that the Framers mindlessly put things in the document without knowing what they meant by those terms.  You know, sort of like Nancy Pelosi’s infamous “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it”.

3) To say that since the Constitution doesn’t define some term it uses, and thus that the term’s meaning is unknown or obscure, is to say that *all* terms used in the document are of unknown or obscure meanings.

Some people – much the same people as above, and for much the same reasons – will say that "natural born US citizen" means *anyone* born in the USA.  But, does that assertion stand up to scrutiny?  Are “anchor babies” natural born US citizens, and thus legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  Are “birth-tourism babies” natural born US citizens, and thus legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  I don’t know whether it’s still common, but some years ago it was popular with the more affluent subjects of (Communist) China to travel to the US just before their babies were due to be born, so as to take advantage of an at-the-time relatively recent supreme Court (capitalization intentional, as per the Constitution) re-interpretation of the first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. 

Are these people – Chinese “citizens”, born to Chinese “citizens”, reared in Communist China -- *really* natural born US citizens and legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  Of course not, that’s absurd!

So, if merely being born on US soil does not suffice to make one a natural born US citizen, what does?

Here are the conditions that one’s birth must meet to in order to make one a natural born US citizen:

1) One must be born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the USA;

2) One’s parents (note the plural) must be US citizens at the time of one’s birth;

2a) which implies that one’s parents must be married to one another, as bastards “have no father”.

Concerning “birth tourism” babies and “anchor babies”, while indeed born in the USA, they fail on both counts.

Concerning Nikki Haley, Kamala Harris, Marco Rubio, while indeed born in the USA, they also fail on both counts.

Concerning Ted Cruz, he also fails on both counts – he was not even born in the USA, his father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth, and, get this, he wasn’t even legally a US citizen until he was 16 years old.

Concerning Barack Obama, we don’t know *where* he was born; he himself has given conflicting accounts.  But, we *do* know that his father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth.  Thus, Barack Obama is *not* a natural born US citizen, and his occupancy of the office of US President was unconstitutional, and thus illegal.

EDIT: 2023/12/28 (the following is a response I made to on GAB to someone's question about the natural born US citizenship status of certain politicians) --

Cruz's mother was a US citizen; his father was not. Cruz's US citizenship was conferred as a matter of US naturalization law -- he is a *naturalized* US citizen. And, in fact, he wasn't legally a US citizen until his mother submitted the requisite paperwork pursuant to US naturalization law when he was 16 years old.

When the Constitution was written, a (married) woman's citizenship was *automatically* the same as her husband's; this was under the legal doctrine called 'Coverture'. In the early 20th Century, the citizenship status of a married woman was de-linked from that of her husband. Had Cruz been born previous to this de-linkage, his mother wouldn't have been able to petition for automatic naturalization for Ted, as being married to a non-citizen, she would no longer have been a US citizen.

To the best of my knowledge, even to this day, US naturalization law makes a distinction between children born overseas to parents both of whom are US citizens in the first case, and to a US citizen man and non-citizen woman in the second case, and to a US citizen woman and non-citizen man on the third.

Now, in the case of Obama (presuming he actually was born in the US), even though he was (allegedly) born in the US, to a US citizen mother and to a father legally in the US, he was not born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the US, as his father was the subject of a foreign sovereign state. Thus, as he was not born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the US, he is not a natural born US citizen.

In the cases of Harris, Rubio, Haley and Ramaswamy -- neither of the parents of any of them were US citizens at the times of their births. Thus, even though born in the US to parents who were legally in the US, as their parents were not US citizens, they were not born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the US, and thus are not natural born US citizens.

In the case of Tulsi Gabbard, she was born in American Samoa to parents both of whom were US citizens. Now, as the US is the *sovereign* over American Samoa, even though A.S. in not a US State, she was indeed born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the US, and thus she is a natural born US citizen.