I learned from the PBS Frontline documentary, “Secret State of North Korea,” that when someone defects from North Korea, the government imprisons their entire extended family. I, and I think most Americans, would find that behavior reprehensible, outrageous and unacceptable for any civilized country.
Such a sentiment also comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition when scripture says:
In those days they shall no longer say: "’The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. ‘ But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
— The Bible (ESV) Jeremiah 31:29-30
And it is found in the United States Constitution in Article III that mentions the curious term “corruption of blood.” Section 3 includes:
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
The Wikipedia explains:
Corruption of blood is one of the consequences of attainder. The descendants of an attainted person could not inherit either from the attainted criminal (whose property had been forfeited on conviction) or from their other relatives through the criminal. For example, if a person is executed for a crime leaving innocent children, the property of the criminal is forfeited to the crown and will not pass to the children. If the criminal’s innocent father subsequently dies, his property cannot be inherited by the criminal’s children either: it will be distributed among other family members.
In the United States, a person’s crimes are his own, and do not work, at least legally, against his family. This is not, however, a birther-friendly principle. I have seen comments like the following many times over the past 6 years, for example this from the Free Republic:
What if Hitler had had his way with an underage American girl? Would his son be eligible?
Why is this POS student visa overstaying Indonesian in our country?
And just two days ago this appeared at Birther Report:
Hell Conman, let’s just let ANYONE with foreign born parents run for potus. How about President Bin Laden Jr.? President Adolph Hitler Jr. has a nice ring to it. Wait, here’s a better one…President Saddam Hussein the second! We could even start a squat-and-give-birth program whereby any scumbag roaming the surface of the earth could sneak into the country and drop a future potus! Jackpot! Hallelujah, rejoice! To hell with foreign allegiance, let’s become just another third world shithole and have a terrorist prodigy running our country! Doesn’t get any better than that!
They want to stigmatize a child because of his parent. They want corruption of blood.
It looks like Corruption of blood has to do with property so these comments you cite have nothing to do with it.
The principle — that the sins of the father shall not be visited upon the son — remains the same.
The whole thing is misplaced. Birther don’t want persons with non-citizens parents to be POTUS because they are not Natural Born Citizens and thus are inherently born with conflicting loyalties in the blood. (In other words, they are not American as matter of right). Hitler and Bin Laden are obviously extreme examples but is distressing to think that a person born in this country who whose father was one of them would have some really serious concerns on where his loyalties lie.
And you believe that the force of law is needed so that the citizens of the United States don’t overlook the fact that one of their presidential aspirants is the offspring of Hitler or Bin Laden?
Bloodlines? Really? Patriotism or loyalty is inherited? Seriously, John, that is dumb even for you.
Article 2 Section 1 as being a Natural Born Citizen is supposed to do that. That is the person is born of 2 US Citizens with no conflicting loyalties. Of course, such an American does not ganrunteer anything. Such an American can still support an evil cause and therefore would be treasonous. But as a matter or right and law, the person’s birthright is American with no conflicting loyalties in the blood. (Because remember that every US citizen must swear allegiance and thus that allegiance in therefore passed down through the offspring as being a Natural Born Citizen. Someone who is not a US citizen has not swore allegiance and therefore his or her other allegiance is passed down through the offspring hence you have conflicting allegiances.)
John, your knowledge of biology astounds me. Could you please explain to an ignoramus such as myself how exactly the oath of allegiance is transmitted by sperm into a zygote? Should a woman take the oath a few hours before she ovulates, just to be sure the taint of another nationality doesn’t infect her progeny, or is it just some magic handwavy thing that’s instantaneous?
Benedict Arnold was a natural born citizen. Soviet spies Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames are natural born citizens. There is nothing inherent in being born within a nation that makes a person loyal or patriotic. The American Taliban John Walker Lindh is a natural born citizen.
When the US won the Mexican War we took the northern third of Mexico and all the Mexicans who lived there became Americans and their children were natural born citizens. Does losing a war make someone more patriotic to the new nation that they are now a part of?
When and where did you learn this, John? Please be specific.
Did they teach you that at Leesburg High School? If so, please identify your teacher so we can verify it.
Did you learn it in a textbook? If so, please identify the textbook.
Fixed your post for you. I added a “s” to “Birther” and then I removed the bullcrap filter from the rest of what you said.
The Founding Father who was known as the Father of the Constitution disagreed with John: “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth, however, derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but, in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”–James Madison
Well all that means is that the Obots and Darpa threatened/bribed James Madison into compliance/silence! 😉
adolph hitler’s nephew served honorably in the US navy during WWII.
Shhh. You know we all agreed to keep the time machine secret.
Is it not distressing then to think that Benedict Arnold, Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, John Walker Lindh, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Jim Jones, David Duke, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Charles Manson were all indisputably Constitutionally eligible to become President?
The Constitution has no political or character qualification to become President. One only has to be a natural-born citizen. And no, that doesn’t take citizen parents, as long as you’re born in the USA.
This chestnut is so ‘obvious’ to birthers that I ran into it literally the first day I stumbled across birtherism.
1) What if Schickelgruber had a baby;
2) On American soil, or with an American girlfriend;
3) And that baby moved to the US;
4) And decided to run for President;
5) And either covered up his origins, or hypnotized the public (like the antichrist!), or those dirty liberal commie zombies all voted for him out of sympathy (poor Schickelgruber-san!)
That’s a lot of very exotic if’s. If a birther mathematician-for-a-day abused some numbers on it, what probability would they arrive at? (100% , of course!)
I must say, though, that the comment from the Gerbil Report is by far the most eloquent expression of this meme I have run across. “squat-and-give-birth program…” indeed.
Fuhgodssake, being eligible, and being elected are two entirely different propositions. I’m eminently eligible. And have about as much chance as Schickelgruder II of being elected!
Man, that’s just eat up with the dumbass.
Forgotten in John’s little diatribe is the fact that Barack Obama has all the “jus sanguinis” he needs by virtue of being born to a mother from Wichita, Kansas.
Just as Ted Cruz has all the “jus sanguinis” he needs by virtue of being born to a mother from Wilmington, Delaware. Although Ted is lacking in the”jus soli” department since he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
D’OH!
Now, Darpa is gonna repo all my cool doomsday weapons.
Really? Must? Who says and when does that happen?
Who is in charge of keeping track?
Speaking of James Madison, a while ago I posted a link to his correspondence with Jefferson in which he (Madison) rather enthusiastically accepted French citizenship when it was offered to him.
When you consider the “world shattering” conflicts of interest at the time between France and the US, it is a testimony to the broadmindedness of the American voters of the times that they still elected him President.
If a dual-citizen can be elected President I don’t quite see what John is rambling about. (But then I rarely do.)
Yeah, while we are on the topic… The telegram that saved us from technocracy wherein it is argued that the Australian Constitution was affected by the “Marbury v. Madison”.
The author argues that the writers of the Australian Constitution noticed Marbury v Madison and were horrified that the poor Americans can’t take a petition for a writ of Mandamus to the Supreme Court and thank the stars that we Australians don’t have that problem.
Now IANAL, and IA especially NA Constitutional L; but I think I can recognize glossing the facts to fit an argument.
To Americans, Marbury v Madison is the case that established the judicial right of review. To the author, Ward, it seems to be the case that shows that Americans have no right of redress against civil servants not doing their job.
My reading of the case says just the opposite of what Ward seems to think it says; I read it as saying that Marbury had a great case, he just presented it at the wrong venue to start with. Had he started at a circuit court he might have had better luck, or failing there, he would have had a recourse to appeal to SCOTUS. Marbury v Madison found that SCOTUS has no original jurisdiction in a mandamus case, but could have taken it up as an appeal.
It would appear that contrary to Ward’s assertion, American’s do have the right to petition for a writ of mandamus, though it may be called by different names in the various states, and while there are jurisdictional rules for federal writs, SCOTUS can hear mandamus arguments, but only upon appeal.
So while Australians might have been frightened by a perceived lack of redress, that fear was, in my opinion misplaced. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Australian Constitution actually adopts a similar hierarchy to the American one anyway, I think it is talking about original jurisdiction for the Australian High Courts, but the Australian equivalent of the SCOTUS was, at the time, actually the United Kingdom’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Just as in America, the Privy Council had no original jurisdiction over Australian mandamus petitions.
If any real lawyers would care to comment on this analysis before I make a fool of myself on the Spectator site (I can’t figure out how to log on yet anyway) I would appreciate it greatly.
With respect to the above: The Australian Constitution
Section 74 describes rules for appeal to the Privy Council.
Section 75 describes the original jurisdiction bounds for the High Court. It is similar to the US SCOTUS bounds, but clause ‘v’ covers Mandamus.
Section 76 allows Parliament to grant further original jurisdiction to the High Court, a provision missing from the US Constitution and the lack thereof played a role in Marbury v Madison.
By what legal or biological process exactly?
How does allegiance cancel out previous allegiances? If A is French and thus has genetic French allegiance, then becomes a US citizen and has a child, how does he prevent any of his previous French allegiance to pass on to the child? How does pledging allegiance to the US destroy the genetic markup that was responsible for allegiance to France?
Besides, if allegiance passes down to the children, why must every US citizen swear allegiance? The children of citizens wouldn’t have to, within your “logic”.
Did you mean “every naturalized US citizen” maybe?
I could swear allegiance to your flag all day long, BTW, that wouldn’t mean I’d lose my German citizenship.
I don’t think a child has any idea of “allegiance” until it reaches the proper age to decide who to pledge it to.
Otherwise it would be impossible for US citizens to ever renounce their citizenship because you just claimed allegiance was genetic.
And still that all breaks down by the insanity of thinking that if the mother is not a US citizen, it makes any difference to the child whether she becomes a US citizen a minute before or a minute after birth. Let’s say she has twins and becomes a US citizen after the first child is born. How is one better than the other?
I’m curious, john. Are you of the opinion that President Obama has demonstrated some form of allegiance to Kenya?
I’ve noticed that more than 24 hours have passed and John has yet to tell us if the was taught the “two-citizen parent requirement” in high school.
If he says “yes” I plan to check it out, because I know where he went to high school.