The Patriot Post® · The Damnable Doctrine of Nativist Citizenship, Part II

These questions lead to the conundrum of the neo-nativists’ inherent logic error – the contradiction in their Matrix – and it is seen in the concept of natural rights. As you are probably aware, natural rights are not issued by government but are part of how sentient social creatures are constituted.

We have an innate sense of what our natural rights are – our nature tells us – and we know that no one else was created superior to us and endowed with some authority to determine our rights for us.

In other words, there is no element of human-granted privilege as an added factor in what our natural rights are. They are solely 100% natural (or God-given), and zero percent law-given.

We can see the nature of natural rights, and that nature is identical to the nature of natural membership. No human-granted element is a part of it. And yet the nativist doctrine asserts that the human-added element of birth location must be added to natural membership or else natural membership can’t exist without it, or doesn’t exist without it because it is not recognized.

The problem with that is that it is recognized, universally, in every country on Earth. The children of a nation’s citizens are citizens also via blood connection, regardless of birth location. It is written into the laws and constitutions of nations.

But those who are indoctrinated with the nativist doctrine of blood-plus-borders are forced to take the position that natural membership doesn’t exist. Only contrived membership can exist – contrived via the combination of the natural factor with the artificial factor of recognition of man-made borders. If natural membership exists without the added factor of birth location, then contrived membership is not needed. If the elemental is sufficient, then the supplemental is superfluous. In their fantasy doctrine, both are necessary to create what they define as a “natural born citizen” (quotation marks mandatory), which is a status that exists in a world without any natural citizens.

They view the common language words “natural born citizen” like some sort of proprietary trademark enshrined in the Constitution and defined by a philosophy of citizenship which pre-dated it but which can’t be found anywhere in any writing.

They claim it is found (but by misconstruence) in the writings of Emmerich de Vattel (The Law of Nations, 1758), but he explicitly stated that the nationality of the child naturally follows that of the father (since he is/was the natural head and defender and provider of the family, along with the owner of both his own children and his wife who “gave herself” to him in holy matrimony, accepting his headship under God and vowing obedience upon taking his name for the rest of her life).

If you remove the false foundation of their miscontruence of what Vattel wrote, then their doctrine is left adrift with no basis in anything. That is because the supposed constitutional authority of their (false) interpretation of Vattel’s writing, an authority which they claim comes via the Supreme Court mentioning (Minor v Happersett) Vattel’s observation that “the natives (or natural born citizens) of a country are the children born in it of parents that are citizens” evaporates when it is seen to not mean what they claim it means.

Their whole doctrine hinges on the false assertion that the words “natural born citizen” are a term of legal artifice with a “legal” meaning, and not the simple meaning of what the words themselves convey. But ask yourself: does this have an assigned, legal meaning: “a natural born heir to the throne”? Or does it simply mean what the words themselves convey, i.e., someone in the line of succession?

Does one need to put those words in quotation marks each time they are written? One does if they have an artificial meaning, like; “a male, first-born son of the monarch, or his heir, who was born within the royal palace to a mother of royal blood and fathered by the King or the Royal Prince”. That would be a contrived meaning – a legal “term of art” Is one who is a natural born citizen defined by a legal term of art, or by simple natural law? That is the central question and that is where their doctrine flounders because it cannot be both. It will be one or it will be the other.

So, can the words be defined without resort to contrivance, -to combination, to amalgamation, to supposed Supreme Court reference or solely to what they meant when they were first penned by John Jay, (president of the Continental Congress).

He suggested in a letter to General Washington (president of the Constitutional Convention) that the position of the Command in Chief not be given to nor devolve on (by succession) any but a natural born citizen. That was to avoid what was his stated concern; the inherent foreign influence threat that would spring from that power being given to one with a secret foreign loyalty, having been born as a foreigner, or born to a foreigner. Those two possibilities were apposed to being born of Americans only and having no direct foreign ties, bonds, connections, loyalties, or allegiance.

With that as his stated concern, it becomes an absurdity to embrace either the doctrine of the native-birth-and-nothing-more crowd, or its sister doctrine of native-birth-plus-citizen-parents. Neither addressed his concern because neither exclusively address foreign influence.

Mere domestic birth alone does not work to instill American values and allegiance, nor keep one from being raised indoctrinated with a violent, totalitarian and/ or anti-American ideology, especially if raised in an foreign land with alien values.

That fact has not changed between 1787 and today, but what has changed is the mind-set of American fathers. During and leading up to the Revolution, Americans became very polarized against tyranny and in favor of natural rights, and they knew that American fathers valued liberty, equality and self-governance very highly, and would raise their sons to appreciate the sacrifices made to secure their rights and liberties.

Those ingrained American priorities and values did not vanish from their hearts and minds simply because they needed to spend some amount of time in Europe, or elsewhere, for college, business, or representation of their country. They were Americans wherever they went, and the locals all knew it – knew that they were different; that they bowed to no king and treated no freeman as their inferior.

Americans whose wives gave birth abroad would never have conceived that they lacked the natural unalienable right to pass their national membership to their sons and daughters; that under an alien nativist doctrine their children would be labeled ALIENS and not Americans, and would be dependent on the beneficence of some government bureaucrat or rule in order to be viewed as that which they naturally were by birth.   And yet that is exactly what the nativists believe and claim is what the founding fathers accepted and embraced, with the abrogation of their own natural rights of belonging. Why would sane free people surrender their natural rights to a doctrine of government that would disenfranchise their children based purely on the arbitrary criterion of political borders?

The nativists are forced to assert that Americans born abroad cannot be American citizens except by the permission of the U.S. government. Their natural rights cease to exist past the border’s edge. Hmmm, does their natural duty cease to exist also, or are they required to serve their nation’s self-defense in its hour of need regardless of where they were born?

One’s natural national responsibility does not cease to exist past the nation’s borders but is intrinsic to one’s national membership. But is that national membership a natural thing or a government-given thing determined by birth location? The nativists falsely claim that it is government-given and that without government permission, one is an alien to their own natural country.

They claim that that permission is given in naturalization law which does something that they misinterpret. It states for the record, for the ignorant and misinformed, the natural fact of the citizenship of American children born outside of American sovereign territory. It states that they are to be recognized as being citizens of the United States (and that is because that is what they naturally are). It protects their natural right to belong – to belong to the group to which those who created them belong, their natural group.

That language of declaration and clarification is not remotely connected to language of decree, or mandate, or grant, or assignment, or permission.

It is purely language of protection, as a government is expected to do for all of the children of its citizens no matter where in the world they are born.

Governments do not make laws to limit or usurp the natural rights of their foreign-born natural citizens but to protect them. But the neo-nativists assert that American natural citizens lose their natural rights as soon as they move past American borders. Then Big Government becomes god over their right to belong to their American parents’ own country.

To illustrate the absurdity of that view, just imagine you are a prospector in the early 1800s. You have migrated far West beyond the borders of the American States and found an area rich in mine-able gold. So you set up camp and establish your living accommodations and begin to dig.

Suddenly beside you appears a U.S. government bureaucrat with his pencil and paper in hand, and announces to you that you have his permission to dig. He will allow it.

Your reaction to the absurdity of his “permission” might be extremely impolite. What right does he have to give you permission that you don’t need and is not his to give?

It’s the exactly same with the natural right of Americans who give birth beyond U.S. borders. The right of the child of a natural American citizen parents to be an American also is not a right that Americans ever gave, nor would ever give, to government. But the government has the right and responsibility to protect your “God-given” right to pass your national membership to your children.

If a government bureaucrat appeared where you were mining for gold, his only acceptable role would be nothing other than to proclaim and protect your natural right to dig (not to supposedly grant it). That would be a defense of your liberty.

Naturalization acts that state for the record the U.S. citizenship of American children born abroad are a defense of their natural right to be recognized as Americans. They are not statutory exercises of Congressional authority over the natural citizenship of Americans.

That would not only be wrong but would be unconstitutional. That’s because the framers of the Constitution, the founders of the nation, did not give to government any authority over their natural membership in their own country, nor that of their children. They only assigned the new future central government the task of making the 13 separate State rules of naturalization of foreigners uniform across the new nation so the period of required residency was consistent, and the personal qualifications as well (all white free men of good character).

So there you have it. Fiction needs to give way to fact. Government permission needs to give way to natural right. Supposed government law needs to give way to natural law. The supposed government-controlled assignment of belonging needs to give way to the right of natural belonging.

Otherwise, we are not free men and women, and do not own ourselves and ours. We are just cogs in the machine who must operate by its rules and force. Which one do you think you are?