Another One for the "Birthers"

After all this time, the "birthers" are still alive and well (if you can call anyone of that persuasion "well"). I know because one of my friends is one of them and he recently informed me that one of his kind had discovered an obscure Supreme Court decision that absolutely proved that Obama lacks the qualifications to be President. 

The decision in question is Minor v. Happersett (1875). It is actually a very interesting case in which Mrs. Minor, a native born US citizen and resident of Missouri, sued Mr. Happersett, a registrar of voters, for not allowing her to register to vote because she was a woman. Attorneys for Minor argued that she had a right to vote guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court argued that the US Constitution, even as amended, does not prohibit states from denying suffrage to women. Indeed, it was not until the 19th Amendment (1920) that Federal law prohibited states from discriminating on the basis of sex in determining the right to vote.

Since the 14th Amendment deals with citizenship and states that "no State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," the Court dealt first with Minor's citizenship rights as such. The birthers claim that language in the Minor v. Happersett ruling defines the class of "natural-born citizens" in such a way that Obama could not qualify. In fact, if this were true, large numbers of people would not qualify as natural born citizens, including John McCain, Mitt Romney, and my own step-daughter.

What the 14th Amendment says is that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This is surely true; however, what this statement does not do is define the class of natural-born citizens. The class of citizens under the 14th Amendment includes persons born in the US of foreign citizens or visitors --- something the birthers do not like --- and excludes persons born outside of the US even though at least one parent is a US citizen. So the birthers cannot depend on the 14th Amendment for their ammunition and, instead, look to the language of the 1875 decision.

So here is the first part of the paragraph that the birthers like. "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners." This, the birthers claim, defines the class of "natural-born citizens." Of course, what it actually says is merely that no one ever doubted that children born in the US of US parents belonged in that class. That does not define the class; it merely designates an undoubted member of the class. 

What is interesting is that the same paragraph continues: "Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." In other words, the Court acknowledged that there are other routes to membership in the class of "natural-born citizens" but saw no need to argue those issues since Mrs. Minor was clearly a citizen without going into any of those other arguments. 

Further into the opinion, it states that legislation "as early as 1790, . . . the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens." The generally accepted membership of the class of "natural-born citizens" is indeed children born in the US (and certain territories) to US citizens, children born in the US to foreign citizens (excluding diplomats), and children born outside of the US to at least one US-citizen parent. Admittedly some people argue with one or another of these members, but the opinion of Minor v. Happersett does not make any judgment about such arguments.

The American Dream

We hear a great deal about "the American dream" and I know pretty well what people these days mean by that. However, I am equally unsure what "the American dream" really means. What dream and whose dream are we talking about? If we are talking about the original immigrants or colonizers of America, I suppose that the dream was life without religious persecution and land that was free for settlement. They did, of course, begin to persecute themselves; and there was the little matter of clearing off indigenous people in order to settle. Not too clear in retrospect how virtuous any of that really was. 

Perhaps the first great vision of an "American dream" was Jefferson's vision of a nation of landed citizens. Democracy made sense in that situation even though I am skeptical that real democracy ever existed in the US. Anyway, the Industrial Revolution removed people from the land. The US Census does not even track the population of small farmers anymore; the number is too tiny compared to the general population (less than 1%). Even farming is industrialized today. What that means is that no one has a natural path to survival anymore. Everyone must "work the system" in some way in order to survive. So, in a Capitalist world, that means that almost everyone is a "surf" in the new system of "corporate capitalism." You take the wages that you can get and you make do with what you have.

So I suppose that, having been dropped into a struggle for survival off the land or without any other free supporting body, we imagine "the American dream" to be this: that everybody has a reasonable chance at succeeding if they apply themselves. But this is where we encounter the great rift in American political thought. Those of a Democratic persuasion focus on "everybody has a reasonable chance" and those of a Republican persuasion focus on "apply themselves." Thus, for Democrats the failure of the American dream is the fact that only a few have a reasonable chance while many have no chance at all. For Republicans, on the other hand, the failure is the fact that people are lazy and just do not apply themselves. Democrats tend to ignore the fact that many people really are lazy and or conniving and take advantage of gifts. Republicans tend to ignore the improbability of reasonable chances. But since no one is willing to talk intelligently across this ideological divide, there is little chance of moderating the rift. Elections stack up to being almost 50/50 match-ups between diametrically opposite tendencies. There is, of course, one other important dimension to this rift. Democrats believe that government is uniquely situated to help the people achieve the dream, and Republicans do not want government to interfere. Taxation is theft and the government should be stripped of most of its powers. What Capitalists want is protection of property --- hence, a police presence and large military budget.

As we work our way toward the election of 2012, the real issue before us is what kind of society we want. When it comes down to basics, that is what government is really about. Government is the way in which a people (commonwealth) exercises its collective power to shape its own destiny. The choices before us are in stark contrast to each other. Democrats believe that part of the aim of government is to "promote the general welfare" of society as expressed in the Constitution ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."). In this respect, they believe that parents should be given aid in rearing their children to become good citizens, that young people should be provided the benefits of education, that workers should receive reasonable compensation for their labors, and that everyone should have the benefits of adequate health care.

What Republicans seem to want is a tax policy that enormously favors extreme wealth and withdraws all Federal programs for promoting the general welfare. I confess that I do not understand what this means as a "vision of a desirable society" except that it would seem we should simply watch people starve and die in our cities and ignore the whole thing as much as we can. If this is not the Republican ideal, then how do they really see this policy working out?