As a follow-on to my previous post about Alan Keyes and his legal challenge to Barack Obama's right to hold office as president, I've decided to blog a few sardonic words about the absurdity of this constitutional notion of having to be a "natural born citizen" to become president. Also, I feel empowered by the recent post, Weekend Whoroscopes, and its potty-mouthed author, JM.
To be honest, I'm having a bit of a problem getting past the irony of Alan Keyes demanding that anyone, regardless of office, be a natural anything, but I'll set that fun aside for now.
But first, the question begs itself: What is the constitutional function of requiring a "natural born citizen" to fill the office of president? Or in the parlance of alternative rockers, "WTF?" Just WTF do you suppose the founding fathers had in mind with the notion of "natural born"? It must have represented a litmus test of sorts, a benchmark of loyalty and love of country, do you think?
Now, that's all well and good -- "Super" as we used to say -- for eighteenth century colonists. It's just that I'm not so sure the notion of "natural born" is all that relevant anymore given this shrinking world and some of the recent players who've held the office for which it is the constitutional prerequisite.
Even those who would position themselves in line for the office lead one to wonder if some change didn't occur sometime in the interveining decades that affected the definition.
Take Sarah Palin (Please!). Palin may have been born in the United States but there is no way in practical terms that woman is even from this planet.
John McCain wasn't "natural born" by any means. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, not that it matters when you're so paranoid you have Congress pass a law just for you declaring your citizenship because of the Canal Zone's U.S. military status at the time and because you don't want those testy Democrats standing in the way of your lifelong ambition. Nevertheless, I'm told that despite his efforts to establish his presidential qualifications, McCain "was from his mother's womb untimely ripped." Or was that MacDuff?
Challenging the notion further, rather than any notion of responsible citizenship, Alan Keyes himself raises in my mind the contrary image of a "natural born asshole" and he does it in ways that only someone like Alan Keyes could conjure. So the irony just keeps asserting itelf. Here is Alan Keys, as demanding and persnickety as he is, poking lawsuits at people he has a difficult time seeing as "natural born." Heh.
In fact, when I think of "natural born assholes" I not only automatically think of Alan Keyes, but also of Gary Bauer and Eric Prince and John Hagee and James Dobson and Rudy Giuliani and especially the guy I think of as a natural born, mean and squint-eyed asshole, the incomporable Lou Dobbs whose greatest of grand parents must certainly have been "natural born" and not in the least immigrants for him to be such an obviously congenitally depraved and wonderkind natural born asshole, the kind of asshole Billy Martin would have coached and felt proud of. [Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh don't matter anymore; Keith Olbermann said so, and Olbermann knows assholes from an inside perspective, would you agree?]
Taking the theme of "natural born" a step further even: Consider George W. Bush. For all his "American" identity (as if he were born on a swaggering horse out west, the horse itself having been fathered by the Marlboro Man right before he nailed Ronald Reagan's mom), Bush was no more who he pretended to be than any other sanitarium escapee with narcissistic personality disorder, let alone a "Texan." Jeeze, he's afraid of horses and there's only six cows on his entire ranch in Crawford. Even those were carefully placed along a fenceline, first having been trained to chew their cud for the cameras and moo placidly among the tall prarie grasses. A natural what? Citizen? Pleeeeze! Given the one million casualties he and Cheney are responsible for in Iraq, there's little humor, but much justice, in the prospect of their actually being someday labeled "natural born killers."
Somebody tell me what "natural born" means if it doesn't come with the intended American context -- trust. With most of these guys, the context is illusion. With a guy like George Bush or Dick Cheney, either one could have been born at Monticello or Mt. Vernon, but they still couldn't have bred out the traitor, embezzler, coward and war criminal in them. I guess they're both just natural born assholes, too. And if they're stuffed with money, they're good enough assholes for Uncle Sam.
Imagine that. Alan Keyes, a natural born asshole, is demanding our president be a natural born citizen. When we discover (again) -- after the previous such lawsuit was thrown out of court on October 27, just before the election -- that Barack Obama is indeed a natural born citizen, and thus he can be trusted, Alan Keyes will still be an asshole, natural or otherwise. Won't somebody please give that man a constitution and put him to bed.
This one's for you, Alan Keyes:
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Comments
Could not agree more! One thing we can depend upon is that the Repugnicans will kick their heels and whine for the next four years. They are addicted to power and have the DTs bad.
So great!
A note of explanation to F. Arouete: Yes, by legal definition McCain is "natural born," but I was attempting to expose that legalism and hold it in Keyes' face as an example of the pettiness that such legalisms can foment.
McCain's status is the result of a law passed to cover children born to members of the military overseas. "Correct me if I'm right," but he had a hand in passing that law. But it was never a provision granted by the Constitution.
Indeed, the happenstance of overseas birth, such as McCain's, raises questions regarding the spirit of the law under which the "natural born" element was added into portion of the constitution dealing with the Executive Branch. McCain's childhood socialization, his geo-social context, is foreign. Although, his upbringing may have been within an overseas US military context, foreign military adventurism was an imperialistic aspect of English foreign policy the framers of the Constitution adamantly opposed as children of the Age of Enlightenment. They wanted the chief executive to be a civilian citizen not a professional military man, certainly not one born to members of an occupational force overseeing foreign territories.
In fact, even members of the early American diplomatic missions whose children were born overseas were not eligible for the presidency under the same spirit I discuss here.
By the way, George Washington, our first president, was not a professional military man. Far from it. He had to learn military strategy on the run, literally.
But arguing such legalisms as surround McCain's eligibility versus Obama's alleged ineligibility miss the greater point I would chose to defend over such "letter of the law" aguments; and that is that the original context under which what I called a "litmus test of loyalty" has all but dissolved for the very reasons I stated in my main ....jest.... against Keyes.
Alan Keyes is the very kind of Pharisaic legalist who would defend McCain on the basis of the argument to which you point. (Actually, I'm not sure Keyes would defend McCain or anyone else with any argument). His problem is that he doesn't have a right-brain, which probably explains his authoritarian personality.
Although, I never called him a "Pharisaic legalist" from my soapbox above, that was the very picture of him to which I was alluding (Go to his website and see him preach). And this is a characiture of him that is held by most other progressives as well.
Despite that Alan Keyes is among the detractors of the president elect, with his Pharisee High Priesthood mindset (again: see his website) can you imagine the loyalist he will become when he figures out that Obama is the Messiah?
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