Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs:Why We Shouldn’t Be So Hard on the Birthers
Orly Taitz, the lawyer and self-appointed mother of the birther movement was chastized by a judge yesterday for bringing a frivilous lawsuit challenging the birth certificate of President Obama. It’s true, the lawsuit had no evidence and no one thinks it has any chance of success.
But what if they won?
Maybe then we would have to look at the archaic rule that requires every President to be born in the United States.
Perhaps, way back when, we thought that loyalty had something to do with birth. Specifically, British born subjects might be more inclined to support the monarchy than their fellow Americans. But these days, with Americans increasingly from first or second generation immigrant families, it makes little sense to base the most important election rules on birthright.
I don’t agree with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but can one really claim that he doesn’t love the United States?
More importantly, many countries now have laws against discriminating on the basis of citizenship. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits discrimination on the basis of citizenship. Canadian law also prohibits discrimination on the basis of citizenship.
We have to ask ourselves, if the birthers were successful and Obama was really born in Indonesia, or Afghanistan for that matter, would he be a worse President?
The birthers are nuts. Str8-up nuts. Obama’s mother was American, that’s all that counts, and the fact that this story has been accorded any serious attention is all the proof you need that journalistic standards have vanished from mainstream media. Seriously now–what the hell is wrong with CBS, or the Washington Post, or any other credible US media outlet, that they would cover this story? They don’t know that a child of a US citizen is also a US citizen? So if it doesn’t matter where the hell he was born, why would any credible journalist cover the story? There is one reason: because Faux is covering the story, and Faux has a clear right-wing agenda that the rest of the mainstream media are too scared to cover for what it is. Faux determines the type of coverage by other media outlets. The rest know that Faux is pure ideological shite, no objective journalism, but the others are afraid to employ journalistic objectivity because they see how much money Faux makes with its blatantly biased coverage.
The Nigerian prince scenario is reason enough to leave the law as is. The US hasn’t had a truly plausible leftist candidate, but there are plenty of wingnuts who will pony up the cash to find a pretty face from somewhere to advance their cause. Until these people dial back their foolishness, it’s too much of a risk to change the law. Yeah, it’s archaic, and it is discriminatory against people who identify as American but happen to have been born elsewhere, but we’re stuck with a segment of the population who won’t be stopped in their delusional racist cause. If people would start calling these freaks out–the birthers, the Sarah Palins, the tax “protesters”, and all the rest–then sure, we could look at changing the law. But not until then. I’m not prepared to give another weapon to a bunch of malcontents who seem to be best described as angry white people with a huge sense of entitlement, people who’ll do anything to anybody (including selling out their country) to preserve their relative advantage. Then again, maybe their paranoia would only get worse if a Chinese or Indian immigrant became President…bwahahahaha…
I don’t think the one has much to do with the other. If we were to scrap the requirement that one has to be a natural-born citizen in order to run for president then, if anything, we ought to have even less tolerance for the “birthers.”
I have mixed feelings about the rule myself and perhaps there ought to be some method of fine-tuning it so that, for example, a person would qualify to run for president provided that they’d become a citizen by a certain age, or that they’d lived in the US for their entire adult life, or some such thing.
A few years ago, when Republicans dominated Congress, there was some agitation among them for changing the rule just so that Schwartzenegger could run for president; fortunately that never went anywhere. It’s not that I have so much against the guy as a person; I may not agree with him on much but in the absence of the current law I don’t doubt he’d less qualified to run for president than many other people who were born and raised here. For example, compared to Sarah Palin the man’s an intellectual giant and is downright sane. It would frost me, though, to see the law changed simply in order that a specific individual could benefit from it. If we’re going to do away with the requirement then why not make it effective at some specific future date so that there won’t be a possibility that law has changed simply to favor some individual, regardless of their merit.
As far as the birthers are concerned though, I don’t see any reason to cut them slack; they’re simply pissed that someone “different from themselves” has gotten elected; remove the substance of their current objection and they’d simply find a new one.
Actually, scratch me saying that the whole feminist movement analogy sucks. Re-reading my post, it actually seems to make sense. Saying that the law makes sense because it’s like a man trying to lead a feminist movement would be similar to this situation if the “man” in question was really a trans woman facing not only sexism and transphobia from the general culture, but also from other women. Saying that someone born outside of the US is automatically alien lays a ridiculous claim of birth determinism in nationality, similar to claims of determinism in gender.
Neither makes sense.
To those saying that it hardly matters because no one’s running who was born outside of the US — It is likely that no one is running who was born outside of the US because it’s illegal for such a person to run. It would be a waste of time for them and make any serious politician’s credibility go down the drain.
For the person comparing it to a man leading a feminist movement, the situations are nothing like each other. Gender, for those identifying solidly as male or female, tends to be fairly fixed, even if people don’t identify with their birth-assigned gender. Being born in America doesn’t make you emotionally American, just legally, similarly, my father who immigrated when he was 3 has no memories or loyalties to anywhere else, and is surely an American. He grew up in our school systems, singing our songs, etc. It seems silly to say that he’s not an American because he spent the first 3 years of his life in Norway.
I don’t even understand your article.
You are giving currency to the Russian/Israeli wingnut who keeps filing court cases with obviously bogus documentation, which is why she got thrown out of court.
There is no need for a discussion of the birth requirement for the Presidency as there is no one serving, running, or contemplating running who was not born in the US (Schwartzenegger notwithstanding
.
The bottom line: you serve that daffy woman’s agenda by even treating her idiocy with seriousness.
Slow news day?
Leeanne, males can lead a feminist movement if feminist want a male to run it. I feel discouraged by those who think that biological determinism should be a qualifier when it comes to talking about something. I think a straight person who’s pro-LGBTQ has something valuable to contribute to the movement just as much as someone who is LGBTQ or someone who’s white has something valuable to say when the talk about critical race theory.
This makes no sense. It’s like saying a male can lead a feminist movement.
Yeah, let’s go hunting down the Americans that happened to be born in another country while their mom was there. Natalie Portman, run and hide because you are not an American. You were born in India or somewhere like that. Don’t let them right wingers near you, or you’ll be shipped back to wherever you were born.
I see no reason to change the rule, and I see no reason to even suspect that his certificate of live birth and birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers are fraudulent.
I’m not in favor changing a law for philosophical reasons. I’d want to see some compelling real-life reasons as to why the current law isn’t working or why a new law would produce better results. I don’t see any such argument for changing the law.
>If they decide the best person to do the job happens to be from somewhere else then so be it.
Remember, this is the same group of people who chose W twice. Might this not be a compelling “protect people from themselves” argument?
If these so-called Birthers had done any research, the whole thing with Obama was a moot point from the start. Even if he wasn’t born in this country, his mother is a natural-born US citizen and he’d have that status through her. It’d be no different than if your mother just so happened to be in Canada or wherever when she went into labor. She’d simply apply for a Born Abroad certificate.
I agree that the rule where you have to be born here to run for President (no other position has that in place, btw) is nothing but a technicality these days. Obviously you’d still have to live here for X number of years, but you can’t control where you were born.
Other than possibly Schwarzenegger (if you lean Right), I’m not aware of anyone in my lifetime that would have been such a compelling candidate for president that it argues fore changing the law.
I’d stay put on the requirement that the president be born here.
Really ryanfye? Do you honestly think people would elect such a person? Eligibility for the Presidency should be based on a couple really basic things (I agree with the age requirement), and the people of the country voting them in. If they decide the best person to do the job happens to be from somewhere else then so be it.
Then should we remove the archaic rules that they have to live here for any point in time? or how about do they even have to live here during their presidency? keep going on that logic and we will end up having a Nigerian price running our country from a third world dump!