To Josh — I wrote this on Facebook, in response to a blog post that Horowitz had made about this topic:
‘The Constitution, the ultimate arbiter of this jurisdiction, is clear on the matter — foreign-born people are ineligible to be President. Think that it is an out-of-date rule? Then seek an Amendment, or begin a rebellion to overthrow the Government. Those are your two options. Defiling the Constitution by re-interpretations not at all connected with the original understanding is unacceptable.
Now, I am an Hamiltonian, so I understand elasticity in understanding very well, and deem it just in many scenarios. But complete, deliberate neglect of specific Constitutional rules is unconscionable. Hamilton would agree — Hell, he even thought that the Federal government would require an Amendment to construct inter-state highways. Looks like the statist Eisenhower missed out on that one.’
Moreover, I remarked that ‘since he [Obama] has not even been elected yet — the Electoral College, the constitutionally-mandated elector of the President, has not met — he cannot be unseated’. Of course, in all likelihood, the Electoral College (which is to decide tomorrow on the next President) will elect Obama, but the critical idea that one must understand is that the United States is not a democracy.
And on your claim that conservatives should support Obama, I emphatically reject it. Almost every President since Wilson has governed unConstitutionally and tyrannically, so a full-fledged armed rebellion is long overdue. But, since ‘all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed’, the conservative may feel as though greater good can come from a prudent political rebellion.
Now, living according to such prudence does not require that the conservative actually support the current leader — conservative Protestant Whigs (and even some Tories) expelled the tyrannical Roman Catholic despot, James II, in the 1688-9 Bloodless/Glorious Revolution. They did so because of patriotism, love for the fatherland, and a desire to maintain the liberty guaranteed by the ancient Anglo-Saxon constitution, which the government at the time was openly violating.
As conservatives, we are obliged to be patriots, true to the Constitution and to the liberalism handed down for centuries; but we may also be obliged to be seditious. However, if a method other than a prudent political rebellion (or an armed rebellion that shall be the last resort) – an explicitly Constitutional method, such as the enforcement of the native-born clause – can be used to invalidate the accession of a leader bound to be tyrannical, then lovers of liberty should seize on that method.
Using the method of invalidating his accession by enforcing the native-born clause, though, mandates that Obama was born abroad. Because facts matter, this method fails if he were actually born in Hawaii. But other options remain.
sbq
Quigley, I’m not saying that we ought to support Obama in all things. But I do think that we ought to support him when his policies are good. My only point is really that we need to take care to not fall into the idiocy that was so prevalent during the last eight years. We support policies, not people. We support policies when they are good for America, and reject policies that are bad for America.