Taking back Constitution piece by piece

It is an immutable fact that the Constitution is the law of the land, but the law of the land should not be presumed to be immutable.

It isn’t.

No artifact of the human mind can be maintained intact like a formalin-preserved insect on a pin. No matter how much comfort it would give us to have predictability and certainty in our law, the elements of human curiosity and cussedness would always give rise to unpredictability and chaos.

This introduces the possibility of improvement, whether through design or through accident, but it also raises the spectre of decline, whether through stupidity or sabotage.

Improvements have come in the form of amendments that accomplished the abolition of slavery and giving women the right to vote. Those were both long overdue by the time they passed.

But there have also been mistakes made in the amendment process, including the prohibition of alcohol and the decision to turn senators into panderers by making them directly electable by the people instead of through the choice of each state’s legislature.

With more than a hundred years of monkey-wrenching the prime law of the land through “progressive” court decisions, there is also lots of damage to undo that is based on “precedent” rather than the plain language of the Constitution.

You could start with the Commerce Clause, which has been shaped into a choke collar to restrict the freedom of the people to engage in trade and seek prosperity. You could start by re-instituting real limits on the powers of Congress or the president, as enumerated in Articles I and II. You could force the nation to honor the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which are included in the Bill of Rights but might as well have been written in invisible ink since they are treated as if they were nonexistent by the Supreme Court, Congress and many presidents.

But let us instead begin with an easy one — the 14th Amendment. This amendment, ratified in 1868, followed close on the heels of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery after the successful prosecution of the Civil War by President Lincoln. The purpose of the first article of the 14th Amendment is plain for everyone to see who has eyes to see. It established that the freed slaves were citizens in order to prevent individual Southern states from denying basic rights to black people. The rest of the 14th Amendment is mostly of limited importance today, but the first article has been used to do considerable damage, whereas its plain language should be a tool for good.

In total, it reads:

“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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The first sentence of the first article is what concerns us today. It establishes that freed slaves who were born in the United States are citizens. Obviously no one today could object to that, but the provision has been twisted into an unrecognizable mess over the past 140 years. This is where the doctrine of “birthright citizenship” supposedly originates — except it doesn’t. You’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes.

History is plain. So are the words in the 14th Amendment. But both are now being ignored thanks to a feckless adherence to judicial precedent no matter how wrong-headed the decision.

We are told that every child born in the United States has the right to claim citizenship in our country based on the wording of this amendment, but for goodness’ sake, before we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, shouldn’t someone actually read the amendment?

It PLAINLY says that there are TWO elements which are BOTH necessary to qualify for citizenship. One is that you must be “born or naturalized in the United States.” The meaning of that is more or less self-evident. The meaning of the second element — that a potential citizen must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States — has been conveniently forgotten or obfuscated. More invisible ink?

Anyone who bothers to spend half an hour researching the history of this amendment will find ample proof that the phrase is intended to exclude the children of foreign nationals from acquiring citizenship just due to the accident of being born in the United States. To claim otherwise requires a willful ignorance so profound as to be frightening.

Of course, the natural inclination of supporters of “birthright citizenship” is to just claim that children born in our country ARE “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. government because, after all, they are citizens. That, however, is a tautology which adds nothing to our understanding.

Plainly, there are some people born in the United States who are NOT “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — otherwise the phrase would not have been necessary at all. Therefore, children born in the United States MAY or MAY NOT be citizens depending on whether they are subject to our jurisdiction.

If you read the history of the amendment, you can see for yourself that children NOT subject to the jurisdiction of the United States specifically refers, among others, to those children who are born to alien residents, legal or otherwise — those, in other words, who owe their allegiance to another nation.

Sen. Jacob M. Howard, the very author of the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment, said the citizenship provisions, “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the family of ambassadors, or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

But even if you don’t acknowledge the history, you must acknowledge the language of the amendment itself. Clearly, anyone who has entered our country illegally, whether from Mexico or China, is NOT subject to our jurisdiction. We cannot, for instance, conscript them into the military, or otherwise obligate them to any kind of service or allegiance. Nor can we charge them with treason because they don’t owe allegiance to the United States.

Unfortunately this distinction has withered away, leaving us only with the politically correct formulation that all babies lucky enough to be born here are citizens by reason of geography.

This is one of many instances where the two choices left to concerned citizens are to either accept the blatant violation of the intent of the Constitution or to rework the Constitution so that its original intent is explicitly restored.

It would not take much. Just a simple amendment that says the following:

“The first article of the 14th Amendment shall not be construed to mean that birth in the United States automatically confers citizenship. The children of temporary or illegal residents of the United States, because they are not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, shall not be considered citizens of the United States unless and until they fulfill the requirements of naturalization.”

Despite the left-wing agenda of attempting to extend citizenship to everyone we feel sorry for, it is probable that this new amendment could be ratified by “three-fourths of the several states,” as mandated in Article V of the Constitution. On the other hand, it is not at all likely that Congress would be able to muster two-thirds of its members to vote for the good of the country and against the good of their political parties; therefore we are unable to ever see such a simple clarification instituted.

Which is why, of course, so many citizens are frustrated with the members of Congress to the point of “unarmed rebellion.” It’s not their country; it’s our country. It’s not their Constitution; it’s our Constitution.

And if we don’t stand up for our country and our Constitution, and do it soon, then shame on us. Vote as if your future depended on it — because it does.