A Hill To Die Upon: The 14th Amendment Does NOT Guarantee "Birthright Citizenship"

Trump's Executive Order ending it is a Constitutionally sound, heroic and necessary move to stop the damage its already caused

My old buddy the economics guru Mish Shedlock has a post at his site about the illegality and foolishness of President Trump’s Executive Order ending “Birthright Citizenship”. As many of you know, I’ve spent 15 years trying to slay this monster of what vI call “The Miracle Amendment i.e. the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”, brought about through malicious court rulings and public opinion being manipulated to make Regicide (of the U.S.A.) a common good. I’ll be talking about it on the radio/TV show today. Below you will find my response to Mish, in full. Here’s his to me.

Here is my response to Mish.

The CATO Institute is a group of theoretical dreamers who think if Bastiat said it then it should be an appendix to St John's gospel. Quoting Senator John Connes as if he is the wellspring of 14A meaning is ridiculous.

The primary author of the Amendment, Jacob Howard (MI) made it as clear as Humel crystal, in transcribed debates over the amendment, that the principal at question was JUS SOLI vs JUS SANGUINIS, soil vs blood and the 14th was referring to the blood of newly freed slaves, BORN in the United States. SPECIFICALLY. To argue against this as you and so many others have done is simply ignorant of the history of the drafting of the 14th A.

The best book ever written on the 14th and what it has done to American jurisprudence is Raoul Berger's "Government By Judiciary". Berger, a Russian immigrant, (read online here: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mcdonald-government-by-judiciary-the-transformation-of-the-fourteenth-amendment ) is the world's leading scholar on the 14th Amendment. Here's some relevant debate Berger transcribes in his book.

"Howard advanced a counterproposal, the present introductory sentence, “All persons born in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Wade then withdrew his proposal.28

Presumably the Howard formulation struck Wade as a satisfactory substitute for, not a repudiation of, his own proposal. Although the Negro had been emancipated, the Dred Scott decision threw a shadow over his citizenship;29

the matter had been a source of interminable argument. Trumbull wished “to end that very controversy, whether the Negro is a citizen or not.” 30

Howard stated that his definitional amendment of §1 “settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.” And he further explained, “we desired to put this question of citizenship and the rights of citizens and freedmen under the civil rights bill beyond the legislative power” of those who would “expose the freedmen again to the oppression of their old masters,” 31

thus confirming that his definition was not a sub rosa abandonment of the paramount goal throughout: protection of the resident Negro against State discrimination

In sum, the purpose of the framers was to protect blacks from discrimination with respect to specified “fundamental rights,” enumerated in the Civil Rights Act and epitomized in the §1 “privileges or immunities” clause. To achieve that purpose they made the black both a citizen “of the United States and of the State in which he resides.” They did not intend by the addition of State citizenship to diminish the rights they had been at such pains to specify, but the better to secure them. The notion that by conferring dual citizenship the framers were separating said rights of a citizen of the United States from those of a State citizen not only is without historical warrant but actually does violence to their intention. Fessenden stated that the definition was framed “ to prevent a State from saying that although a person is a citizen of the United States he is not a citizen of the State.” 36

He did not mean to safeguard State citizenship in order to leave blacks at the mercy of Southern States. It was precisely their abuse of the freedmen that led to the Amendment."

Arguing that the geographic location of a woman's birth canal being in the United States, who owes allegiance to another country, makes her offspring a citizen of this UNION of states, is regicidal, historically inaccurate and just plain stupid. My friend William Briggs has this to say on the matter.

My argument is I don’t want them. This is my home, not theirs, and they are not welcome.

That is all the argument I need.

Trump is right to try and ring sanity back to CITIZENSHIP and how it's obtained.