If “birthright” citizenship is overturned, then no one is a citizen of the United States.
This week, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and other presidential candidates seem to be using xenophobia to seek votes by promising to overturn the 14th Amendment.
This “birthright” issue and attacks on the 14th Amendment are marketed as a defense of our border with Mexico, but they also invalidate citizenship for every person born in the United States, meaning that there will be no U.S. Constition, no US social contract, and nothing to protect you, your family and neighbors.
E pluribus unum is being trampled. What affects migrants from Latin America also affects migrants from Europe, Asia and Africa. If that does not include you, it includes your ancestors, even the ones who walked across the Bering Strait.
We live in an age when legalized slavery is returning. It is a feature in the Islamic State and it is a feature in Boko Haram.
To return legalized slavery to the United States, a crucial step is to overturn the 14th Amendment. Ending the 14th Amendment accomplishes opens many opportunities:
- People with African ancestry, something determinable with DNA where skin color is insufficient evidence, can be denied citizenship.
- States will have the power to confiscate property of individuals or classes of people. Many benefitted from the Japanese internment during World War II. Germans were also suspect people. This time, we will be able to confiscate the property of people from Eastern Europe on suspicion of supporting Putin, from West Asia and the northern half of Africa on suspicion of supporting Islamic State, from East Asia on suspicion of supporting China or North Korea, from South America on suspicion of supporting Venezuela, from England on suspicion of supporting a royalist faction to bring Prince Harry to the throne of the United States and Canada, etc.
- Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, a section addressing “the validity of the public debt of the United States,” may have some influence on the borrowing power of the United States. This may affect our international trade. It may also affect Social Security and the pensions of federal workers. It may affect the salary, health care and retirement plans for our soldiers and their families.
- Section 3 of the Fourth Amendment addresses the required loyalty of members of Congress and “insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution compels us “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Reversing the 14th Amendment is a violation of this primary Constitutional directive.
When I was sworn in as Governor of the Buckeye Girls State, an American Legion Auxiliary civic education program, I took an oath of office in front of Ohio Governor James Rhodes and more than a thousand of my peers who voted for me that “I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Ohio.” There is no expiration on that promise.
So, the 1851 Ohio Constitution is a social contract binding “we the people of the State of Ohio” and our “Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit.”
In my opinion, this week’s challenges to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are a threat to the State of Ohio and that approaches a threshold in Article III, Section III, of the United States Constitution in which treason is defined.
World War II veterans taught me in high school that citizens must diligently guard and defend the Constitution of the United States. I wonder if the 14th Amendment is being taught in this way to our students in the regulated curricula rolling across our nation.
The U.S. Constitution obligates me to speak out when I see actions that threaten one of the United States.
Today, I fulfill this obligation.
profmrobinson 