Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.
Clause 5: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
It would appear, based on your <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> reference document, that we have been citizens of the United States for a little longer than you stated above.
Article XIV.
Section 1. 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.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,(See Note 15) and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Kindly point out and explain to me the language that you consider enslaving. Apart from being somewhat vindictive toward those who were considered "in rebellion" about all this does is make the states subject to the terms of the first 10 amendments (prior to this those rights were only protected from infringment by the federal government, not state governments) and clears up who is a whole and complete citizen, which was left a little fuzzy by the original document due to the arguments over slavery at the time the original was adopted. If you don't agree that "Americans" were United States Citizens prior to this refer to Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 above.
Having pointed out a couple of flaws in your Constitutional argument, which makes the rest suspect whether you agree or not, we shall now proceed to geography.
Continents are not made up of states, commonwealths and countries. They are made up of dirt, preferably above sea level as that makes it more comfortable to live on and easier to breath. There are 4 major land masses on the planet that we inhabit which for convience said inhabitants have more or less agreed to refer to as the seven generally recognized continents. The Americas, North and South are generally recognized as what we have agreed to call the continents located on the land mass named after Amerigo Vespucci. These two continents were connected to make one land mass, although somewhat tenuously, by the Isthmus of Panama until we decided to separate them, for reasons of finance I agree, by digging a ditch. Regardless of the ditch, I for one am still comfortable refering to them as the Americas and for the most part thinking of them as one large chunk of dirt. We now move on to the second major land mass upon which the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa are situated. I doubt that any will argue that Europe and Asia sit on the same chunk of dirt and for those of you who think it strange to include Africa I remind you that until the French severed Africa from Asia there was a physical connection. That pretty much accounts for 5 of the 7 continents. I don't think there's much argument about Australia and Antarctica being separate continents although a good argument can be made that they are island and not continents in the proper sense. In any event, why is it proper to refer to someone from 5 of the 7 (although I don't know that there are any native human residents of Antarctia) commonly recognized continents as being European, Asian, African, Australian and, if there are any, Antarcticans and not to refer to someone from North or South America as American. They may not be American in the sense you choose to interpert it, but they are in the greater, or lesser as you see it, sense Americans.
Moving on to countries, states, commonwealths et al. Tribes formed towns. Towns evolved into cities. Cities evolved into states. About that time we learned how to write and make maps. Maps were important because each tribe, town, city and state claimed a sphere of geographical influence. If you did not draw a map which represented what you claimed for your sphere of influence how would your neighbor know where you drew the line? And there it is. Countries are made up of lines on a map. Neighbors often argue over whether or not the lines are in the right place. They get angry. They hit each other. They kill each other. The lines move. The boundaries change. The countries get larger, smaller and sometimes disappear altogether. The continents don't care. They're still there. They haven't moved. The only thing that affects them are nature's violent cataclysms and the semi superhuman feats of engineering that man loves to show off with. So there you have it. States, countries etc. don't make up continents, they are simply on them and the lines which delineate them are only as strong as the countries which claim the territory within them and are able to enforce them as boundaries. I could go on but I feel that we have digressed considerably from the original topic. I feel that I have countered your points, at least to my satisfaction, for the most part. Feel better now Ram? Is this more like what you expected? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
