“Lay on, McCain!”

How Birnam Wood came to the Oval Office

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
7/27/08
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
 

In MacBeth, the title character goes to the three witches to find out what he needs to worry about, and they assure him that he has nothing to fear until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and until he encounters a man “not of woman born.”

MacBeth figures he’s got the whole shooting match sewn up, and marches confidently toward his destruction. Then, English forces disguise their approach on the Dunsinane Castle by hiding men behind branches taken from trees in Birnam Wood and, um, advance. And they are led by MacDuff, who was “untimely ripped from his mother’s womb,” a C-section, or Caesarian baby. (They were doing C-sections in the time of Imperial Rome, which is WHY they are called “Caesarians”) MacBeth does battle with MacDuff, loses his head, and the play ends. Not only does MacDuff win, but he gets the funniest line in a distinctly unfunny play: “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?” You gotta watch out for those fell swoopers. They’ll get your chickens every time. Especially the pretty ones.

It goes to show that you really need to read the fine print on those supernatural prognostications. There’s always an element of “the monkey’s paw” to them, and if you don’t look for the loopholes, you’ll get screwed by Act V.

But it seems that MacDuff could never run for President. I mean, quite aside from the fact that he was English, probably fictional, and died some 500 years before America was founded.

Being “untimely ripped” and “not of woman born” means he wasn’t “natural born.”

So by this logic, anyone who was birthed by C-section is not “natural born” and cannot be President of the United States. That may sound pretty stupid, but it’s right there in the Constitution: Section 1 of Article II, “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;...”

“Untimely ripped.” That just ain’t natural. Sorry. You don’t qualify.

I’m really surprised nobody thought of this before. There’s a pretty good chance that one or more presidents were born by Caesarian, and should never have been in office. If this proves to be the case, I suggest that the history books be expunged of all mention of them, any laws they signed should be considered null and void, and if necessary, reconsidered by Congress, and any wars the nation fought should be fought over. Further, we should look at Barbara Bush. Yes, that isn’t pleasant, but her species may be open to question, and a quick DNA test should be administered to see if she is, in fact, human, let alone female. Can’t have any unnaturally born types serving as president. Crooks, morons, and psychopaths, sure. Bring ‘em on! But nobody not “naturally born”!

OK, that’s an idiotic argument, but similarly idiotic ones are making the rounds about both candidates for President this year. That the wording exists at all in the Constitution shows that the founders were capable of some pretty moronic things themselves (declaring blacks to be 3/5ths of a human and setting up the Electoral College were two other great moments in Founder stupidity), but it is there, and various “the law is the law” types, along with over-the-top party loyalists, have been using it to claim that neither McCain nor Obama qualify for the office because they aren’t “natural born.”

Now, me, I’m unnatural. I was born in Ontario. It could have been worse. I was nearly born in Quebec, which would have made me REALLY unnatural. Just so you know.

In McCain’s case, he was born of American parents on an American base in the Panama Canal zone. Panama is outside the United States. Seems cut and dried, if you assume that “natural born” means born on American soil, which strikes me as rather unhygienic. I’m not sure if babies born in operating rooms count as natural born since they weren’t born on soil. Back in the times of John Jay, they didn’t know about germs, you see, and apparently thought soil was essential to natural birth.

So McCain was born in Panama in 1936. In 1937, Congress passed a law which read, “Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.” The law took effect on August 4th, 1937, a date which shall live in famy. The reason for the law – and it was later extended to all military personnel who have children serving on military bases overseas – was simple, and just. America didn’t want to be in the position of asking people to serve their nation overseas, and then reward them by declaring any offspring they might have while serving their country abroad to be second-class citizens.

The argument is that McCain was passed a year before the law was passed, and therefore spent the first year of his life being unnatural. It’s kind of like the “one drop” rule some southern states had to determine if someone was white or not. One drop of Negro blood made you a Negro. For all the vaunted superiority of being a member of the white race, just one drop of Negro blood could ruin the whole thing. Frail things, us whites. Now me, I was born in . . . but you already know about that. I’m white. Just like every other human born of African parents back around 70,000 BCE. MacDuff was white, too. But not his pretty chickens. They were born by egg, which is unnatural.

But being American is even trickier than being white. One minute spent being unnaturally born meant you were unnaturally born for life.

Except, of course, the law stipulates that it is retroactively effective to February 26, 1904, and even John McCain isn’t THAT old. I don’t know why they selected that date, but strongly suspect that the son of some high ranking military officer might just have gotten born on or immediately after that date in the Panama Canal Zone.

But, the “natural-born” types protest, that’s ex post facto. Ex post facto, also forbidden by the constitution, forbids persecuting anyone for an action taken that was not deemed criminal by law at the time of the action. It’s one of those things in the Constitution that kinda makes up for the “natural born” and Electoral College idiocies. It doesn’t mean a law can’t be retroactive; just that the criminality of the act cannot be retroactive. If they had tried to declare John McCain’s birth illegal, that would be ex post facto. But they weren’t. They were just extending a right, and the Constitution has no quarrel with that.

The claims that Obama cannot be president are, if anything, even sillier. They start out by noting that Barry Goldwater ran for president even though he was born in Arizona back when it was still just a territory. They then note that Obama’s father was Kenyan, and make the following argument: “Barack Obama is not legally a U.S. Natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth, which falls between “December 24, 1952 to November 13, 1986? . Presidential office requires a natural-born citizen if the child was not born to two U.S. Citizen parents, which of course is what exempts John McCain though he was born in the Panama Canal. US Law very clearly stipulates: “…’If only one parent was a U.S. Citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.’ Barack Obama’s father was not a U.S. Citizen and Obama’s mother was only 18 when Obama was born, which means though she had been a U.S. Citizen for 10 years, (or citizen perhaps because of Hawai’i being a territory) the mother fails the test for being so for at least 5 years **prior to** Barack Obama’s birth, but *after* age 16. It doesn’t matter *after* . In essence, she was not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. Citizenship. At most, there were only 2 years elapsed since his mother turned 16 at the time of Barack Obama’s birth when she was 18 in Hawai’i. His mother would have needed to have been 16+5= 21 years old, at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to have been a natural-born citizen. As aformentioned [sic], she was a young college student at the time and was not. Barack Obama was already 3 years old at that time his mother would have needed to have waited to have him as the only U.S. Cizen [sic] parent. Obama instead should have been naturalized, but even then, that would still disqualify him from holding the office.”

Which was all fine and good, except for one little detail. Hawaii was admitted to the Union as a full-fledged state two years before Barack Obama was born. That makes Hawaii American soil, and therefore, no matter what the status of his parents, Obama was natural born, or, if you prefer, “American soiled.” It doesn’t matter if either parents were Americans or not, or if they had the legal right to be in America; they were in America, Obama was born in America, and therefore he is a “natural born American.”

There are some Hawaiian separatists who maintain that Hawaii was dragged into the Union illegally (they probably have an argument for that), and that Hawaii is therefore not a part of America. Although if that’s the case, why would they care if Obama is running for president in a country that most of them have never even visited? It’s not their problem.

So both McCain and Obama can be president. You may have your own opinions that one or both are psychotic, crazy, sociopathic, senile, or vicious. But by gawd they were born in good old fashioned American dirt, and so they can be president!