Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment

[Emsworth]

Pretty horrible.

Might I ask why you feel so?

I feel that any citizen (regardless of the time spent as such) should be able to be President. (Exceptions, of course, apply on the basis of age, residency, and the like.)

[Emsworth]

This is the chief conductor of foreign policy. A natural-born citizen is less likely to sell us out to the United Nations or some similar international outfit.

I don't think that this is too much of a concern. Our natural-born Presidents have in some cases done worse.

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Because the People might find better candidates among those others.

[Emsworth]

the US voting public should be able to decide who is fit to be president or not. 

There ought to be some limits. A non-citizen, for example, should not be eligible.

[Emsworth]

I'm against it.  There are plenty naturally born US citizens within the US to run for President.

That argument does not appear to be logically valid. By analogy, someone in the nineteenth century could have argued that there were plenty of males to run for office, and that females should therefore be excluded.

One group should not be prevented from running simply because there are a lot of people in another group.

[Emsworth]

It's not like we are running low on people who have the ability to be our leader (though we are running low on candidates worth being our leader lately).

Once again, this is not a valid argument. It's like saying, it's not like we are running low on white Christian males who have the ability to be our leader, so no one else should qualify. The number of people available is absolutely irrelevant.

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That argument is a rather difficult one to make. Why would a natural-born citizen be more likely to maintain national security than, say, someone who became a citizen at the age of one?

The argument that naturalized citizens are somehow less likely to owe allegiance to the United States is, I'm sorry to say, entirely unconvincing.

[Emsworth]

You don't seem to get what MODU is saying. He's saying a non- native born president is undesirable because of national security purposes.

That argument, too, I understand, but disagree with. I simply feel that a natural-born citizen is no less likely to betray national security than a naturalized one.

Yet you assume that everyone who becomes a naturalized citizen might not have other motives.  Let's say for example a 19-year-old covert PLO operative moved to the US and became naturalized, and then when old enough ran and became President?

The probability of that occurring is most likely about the same as the probability of a natural-born citizen betraying the U.S. This might be especially likely, using your logic, for natural-born children of immigrants.

[Emsworth]

Why should we even want a foreign-born president?

It's not a question of what we want at this time, but a question of not unduly restricting the choices of the People.