"The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse."
Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER
His birth certificate has been widely displayed, and pronounced by experts as the real thing, yet there are those who remain unconvinced that Barack Obama has the minimum requirement necessary for anyone to be President of the United States: U.S. citizenship. To these birthers he is a Kenyan, at best a British colonial subject (since Kenya was a British colony when Obama was born). The same could be said for our first nine presidents, they too having been born in British colonies. But the Constitution got around that technicality, declaring anyone thirty-five or older who was a citizen at the time of the Constitution's adoption, eligible to be president. Since then the question of citizenship as a prerequisite for eligibility has scarcely been considered. We know where public figures come from. We take their word for it--until now. Newt Gingrich claims Obama thinks like a Kenyan, which confirms the birthers' suspicions...he looks Kenyan.
Gingrich's surprise expertise on Kenyan thought patterns notwithstanding, birthers say race has nothing to do with their suspicions about Obama's eligibility. Their disclaimers are hard to believe. Kenyan is one of the new slang words for African-American, a nice way to get around using the really taboo epithets. They probably wink when they say it.
We all know Barack Obama is of African descent. Most of us are aware with a certain sense of pride, or at least relief, believing his election to be a sign that we Americans might someday actually achieve that elusive goal of true racial equality, to finally live in a country that has only one race: human. Not so the birthers. To them, the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate is a moot point. He may have been born in this country, but he is still a Kenyan, and certainly not enough of an American citizen to be president. There are true Americans, and there are others, who get to live here if they cause no trouble. Never mind that pesky Fourteenth Amendment--if it needs to be repealed, so be it. Then we can stop foreigners from crossing the border to drop newborns, and decide who gets to be president at the same time.
"We want our country back," is the mantra of the birthers, and other tea party patriots. They are vague about where our country has been taken, and why it so desperately needs retrieving. Perhaps the old canvasses depicting our nation's founding can shed some light. The signers of the Declaration, and the framers of the Constitution, "We the people", were all white. America's foundations have stood the test of time, why not the definition of "real Americans?"
By this standard, the man currently in the White House is not "real" enough to be a real American. He is half Kenyan. He was born in Hawaii, which only two years before his birth was a U.S. colony. He lived in a foreign country. He barely meets the minimum requirement for citizenship. Must America elect a president who is only minimally eligible?
The fact that America did elect Obama makes no difference to the tea baggers. By their lights America may be a democracy (or was before 2009) but not even a democracy is allowed to elect a foreigner president. Look again at our founding fathers: all white, some who owned people with Kenyan features. Of course, hardcore right wingers would also despise a white Democratic president, but their fanatical obsession with Obama's citizenship puts off rational dialogue to an extend that only racism can explain. Whatever problems our country may have, they are dwarfed by having a Kenyan usurp the presidency. To the birthers, America's only priority right now is to get rid of that Kenyan. Then their country will be "back."
