Perhaps no controversy in recent years illustrates more clearly the dismal state of American civics education than the controversy pertaining to Barack Obama’s birthplace. People who are woefully ignorant of Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States again are locked in mortal combat with people who are woefully ignorant of Article 2, Section 1 of the same document. The only good outcome that one can hope for in this struggle is that they both lose.
Let’s start with the birthers; after all, they started it. Birthers believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore is not a native born citizen, and not eligible to be elected President of the United States. Birthers have some highly circumstantial evidence on their side in the form of secondhand comments about a newborn Obama being held in his mother’s arms in Kenya. They also had, for a space of time, an argument from silence due to the lack of publicly available documentation of Obama’s U.S. birth. This argument eventually failed along two lines: first, because the argument from silence is a material fallacy (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence), and second because the evidence was, eventually, produced. The State of Hawaii has confirmed that Obama was born there and has furnished America with a certificate of live birth. With the release of that document, the birther movement seems to have suffered its final defeat among convincible Americans. Nevertheless, a few diehards still clench to the hope that Obama can be disqualified from office due to the fact that the Hawaiian document is a “Certificate of Live Birth,” as opposed to a Birth Certificate.
This is a sad state of affairs. It is always sad to see dispirited people floundering in desperation. Many of the birthers are the type of people who speak loudly and repeatedly about their fidelity to the Constitution. The problem is that the Constitution is against them. Article 4, Section 1 settles the matter:
"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."