The spectacle of those shrieking that President Obama was born in Kenya, and is therefore ineligible to be the President of the United States, more than calls to mind British anti-monarchists.

 

Identifying strongly with the either or both of the culturally liberal Left and (the real threat to the Crown) the economically liberal Right, it never takes them long to start about how foreign, and specifically German, the Royal Family is. Just try suggesting that they say the same things about people whose families arrived here far more recently, such as the Irish, the Jews, the blacks or the Asians. They don’t like it. They don’t like it one little bit.

 

Having to be born here would not be enough for a British “Republic” (ours is already a res publica). Its advocates would insist that Presidential candidates prove that all their ancestors had also been born here, going back at least to the accession of George I in 1714.