Rand Paul’s proposal contravenes one of the most fundamental, and currently overlooked provisions of the US Constitution, namely its prohibition of titles of nobility; because to deny citizenship to anybody born here will create a hereditary class accruing unmerited advantages by accident of birth: those whose parents were citizens at some arbitrary point in time. Such would be nobility again rearing its ugly head. In fact the proposal smacks of that ugliness already.

I can hardly think of a more fundamental attack on what this country is all about.