Editor,

We’ve all heard it. “Barack Obama was born in Kenya. He’s not eligible to be president of the United States. He’s a Muslim. We don’t want one of ‘them’ to be our leader.” At this moment, leading presidential candidate Donald Trump has informed us that his Republican nomination opponent Ted Cruz may not be an American citizen.

Are we taking Mr. Trump seriously as a “populist?” Was he born in poverty in a log cabin, like the president who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln? Does Trump follow the lead of George Wallace, a segregationist governor of Alabama who eventually became an advocate of racial tolerance? Perhaps as a “share the wealth” candidate, Trump should carefully consider the fate of Huey Long, a governor of Louisiana in the 1930s, an innovator in regard to racial tolerance and a man who seriously contemplated running for president against Franklin Roosevelt. Unfortunately for Long, he offended Dr. Carl Weiss, the son of one of Long’s political opponents. Dr. Weiss, perhaps, taking Jefferson’s words about “Watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” too literally, “bumped off” Gov. Long with a handgun.

I suggest we consider one of the difficult yet wise provisions of our brilliant Constitution, the ability to change it, but not easily. When it finally dawned on us (surprisingly late in our history), that owning dark skinned people as property was, to put it mildly, tacky, we emancipated them by amending our Constitution.

Not quite as urgent, but worth consideration: Article II, Section 5, the Executive Branch. “No person except a Natural born Citizen… shall be eligible to the Office of President… .” As much sense as this phrase may have made in 1787, perhaps in 2016, in a very globalized world in a nation of very few “native” born citizens (i.e., descendants of aboriginal “Indians”) the “native born” phrase made a lot of sense. We are very complicated, as the current conflicts in Malheur County, Oregon indicate; “native” gets very complicated. We may soon have emigrants to the planet Mars. I suggest we amend the Constitution so that only earth-born American citizen humans be eligible for president of the United States of America.

STEPHEN KAHN

Langley