Posted under History & Politics & Sovereignty and Secession
Thomas Naylor, ‘What the Birther’s Missed:Why Hawai’i is Not a Legitimate State
Reading a children’s edition (republished in ’79 from a 1902 manuscript) of the Arthurian legend this evening to the elder boy, I found myself with Merlin creating the round table. In this children’s edition, the table is to sit 50, which includes the Seat of Peril, or the Perilous Seat, or whatever name have you–if you sit in it, and are unworthy, the act is fatal. Further, the text includes a warning from Merlin that when the 50 seats are filled, God will wreck King Arthur.
While indeed the legend frequently changes the number of seats at the Round Table, the mind is tempted to consider the thought of the author and the later editors to use the 50 seat number and Merlin’s warning–Fate is apparently still with us.
With that in the background, Thomas Naylor hits the metapolitical point of the Birther question–is Hawaii a legitimate state?
And I won’t (which is to say I will) bother to mention the Pearl Harbor Question–we’ll tackle candidates from Seward’s Folly another day if need be.
DW on 21 Jun 2011 at 2:50 am #
I made this point in 08 about both Obama and Palin. Interestingly the very same people prone to Birthism were appalled by the notion that Alaska and Hawaii were – and are – illegitimate states. I assume this has something to do with national greatness nonsense.
Kirt Higdon on 21 Jun 2011 at 4:11 am #
Why stop with Hawaii or Alaska? The continental 48 were acquired mostly by conquest and armed dispossession of the former inhabitants. And the tyrant Lincoln forced secessionist states back into the union and rammed various amendments to the Constitution through by means of military occupation. Obviously the US is an illegitimate country.
Aaron on 21 Jun 2011 at 6:21 am #
At first I thought that article was a parody. Apparently it was meant seriously, though. Here’s my vote for stupidest question of the year: “If Barack Obama were born in Hawaii, and his birth certificate says that he was, then why has he shown so little interest in the plight of Native Hawaiians?”