If President Barack Obama was a portable antiquity, my bet is there would be no interest whatsoever in the United States about where precisely he came from. The problem for him is that in a National Archives and Records Administration display case in Washington, there is a document of 1787 which says that the President has to be what it calls a "natural born Citizen", though neither do the "framers" define in that document what that means, nor who determines who is eligible to stand for election. Despite the fact that "we the people" voted pretty decisively that they wanted him to lead the country, there are those who are unhappy with the choice and now claim that the two most important words in the whole Consititution are "natural born".
A bemusing video with a National Geographic type voiceover produced by a group called Restoretheconstitutionalrepublic.org ("We the people will not allow our Beloved Constitution to be highjacked and DESecrated!") urges US citizens to "take time to research the facts" about the significance of provenance in this particular case because "the agencies of misinformation want to to think this is an absurd battle waged by conspiracy theorists [tinfoil hat shot], but the issue IS real and the matter IS serious and simply trying to shoot the messenger will not make the message disappear"...
Now it is obviously an internal matter how the US deals with the ultra nationalists in their midst and their insistence on the vital importance of two words in the Holy Writ (though it beats me why it actually matters in this globalised day and age in what hospital or building a newborn kid came into the world - when just a few years earlier they wanted to free themselves of mad King George, the watchword in North America was the self evident truth that "all men are created equal"). By the way, the same Consititution uses the word "he" for the President and talks of Indians and classifying people by their "former state of servitude", never amended either.
US collectors frequently loudly protest that no-questions-asked collecting of provenance-less portable antiquities from every corner of the world (Old and New) is their "Constitutional Right" which nobody can take away from them (the rhetoric used is often of the 'Cold Dead Hands' type). Actually there is not a single word in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights to support this assertion. It does however allow for the definition and punishment of "Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations". It seems to me therefore that far from giving its citizens a carte blanche to act as they will in such matters, cultural heritage piracy and transmaritime smuggling of antiquities against the law of nations is something the adhering to the letter of the Consitution would require to be more fully addressed than it currently is in US legislation. In any case, this is what "we the people" of the US declare they are going to do in their Constitution.
If President Barack Obama was a portable antiquity, my bet is there would be no interest whatsoever in the United States about the piece of paper saying where he comes from. US collectors do not seem overly concerned to buy only portable antiquities with a clearly defined and precise provenance. Let's see some consistency in their claims about what the Consititution means to them.
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“US collectors do not seem overly concerned to buy only portable antiquities with a clearly defined and precise provenance. Let's see some consistency in their claims about what the Consititution means to them.”
Or at least, let them understand the Constitution and the law have moved on.
At around the time of the 1970 UNESCO treaty and the Cultural Property Implementation Act “the sweeping notion of state ownership claims exemplified by the foreign cultural patrimony laws was alien to traditional American jurisprudence regarding the protection of private property holders’ rights.” That sounds rather familiar. Hasn’t that sort of talk been trotted out recently by people that deal? But things have changed.
United States v. McClain established that American citizens could be convicted under the National Stolen Property Act for violating another country’s laws regarding removal of cultural heritage “where that foreign law was unambiguous”. http://www.aam-us.org/pubs/mn/MN_ND06_antique-laws.cfm
In other words, if the foreign law is clear enough then “didn’t realise” is not a very good defence these days if the law abroad is clear, even if it is wrapped up in a self-serving code of ethics or a claim to professionalism or a flag. “Freedum” and “The ‘merican way” won’t wash any more, so says the Supreme Court.
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