Image by Brett Jordan.

Soon unelected co-President Musk may “own” us all as he buys elections with his “free speech” (money is speech per Citizens United).

After his “investment” in the Presidency in 2024, Musk now moves into states: “Musk’s attempt to buy Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is a red alert that his attack on democracy isn’t limited to gutting the federal government,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler.

If successful, I suspect Musk’s “love of money” will propel him to buy up or seek to use government to control all jobs effectively rendering him the Massa of the Big Plantation formerly known as the USA. Government of the people may be our last best hope preventing us all from being reduced to Fugitive Slaves. Let me explain.

I have practiced civil and Constitutional law for more than 45 years, and until now never worried about being made a “non-citizen” (though the Bill of Rights protects “people” so that remains in force, somewhat).

The Constitution as originally adopted assumes that there is citizenship of the United States, and of the States, but does not explicitly state the law of what makes one a citizen of either (other than by giving Congress the power to naturalize). Under Article III the federal courts were granted jurisdiction over controversies between citizens of different states, and thus assumes that some people have state citizenship.

Article II requires that only a natural-born citizen of the United States, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, may be President, and thus assumes that some people have national citizenship.

Nowhere, however, does the original Constitution lay down a clear legal rule about either kind of citizenship. Not, that is, until adoption of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the USA. That includes me, and probably you. But if it can be taken away, then we are all reduced to the same legal status as Fugitive Slaves before the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment.

Before the Civil War black people held in slavery in the south were condemned to a “Twilight Zone” due to the so-called Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution. Found in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, it required a “Person held to Service or Labour” (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who flees to another state be returned to his or her master in the state from which that person escaped. (Ironically, this mess resulted because the authors........

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