Your point would have been reasonable before the 14th Amendment (14A) was ratified. But when the states ratified 14A not only did they commit themselves to respect constitutionally enumerated protections, but they also gave the feds the power get involved in issues concerning possibly unreasonable abridgments of constitutionally enumerated rights by the states.
Ratified by whom? Those elected or those imposed by fiat via the reconstruction act?
Actually, the 14th Amendment itself did not do all that on its own.
A “progressive” supreme court DECIDED that the 14th amendment did all that.
I venture to guess that many states would not have ratified it if they had known what the democrats were going to do with it.