(It is not) easy to imagine the northern states, victorious in a Civil War that lead to the fourteenth amendment, should have decided to turn over to the federal courts not only the protection of the rights of freed slaves but an unlimited power to frustrate the will of the Northern states themselves. The only significant exercise of judicial review in the past century had been Dred Scott, a decision hated in the North and one hardly likely to encourage the notion that courts should be given carte blanche to set aside legislative acts. ... Had any such radical departure from the American method of governance been intended, had courts been intended to supplant legislatures, there would be more than a shred of evidence to that effect. That proposal would have provoked an enormous debate and public discussion.
Also:
We know there is no evidence that the ratifiers imagined they were handing ultimate governance to the courts. We know that a constitutional revolution of that magnitude would have provoked widespread and heated (to put it mildly) discussion but there is no record of any such discussion.
You see, Robert Bork distrusted the progressives. The progressives said "here is the new truth about the 14th amendment", and Bork simply went and got the debate notes from when they created the 14th, and of course there's no evidence of any of the progressives claims. (I'm sure he probably reviewed some news reports of the era as well.)
What a surprise. Progressives are liars. That's shocking, SHOCKING news there.
"Who was Margaret Sanger?"
She was a person who I cannot trust. Same for Baldwin and Jones and Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt and Walter Lippmann and on and on.
When these poisonous people make a claim, I know that the opposite of what they claim is the truth.
So what do they claim about the 14th? I know for a fact that the opposite is the truth.
Why do you believe their claims? Why do you believe their claims without evidence? I'll end this with a simple question for you. Have you ever downloaded the debate notes from the framing of the 14th amendment and read the discussions that took place? It's either yes or no.
There was a strong Christian abolitionist movement that stood apart from the "kook" element. Linking opposition to slavery to heretics and nuts was a common strategy of pro-slavery propagandists. To some extent, it worked, because theologically orthodox abolitionists weren't as flashy as those with more radical ideas, but the split of the Protestant denominations into Northern and Southern churches before the Civil War indicates that there was opposition to slavery among theologically orthodox Christians. For better and for worse, there has long been a crusading, world-bettering strain in Christianity (not just in the Mainline Protestant denominations, but also in Evangelical Christianity) that political ideologues have trouble coming to terms with.
Have you read the 14th amendment? The first part is mostly straightforward and not very objectionable, but the second part is the worst bunch of crap gobbledygook that a committee could have created. It is that second part which has caused the vast majority of the trouble with the Federal courts.
Not intending to create a mess does not excuse people from having done it.
And there is no way the 14th amendment would have passed had the Southern states been allowed to vote as they wished. That was the consequence of the Civil War. To let Northern liberal kooks set policy for the entire nation turned out to be a series of ongoing disasters.
I'll end this with a simple question for you. Have you ever downloaded the debate notes from the framing of the 14th amendment and read the discussions that took place? It's either yes or no.
No. I read them online without downloading them. And there were some really stupid points brought up in the debates on the 14th amendment. I have long argued about our "anchor baby" policy, and it is clear that is an area where the 14th was better written originally, and then made worse because stupid people (Senator Jacob Howard) decided to meddle with the previous verbiage. Look up the section on "local allegiance" and how they mucked that up.
By the way, my tagline is a statement from John Bingham taken from the debates on the 14th amendment.