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.
Sure, but we are way far away from even that. We have a whole cloth cherry picking of single words in order to justify anything and everything. The best example I think I could come up with is Santa Claus. How many of us tell our kids that this fat man is coming down the chimney with presents? Well, the presents are there under the tree aren't they? See, that's proof of all that the 14th amendment contains.
For a solid real-world (SCOTUS) example is Jefferson's Danbury letter and its use on the courts by two separate notable cases. In Reynolds v. United States, the court cites the Danbury letter. Word count? 132. Everson has a word count of 8. One of these two cases clearly set out to be dishonest and the other did not. With 8 words everybody has said everything and nobody has said a thing.
Look, with that kind of word count you could prove that in my past discussions with you I've discussed that the moon is made of swiss cheese. Which is exactly what progressives do and have done with the 14th and any other thing that they think they can gain advantage from.
The progressives desperately need a focus on intent when it comes to the 14th. That's where they win because they can make it whatever they want. The reality is there's no evidence for any of this it's been stretched so far, we're not in intent anymore. We're walking down the street in Mauritius. The progressives are simply flat out lying. That's why there's a 40 year gap. It wasn't until Woodrow Wilson invented the living constitution that we end up with Gitlow and all the rest of it.
As to the reading of the debate notes, I find that rather commendable. I too found various oddities in my readings,(and the amendment itself) but nothing anywhere near the realm of the outright hoaxes that have been cooked up out of the 14th. Bork's observations are dead on accurate and having read the notes that's why I trust his observation.