I think you need to re-read #49. When you say "They are making up fake laws", and "They are clearly not a valid interpretation of "law."", this does not strike me as the kind of comment that can support the idea that the 14th is the sum of all evil.
For the 14th to be the source of this, they wouldn't be making fake law, they'd be creating real good law. They wouldn't be using invalid interpretations of "law", they would be using sound reasoning of law. Minus the quotations there.
It has to be one or the other.
"You didn't know that the legal argument in Roe V Wade is the "penumbra" from the 14th amendment? Do you read articles in pro-life circles? Yes, the court cited the 14th amendment to create the "right" to abortion."
They could have cited a turkey. Who cares. The word "abortion" does not appear anywhere in the text of the debates that created the 14th amendment. Nor in the final product of the 14th itself either.
I don't know where the difficulty exists, other than you completely trust when progressives lie. This is not a good life choice to put your trust in progressivism.
"Virtually all the modern liberal crap is pinned onto the 14th amendment"
Liars are apt to lie. Fools believe liars.
"but because they wrote the 14th so very horribly, it can be twisted to mean anything the courts want it to mean."
I don't know if I buy that any more than the idea that the first amendment is sloppily written, or the second amendment, or any others. Progressives do this. They de-educate us using the government schools, then they quote things out of context, and the result is all of this havoc. The 2nd Amendment is in the exact opposite position as the 14th. The progressives take advantage of not educating us to destroy our liberties. Problems created become new opportunities to create new problems, which then spawn even more new exploitable problems.
Bork read through much of the debate notes and came up with many of the conclusions that I did. Perhaps you should read the notes original source. The 14th is not nearly as sloppy as we have been maleducated to think. It's "just" 150 year old language in the same way that the 1st amendment is "just" 250 year old language.
The imprecision isn't in the 14th amendment any more than the 2nd, the imprecision is in the progressives. It's by design. You have got to stop trusting progressives so much. It's sickening how much you trust them.
"According to historian William Leuchtenburg""
I don't care what a progressive historian has to say. Moving on. Garbage in, garbage out. Next.
"I have always said the dispute is between the "Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians.""
Of course you have. You trust progressives. That much is clear and without any doubt. This idea that it's hamiltonians vs jeffersonians is progressive historiography 101. I just finished Herbert Croly's book as an audiobook just a few months ago, "The Promise of American Life". This is the ideology he espouses in that book.
I almost don't want you to read the book because I fear you'd further cement your progressive views if you read it. But that book is either the _de-facto_ source of this progressive historiography, or else Croly was the guy who elevated it to make it mainstream within progressivism. Either way, this is as foundational to progressivism as sand is to concrete and that's the book where to find it.
Whatever or not you choose, I know the source is correct here. So it is what it is. Here is both the text and audio. For a real conservative, this is incredibly valuable. https://librivox.org/the-promise-of-american-life-herbert-croly/
If they had cited a "turkey" as the basis of their newly made up law, even the stupid people in the nation would have realized this was bullsh*t.
By citing the 14th as the basis for their made up law, they can claim legal authority for making it happen and most people won't bother to challenge them on their made up bullsh*t.
That's how this works. The latter portion of the 14th is so badly written that it can be interpreted by an activist court into meaning anything the activist court wants to do.
No, the 14th doesn't actually say these things, but it gives the courts so much power to "interpret" it, that they can turn it into anything they want.
If the 14th had to go through an actual valid ratification process, this never would have happened, but with the Washington DC sockpuppet "states" ratifying what Washington DC ordered them to "ratify", they could get away with writing it really crappy and giving all that power to liberal judges.
It wouldn't have passed a valid ratification process.
The Fourteenth is a beast, but, so is the Commerce Clause.
One of the authors of the Fourteenth, Roscoe Conkling, testified in an 1881 railroad case that its equal protections clause was intended to include corporations. And so onward we go in twisting and turning original intent to fit the latest expediency.
I’m with ProgressingAmerica that it was the progressives who used it the most. Regardless, starting w/ McCullough, the Court will find an excuse for whatever it wants, be it the Fourteenth, or the Fourth and Fifth for privacy and due process.
The Founders’ worst mistake was not to anticipate judicial review.