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I don’t think the 14h is badly written. I think it’s well written for the era it was written in (a century and a half ago). I think it’d be unrealistic for us to expect the amendment writers to write them in such a way that it would account for all of the ways words could be misapplied a century later with all the ideas future leftists can dream up given enough time.

The 14th amendment was created because Congress decided the Civil Rights Act of 1866 wasn't strong enough. The 14th was supposedly modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is *MUCH* clearer on what the intent was than the 14th amendment is.

Have you read the Civil Rights Act of 1866? Having seen the difference, it is clear to me that the 14th was botched, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 had better verbiage.

"Be it enacted . . . , That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding."

Now that i've shown you the difference, do you still believe the 14th was "well written for the era"?

Respectfully, I think you and I have a different expectation of how much detail should be in a constitutional amendment. If you look at the amendments before the 14th and how much verbiage each one has, you'll note that the only ones with step-by-step details are the ones that pertain to the political process of the government. For example, here are the word counts of the amendments:

1st: 45 words
2nd: 27 words
3rd: 32 words
4th: 54 words
5th: 108 words
6th: 81 words
7th: 50 words
8th: 16 words
9th: 21 words
10th: 28 words
11th: 43 words
12th: 401 words -- because it details the change in the process of electing prez and VP
13th: 94 words (including the headers "Section 1" and "Section 2")

Let's compare those to the 14th Amendment.

14th: 433 words (including the "Section" headings).

248 of those words are in Sections 2 and 3. Section 2 is to clarify the details of the election process regarding the new citizens (i.e. don't even think about a 3/5ths clause anymore). No wonder it's about as terse as Article I's Sections 2 and 3. Section 3 is saying nobody in the rebellion can hold office.

433 words - 248 words = only 185 words for the remainder of the 14th Amendment. Take out Section 4 (8the government isn't paying the debt of rebel states) and you have only 80 words in Section 1 (the citizenship portion we're arguing about lately)

So the 14th Amendment, excluding the political process section, isn't wordy. It's much like the prior amendments (again, excluding the political process amendments). Now let's look at the portion of the 1866 Civil Rights Act that you copied. It has 156 words. Practically twice as many as the comparable 14th Amendment's Section 1. IMHO, it would be unreasonable to expect the 14th Amendment's Section 1 to be that terse.