Ray: --- You say that the Cons prohibits the states from infringing on individual rights. This isn't quite true.
The Cons pretty much leaves the states free to deal with civil liberties as they see fit.
You're ignoring Art. VI and the Amendments.
The prohibitions on the states are found in art 1 sec 10, and as you can see, those prohibitions are pretty thin.
Our Bill of Rights is 'thin'?
It's not that the framers didn't care or anything, it's just that the states were used to dealing with their own issues, and would have certainly had problems if the new G had come along and said, "Here now, we're the new boys in town and you will do this and this with your laws, and that's that."
Yep, there was a lot of fancy language used, & compromises made, -- in order ratify our Bill of Rights, -- but they're still pretty clear to me.
Do you have a problem with States obeying them as the Law of the Land?
Art VI, unless I'm missing something, is not a prohibition on the states. The Bill of Rights is irrelevant. I am discussing the ORIGINAL cons, which was ratified w/out a BOR. Furthermore, the BOR did NOT apply to the states until after the Civil War. The BOR applied ONLY to the Federal Gov. Many of the states, for example, (VA included) actually had state supported churches. If you lived in VA,you paid taxes to support the state church. That simple. Again, the prohibitions in Art 1, sec 10 are indeed thin.
The Bill of Rights is not a "list of our rights," it is a list of restrictions on the federal government.
Regardless of your interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights never applied to the state governments until the passage of the fourteenth amendment.
The constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and, in that constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated...In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in Congress and adopted by the States. These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the general government--not against those of the local governments.
In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in congress, and adopted by the states. These amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the state governments. This court cannot so apply them. - Chief Justice Marshall Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833)