Another problem with amendments added later on to the Constitution is that they often show a lack of understanding for the original design of the Constitution. The relationship between the people, the states, and the federal government was carefully laid out by the founders at the Constitutional Convention. However, some amendments have changed that relationship or removed checks and balances from the original system thus placing the Constitution as a whole in jeopardy. Such amendments that have done this are the 14th whose ratification is extremely controversial, the 17th, 16th, etc. When amending the Constitution it should be done with great consideration with respect to the original design lest you should break the system.
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Interesting article on the Blaine Amendment:
http://falr.unc.edu/volume2-1/McAfee.pdf
The Blaine Amendment included a lot of partisan gamesmanship. The Democrats controlled the U.S. House at the time, and were in those days the states rights party. The Democrat House passed the Blaine Amendment only after knocking out the provision that Congress would have the authority to enforce it. This was because they opposed federal control of education and feared a future Republican congress might use that provision to impose federal standards. When the proposal reached the Republican Senate, the congressional enforcement clause was restored. However, fear then erupted among Republicans that Catholics might be able to make the case that the Blaine Amendment prohibited Bible reading in the public schools. Such reading was commonplace at the time, and consisted of the Protestant King James version in most jurisdictions. So the Republicans added a provision explicitly protecting Bible reading in the schools. In the end, the Blaine Amendment failed in the Senate on a party line vote by falling short of the required two-thirds majority for passage. Republicans voted for it only after protecting Protestant Bible reading. Every Democrat in the Senate voted "no", fearing any federal intrusion into education at all, even if Bible reading was protected.
There's no indication that any member of either party was interested in secularizing the schools. Not then, and certainly not during the earlier 14th Amendment debate.
Most of John Bingham's quotes alleging that the 14th incorporates the entire Bill of Rights against the states came after the fact, similar to incidents in more recent history where proponents of civil rights laws claim after passage (though not before) that the bill requires affirmative action programs, forced busing, or quotas. During an 1871 debate, when Bingham made such a claim, a congressman named Storm from Pennsylvania responded:
"Sir, if the views now announced by gentlemen on the other side of the House had then [during debates on the Fourteenth Amendment] been promulgated, that amendment would never have been ratified. If the monstrous doctrine now set up as resulting from the provisions of that Fourteenth Amendment had then been hinted at, that amendment would have received an emphatic rejection at the hands of the people. [. Cong. Globe , 42d Cong., 1st Sess., app. at 84 (1871).]"
Even at that, I don't think Bingham was being dishonest. He was just speaking in generalities because the 14th did indeed incorporate SOME of the Bill of Rights, such as the due process protections, etc.