“The 14th amendment has done more harm than good to republican government. You can’t have “states’ rights” and incorporation. It’s one or the other”.
I am no legal scholar but I disagree. While I am no fan of the 14th amendment, there are rights that are guaranteed us through the constitution that states can not abridge. These rights are/should be incorporated. The 2nd amendment is now thankfully one of them.
Until the 14th amendment, this was not true. As soon as you accept incorporation, federalism/states rights goes out the window. Hell, without incorporation, the Feds would have no way to create rights--like, for example, a right to abortion. They'd have no say in, for example, religion in schools, etc. Like I said, it's done more harm than good. We'd be better off fighting for our rights at the state level.
The 14th Amendment, in a nutshell is unconstitutional...not as it is written, but as it's interpreted. If a State has an unconstitutional action, which is one that is disagreed with by the People of that State, it is up to the People to remedy it, NOT the federal government.
The Constitution was never intended to have any operation on the People who ordained and established it. For your perusal, here is View of the Constitution of the United States .
But a contract of this nature actually existed in a visible form, between the citizens of each state, respectively, in their several constitutions; it might therefore he deemed somewhat extraordinary, that in the establishment of a federal republic, it should have been thought necessary to extend it's operation to the persons of individuals, as well as to the states, composing the confederacy. It was apprehended by many, that this innovation would be construed to change the nature of the union, from a confederacy, to a consolidation of the states; that as the tenor of the instrument imported it to be the act of the people, the construction might be made accordingly: an interpretation that would tend to the annihilation of the states, and their authority. That this was the more to be apprehended, since all questions between the states, and the United States, would undergo the final decision of the latter.
This was used, I believe in the Heller case as evidence. It's the first legal paper written on the Constitution after Ratification.
No federal judicial court has the ability to sit in judgment of a State.
That's right. The Constitution grants powers to the federal government, and at the same time limits them. While state powers aren't specifically granted or limited by name, I don't think for a minute the founders intended any state government have the power to infringe upon a person's natural rights. To the extent the 14th. codifies that, I have no problem with it.