No, a ratifier is not a writer or a contributor in the sense of original thinking. However, I understand that defining the scope of who the Founders really were is a debated issue. I really limit it to those who made the most notable contributions to the creation of the original documents, not to its broader acceptance in the states. Again, as a matter of best evidence, authors should take precedence over voting delegates, and the precedent tributaries of thought such as Locke and others, should be considered important and even dispositive if the authors so regarded them.
Sincerely, I am not trying to be difficult. The legal studies I undertook at over 50 years of age did not come to me as from a divinely inspired professorial idol talking to a young and easily overawed mind, as you suggest. Initially, I contested the issue. Being more of a traditional Calvinist, direct, divine revelation was more my notion of how universal moral principles were communicated to the human soul.
However, my mind changed as I studied, again reading directly from Augustine, Aquinas, the Greek classics (I only read Koine, and that badly, so pardon my skipping the Attic), and of course Descartes, Locke and many others. Modern sources as well, reflecting on the same general problem domain, such as Budziszewski, Robert George, and the like.
So no, I do not have some bare-bones context into which I am mindlessly throwing the phrase “natural law” like some potent talisman. I believe there is a moral contour to the universe that any soul may find, and so strong it is, that they may feel it even when they cannot see it. And I believe there is evidence the Founders not only saw it that way, but designed their Constitution deliberately to accommodate it. Hence the inalienability of the rights to be protected.
Which is why I sincerely do not understand how anyone, especially with the kind of vastly superior erudition you claim to have, could think the Founders, almost all theists, would allow their design to be so compromised that genocide would be permissible in the states under their notion of federalism. I really, really don’t get that. These were smart guys. Why would they set themselves up for failure in such a critical part of their mission?
As for Incorporation, it is a bit player in the drama, a piece of evidence for my argument that the grander design existed, and that is how I offered it, if you will review my introduction of it. You decided to latch onto Marshall’s resistance to it in a takings case, as your entire proof of universal opinion among the Founders. If you are in so lofty an educational status as you would have me believe, why are you relying on a single datum on a line of evidence that is not even the central issue? Does that really meet the rubric of a credible academic proof?
I am trying to be nice, and I have not derogated your intellect or education as you have mine, but I simply don’t see why you are defending the islands whilst I take the mainland unopposed. I am still a good learner after all these years, and I hope you will do me the kindness of giving a more well-rounded response to my inquiry, and help me see what I am missing, rather than simply lambasting me for my intellectual deficits without informing me what you actually believe about what natural law is, and how it may or may not have a role in comprehending the federalism of the primordial founders.
I am all ears. Really. Just ask my wife. :)
SR
No, a ratifier is not a writer or a contributor in the sense of original thinking.
So...by your same reasoning then Thomas Jefferson and John Adams shouldn't count either, because they were in Europe as foreign ministers during the constitutional convention. Nor were John Hancock, Patrick Henry, or Samuel Adams, seeing as they only took part in the ratification stage as well.
You are playing pick-and-choose with your founding fathers. It's a very strange world where an Alexander Hamilton (who blathered about monarchy at the convention, but lost almost every single vote and got ignored by the rest of the delegates) "counts" as a founder and Rufus King (a comparatively minor figure) also "counts," but John Marshall (a judicial heavyweight who people actually did listen to) does not. In fact the only criterion I can even discern is their perceived convenience to your argument. Marshall is inconvenient to your point (and I'm still not convinced you even know what your point is beyond regurgitating a muddled concept of natural law for its own sake interspersed with increasingly obvious name-dropping), so you dismiss him.