While the 14th was as you well point out, intended simply a post-CW reconstruction amendment, it has sinister language written by crafty devious attorneys. Effectively, while the 13th freed slaves, the 14th then reversed it, making ALL ‘citizens’, both blacks and whites, slaves to the federal government.
What the 14th started for the death knell of the states, the 17th finished them off.
Yes, the language of the 14th Amendment was purposefully crafted to be confusing and give an open door for unconstitutional government power.
But the deciding factor of the 14th Amendment isn’t the terribly written and confusing language. A crucial way to decide on ambiguous, confusing language of a law is to look to the intent of those who passed the law, in this case, the INTENT OF THE RATIFIERS - the states that passed the amendment and gave it power. And it is clear that the intent of the ratifiers was certainly NOT to give the feds unimaginably new sweeping powers over the states.
If so there would have been a record of huge debates in Congress about this. But there is not one iota of evidence of any debate which says that ratifiers intended this amendment prima facia to be a Post Civil-War Reconstruction Amendment limited to instating full black citizenship and restoring the union.
And this issue was decided and incorporation” was rejected by the Supreme Court not long after the ratification in cases called the “Slaughterhouse Cases”. No matter. The Left ignored this very important precedent of the “Slaughterhouse Cases” that had mandatory authority. And since the Right wasn’t stopping them, the Left continued to cut the Constitution with a thousand cuts, using among other things, the counterfeit and officially rejected “incorporation doctrine”.