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Interpreted which is my point. And its the wrong direction.
And your interpretation is the wrong direction. I mean I just gave you a DIRECT quote from the person who WROTE the language for the 14th Amendment, Section 1.
Guess what, the Courts have read those quotes too and their interpretation is "well the guy who drafted it says it incorporates the bill of rights to all States, and the language is still there in the ratified amendment, so therefore [applying the bill of rights to states] it will do so." Not a hard interpretation...
And your interpretation is the wrong direction. I mean I just gave you a DIRECT quote from the person who WROTE the language for the 14th Amendment, Section 1.
Guess what, the Courts have read those quotes too and their interpretation is "well the guy who drafted it says it incorporates the bill of rights to all States, and the language is still there in the ratified amendment, so therefore [applying the bill of rights to states] it will do so." Not a hard interpretation...
The most recent Court decision on incorporation came in the 2010 case of McDonald v Chicago, involving a challenge to Chicago's tough gun control legislation. Just two years earlier, the Court had ruled in a case challenging a District of Columbia gun control regulation that the 2nd Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms. In McDonald, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Court held that the 2nd Amendment right was thought by ratifiers of the 14the Amendment "among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty" and is therefore now a right fully enforceable against the states. Justice Thomas, concurring, argued that the better vehicle for incorporation, one truer to the original understanding of the 14th Amendment, was the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Dissenters argued that the right to bear arms, "unlike other forms of substantive liberty,...often put others' lives at risk" and was therefore not the sort of liberty the 14th Amendment protected against state enforcement.
The thing I still don't like is the "Wall of Separation" Clause which does NOT exist in the Constitution. I understand the "Establishment" wording, and see how it applies, (and with the 14th even to the States), but I seem incapable, absent judicial activism, of applying the words Thomas Jefferson used in his letter to the Danbury Baptists. How was this considered possible to Justice Williams in 1879 when the record clearly indicates that Jefferson and Madison attended church services at both the House of Representatives and at the Capitol.
I just have a real difficult time accepting this supposed "Wall of Separation" Clause. So maybe someone can explain how Madison and Jefferson (along with almost every other President before the 1879 SCOTUS decision) attended church in either the House of Representatives or (mainly) the US Capitol.
From the same Library of Congress page:
Quote:
Jefferson at Church in the Capitol
In his diary, Manasseh Cutler (1742-1823), a Federalist Congressman from Massachusetts and Congregational minister, notes that on Sunday, January 3, 1802, John Leland preached a sermon on the text "Behold a greater than Solomon is here. Jef[ferso]n was present." Thomas Jefferson attended this church service in Congress, just two days after issuing the Danbury Baptist letter. Leland, a celebrated Baptist minister, had moved from Orange County, Virginia, and was serving a congregation in Cheshire, Massachusetts, from which he had delivered to Jefferson a gift of a "mammoth cheese," weighing 1235 pounds.
I mean you can think that, but the way it is going to be seen on the ground basically makes this DOA.
Which is my point. Its arbitrary and bad law since it is clearly a gaping hole of activist judgement. Religion can fit in the exact same place as the 2nd because as long as it does not" interfere with liberty" according to the dissent..
I also find it rather humorous that I would be some idiot for not knowing this obvious nature of the Amendment when 4 supreme court judges are in dissent and reject the Bill of Rights by extension argument just in 2010. I don't even think I made an argument. I just saw no clear path to the conclusion that it proscribed. With no mention of church and state in the 14th, its a tortured concept. Simple laws in a democratic system are not these complex derivatives that require long explanations from a professor at Yale. That is bad law. especially in a democratic republic.
So what was my point again? Laws don't protect you. The separation of powers protects you, and that was what the Bill of Rights tried to do in protecting the states. In the spirit of it, no law can protect you, only a real balance of power.
Why do some religious adherents think that they need the FORCE of LAW to require everyone to believe in their version of truth? Is there faith so weak that they fear some of THEIR believers will stop believing or are they so infested with the spirit of MAMMON that they need a MONOPOLY to insure all the offerings are theirs?
Government uses FORCE to control behavior. Religion uses FAITH to the same end. FORCE and FAITH should NEVER be combined or CERTAIN TYRANNY WILL RESULT.
Yes, I am shouting.
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