Posted by johnwk:
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Generally speaking, I oppose legislation which interferes with people’s right to mutually agree in their contracts and associations, whether in business dealings or their private lives.
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Originally Posted by Michael Tree
Yeah! If people want to have restrictive covenants that prevent Jews, Chinamen, or <shudder> the Irish from living in their neighborhood, opening businesses in their buildings, and marrying their daughters, they should be able to do so, gosh darnit! This is America!
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I get the distinct impression you have a problem with people being free to mutually agree in their contracts and associations and thus portray this unalienable right and liberty as inherently evil.
Posted by johnwk:
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If you are one of the few who is aware of how the Fourteenth Amendment has been repeatedly used by radicals to undermine the limited intentions and beliefs under which the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted --- such limited intentions being to forbid the enforcement of any state legislation based upon race color or previous condition of slavery --- then you will also be one of the few who will also understand how the wording of the Equal Rights Amendment [re-introduced in the House and Senate] if adopted, will open the door for our Washington Establishment to impose countless new federal regulations and rules within every State in the Union which will make our Tenth Amendment and our constitutional guarantee to federalism meaningless.
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Originally Posted by Michael Tree
As for the rest, you ignore the actual text of the 14th amendment in favor of the narrow interpretation that your political ideology requires.
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What I wrote is factually correct concerning the limited intentions and beliefs under which the 14th Amendment was adopted, and can be documented from the words of those who framed and ratified the amendment. For example, one supporter of the 14th Amendment put it this way:
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“Its whole effect is not to confer or regulate rights, but to require that whatever of these enumerated rights and obligations are imposed by State laws shall be for and upon all citizens alike without distinctions based on race or former condition of slavery…It permits the States to say that the wife may not testify, sue or contract. It makes no law as to this. Its whole effect is to require that whatever rights as to each of the enumerated civil (not political) matters the States may confer upon one race or color of the citizens shall be held by all races in equality…It does not prohibit you from discriminating between citizens of the same race, or of different races, as to what their rights to testify, to inherit &c. shall be. But if you do discriminate, it must not be on account of race, color or former conditions of slavery. That is all. If you permit a white man who is an infidel to testify, so you must a colored infidel. Self-evidently this is the whole effect of this first section. It secures-not to all citizens, but to all races as races who are citizens- equality of protection in those enumerated civil rights which the States may deem proper to confer upon any race.” ___ SEE: Rep. Shallabarger, Congressional Globe, 1866, page 1293
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Originally Posted by Michael Tree
The fourteenth amendment does not say "any person of color", or add to the end "...on the basis of race or color." It says "any person."
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I am glad you have quoted part of the 14th Amendment, but you did so out of its context and that context reveals it is a prohibition placed upon a State‘s laws. It is not directed at people in their ordinary relationships with each other:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall ……….
In addition, you forget the most fundamental rule of constitutional law which is to carry our the intentions and beliefs under which our Constitution [each article, section, clause and amendment] was adopted. In this case, the documented and preponderance of evidence establishes the 14th Amendment was intended to accomplish a very narrow objective which I stated above. If you have documentation to the contrary, please feel free to post your documentation.
The fact is, even Bingham, who wrote the 14th Amendment, emphasized “the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen . . . is in the States and not in the federal government. I have sought to effect no change in that respect.” See
Cong. Globe page 1292
Bingham goes on to say:
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I have always believed that the protection in time of peace within the States of all the rights of person and citizen was of the powers reserved to the States. And so I still believe.
Now, what does this bill propose? To reform the whole civil and criminal code of every States government by declaring that there shall be no discrimination between Citizens on account of race or color in civil rights or in the penalties prescribed by their laws. See Cong. Globe page 1293
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Even our SC, in the Civil Rights Cases noted the intention was to secure “those fundamental rights which are the essence of civil freedom, namely, the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue … to inherit, purchase … property
as is enjoyed by white citizens. (Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.W. 3, 22 (1883).
The 14th Amendment, as exhibited by a preponderance of evidence had a very narrow objective and was intended to ‘incorporate’ the guarantees of the first Civil Right Act into our Constitution, nothing more. And what were the intended guarantees? Mr. Howard, sums it up as follows:
“I do not understand the bill which is now before us to contemplate anything else but this, that in respect to all civil rights___and those are some of the civil rights which I have just enumerated___
there is to be hereafter no distinction between the white race and the black race. It is to secure to these men whom we have made free the ordinary rights of a freeman and nothing else. See
Gong. Globe, Jan. 30th page 504
As I correctly stated, the People, when adopting the 14th Amendment intended to prohibit state sponsored discrimination, “black code laws“, [discriminatory law based upon “race, color, or former condition of slavery] and insure that all people, regardless of race, color, or former condition of slavery, would enjoy a constitutional guarantee to make and enforce contracts, to sue, to inherit and purchase property, etc., as was then enjoyed by white citizens. This was the prevailing and narrow objective of the Fourteenth Amendment and was repeatedly stated during the debates.
The 14th Amendment was never intended to allow Roe vs. Wade, allow the SC to allow Martin, a cripple, to ride around in a golf cart during the PGA event, nor did it support Misssssssss Ginsburg’s opinion commanding VMI to admit females into the Institute. All this and more has been invented by subversives who work to overturn federalism, our Constitution’s plan.
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Originally Posted by Michael Tree
The fifth section of the 14th amendment also gives Congress the power to enforce this. In other words, Congress has the power to enforce equal protection of the laws for all persons. That's what it did when it passed the ERA.
You clearly want the U.S. to go back to the federalism of 1789, but many of the constitutional amendments have shifted that balance of power, especially the 14th.
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Your opinions are not in harmony with the documented evidence taken from the Congressional Globe concerning the 14th Amendment.
JWK
Intent of constitution
16 Am Jur 2d Constitutional law
Par. 92. Intent of framers and adopters as controlling.
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The fundamental principle of constitutional construction is that effect must be given to the intent of the framers of the organic law and of the people adopting it. This is the polestar in the construction of constitutions, all other principles of construction are only rules or guides to aid in the determination of the intention of the constitution’s framers.
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