Listen to this progressive whine about how bad the 14th amendment is

From a Constitutional and therefore conservative(as in modern conservatism) point of view, the 14th amendment is a fantastic bit of work. I don't bring this up too often, because the 14th amendment didn't become a weapon of progressivism until somewhere in the 1950's(and it is thus generally outside of the scope of my focus), but the 14th amendment takes plenty of attacks from many who are not actually attacking that amendment, but rather, the courts' misuse of it.

But they don't know that, which is sad. Most conservatives, if they knew the timeline, would be ardent, ardent defenders of the 14th amendment.(the more I read about it, the more I'm convinced of this) Far too many conservatives think the 14th amendment authorizes all of these christmas tree goodies for progressivism, so therefore the 14th amendment must be the worst on the docket.

In reality, the men who stood together in the mid 1800s and framed it did a masterful work, as is illustrated by the recorded debates for that amendment. (see here) They specifically had as a goal NOT to re-write what the Founding Fathers did, and specifically built the 14th amendment to NOT rock the boat.

The 14th amendment wasn't always a treasure chest for the progressives to continually pull gold doubloons out of, and they knew it.

Rexford Guy Tugwell, who remains to this day an extremely consequential progressive, and probably the main architect of the New Deal, wrote this in 1928:

The grain of grace is familiarly furnished, as in other cases, by the dissent of Justices Stone, Brandeis, and Holmes. The minority opinions of these three are coming to be legal classics. They may in time become the rule of law. But so long as legalists so downright as Justice Sutherland are dominant, progress is definitely blocked. The decision could not be clearer:

An employment agency is essentially a private business. True, it deals with the public, but so does the druggist, the butcher, the baker, the grocer...Of course, anything which substantially interferes with employment is a matter of public concern, but in the same sense that interference with the procurement of food and housing and fuel are of public concern. The public is deeply interested in all these things. The welfare of its constituent members depends upon them...but in none of them is the interest that "public interest" which the law contemplates as the basis for legislative price control. Under the decisions of this Court it is no longer fairly open to question that, at least in the absence of a grave emergency, the fixing of prices for food or clothing, of house rental or of wages to be paid, whether minimum or maximum, is beyond the legislative power. (RIBNIK v. MCBRIDE, (1928))

Freedom of contract and the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have again been made to serve the cause of reaction. Contrariwise, however, the dissenting opinion of Justice is much the clearest analysis ever made of that shadowy legal area within which economic compulsions are disputed. The majority makes no attempt to meet the theoretical objections to its position; its statement is pure and unreasoned dogma, its use of "public interest" an obvious statement of prejudice and dislike for bureaucratic meddling.

Would you listen to that!!! It's the tool of reaction! The 14th amendment in his view is a bomb because of all of you reactionaries out there. But you wouldn't know that today, nearly a century later. The 14th amendment is constantly used as a weapon against "reactionaries".

I sincerely urge all of you to read the debates from the framers of the 14th amendment. There's not one item that progressives claim, that was discussed at the time.

At least, I haven't found one yet. I bet you won't either.

Don't give up on the 14th amendment. It isn't what the progressives claim that it is. As always, progressives are liars.

https://tinyurl.com/ycwpj2wt