dismal said:
I'm not mocking you I'm mocking your belief that the 14th Amendment clearly incorporates the first 8 amendments against the states. I can read the plain language of it and see that is not in there. Language that would make such a thing absolutely clear would not have been even slightly hard to draft if that was the intent.
No, you were mocking me on the false and unjustified assumption that I had a belief that I do not have (namely, that I believe that SCOTUS rulings are divine, etc.). Check the record.
But regardless, and with regard to the 14th Amendment, it seems clear to me that it does incorporate them. But as I have repeatedly said, I might be mistaken (I'm not an native English speaker, let alone from that time), so I'm willing to consider linguistic evidence. Where is your evidence?
dismal said:
The generally accepted view of the privileges and immunities clause is that it prevents states from disavowing the rights of citizens from other states. If someone from New York found themselves in Pennsylvania they would be entitled to all the rights a citizen of Pennsylvania had.
When you say "generally accepted", who is the set of people over which you're making the assessment?
If you're talking about people who write about constitutional law in the present, judges that rule on the matter, etc. (but whom, exactly?) that might or might not be the case for all I know (evidence?), though clearly there are plenty of people who disagree (e.g., justice Clarence Thomas, or
the Cato Institute policy report )
On the other hand, (quoting the Cato link) "Yale law professor Akhil Amar agrees: “Virtually no serious modern scholar — left, right, and center — thinks that [Slaughter-House] is a plausible reading of the [Fourteenth] Amendment."
In particular, acceptance of incorporation is also the generally accepted view (under the previous interpretation of "generally accepted"; if you meant to pick another set of people, please clarify).
Some accept it on due process grounds, others on privileges or immunities.
I asked you before what your evidence for your interpretation of the due process clause was. But you chose not to answer.
Later, you got into a debate with Bomb#20 over the privileges or immunities clause (among other issues), and I decided to ask you about your interpretation of the privileges or immunities clause.
If you want to go by "generally accepted", even if you win the "privileges or immunities" debate (which you have not shown, but assuming so), you lose the incorporation debate, because incorporation is generally accepted.
Else (i.e., leaving aside the "generally accepted" view), please provide linguistic evidence to support your claim.
dismal said:
It's nonsensical to assume the 14th Amendment version of it entitled people in the states with the right to the 1st Amendment phrase: "Congress make no law regarding an establishment of Religion". This places a prohibition on Congress. All citizens in all states had protection from Congress establishing a religion the moment the 1st Amendment was adopted. They never had the privilege or immunity from their own state establishing a religion, and thus the 14th Amendment could not give it to them.
It's not remotely nonsensical. In fact, my impression of it is that it's exactly what the 14th is saying (well, part of; it also incorporates other rights), in context (the meaning of the words without context doesn't allow one to tell which privileges or immunities are included).
In 1866 (i.e., before the amendment was passed), and when the proposed text was "The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each state all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states....", Bingham said it was a proposition to give Congress the power to enforce the bill of rights as it stood at the time (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privileges_or_Immunities_Clause#Text_of_the_clause ).
Later, though, he changed the language. In 1871, he explained the change by saying that "I hope the gentleman now knows why I changed the form of the amendment of February, 1866. Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States" (quoted from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privileges_or_Immunities_Clause").
Back in 1866, after the change, he still insisted that it was about protecting rights from state governments, even using the language of the Bill of Rights (see his example about cruel and unusual punishment).
If, on the other hand, you want to consider the text without any context, then why would "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" not include many of the protections in the Bill of Rights?
Once you get rid of context, the meaning still surely allows for some of those protections to count as "privileges or immunities..." (am I wrong about that? If so, where is the evidence?), and without context, you would have no counterargument.
Of course. With the polarization of politics these days, we weren't going to get it. I'm please with what we did get, and hope that it reminds voters how important it is to elect HRC even if she isn't anyone's first choice. One or more USSC appointments depend on it.