Constitutional Myth #8: The 14th Amendment Doesn’t Exist
GARRETT EPPS JULY 13, 2011
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
14th Amendment, section 1
The [Fourteenth] Amendment has been called “the second Constitution,” because of the number and importance of the changes it made. But to hear many of 21st Century’s far-right “constitutionalists” tell the American story, the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t exist. Or, at least, not as something that affects the way we live today.
These people are what I call “Fourteenth Amendment deniers.” Their radical right-wing agenda is much more attainable if the values of human equality, and basic civil and political rights, are read out of the document. So, like Sgt. Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes, they look at the text and see “nothing — nothing!” Read HERE.