Still In The Trenches

To: Jonathan Emord, Atty. 

Re: NWV Column of Dec. 15

Dear Mr. Emord,

I appreciated very much your column of today, titled Freedom To Offend…'; but I am at a loss to understand something that has been going on in this country for some time regarding what is called - sometimes blindly, I think - 'our Constitutional rights'.  Maybe you can help me.

The First Amendment - as are all the items in the Bill of Rights - is directed at the federal government; that IT shall not do such-and-such (so-called' negative rights').  Citizens in their respective States are subject to their State's constitution on such matters (i.e., matters that are not specifically delegated to the federal government; which is a government of LIMITED and DELEGATED powers - "few and defined," in the rather authoritative words of James Madison).  How did the federal Constitution get turned on its head, and be made to apply FROM the United States Government TO the several/sovereign States, in our federal system of government???

I have heard the argument that the 14th Amendment incorporated something into the Constitution called just that : 'incorporation' - that the whole of the Bill of Rights was somehow 'incorporated' into the powers of the federal government to rule on, and into the rights of U.S. citizens in their several States.  But that surely cannot be right.  To believe that is to believe that it says, in effect:

'The powers formerly reserved to the States, or to the people, shall now reside in the federal government.' - thus nullifying the 9th & 10th Amendments, and the entire spirit of the federal Constitution, and federal form of government, turning the U.S. into a centralized form of government.   [I.e., no 'State's rights'.  And therefore, no protection from the 'central' government taking away our weapons of self-defense in incremental steps, e.g.]

I 'get' that the 14th declared that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property "without due process of law" - i.e., that laws must not be arbitrary, must be legitimately codified - "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" - i.e., that the law must be color blind, no respecter of persons; equal for & to everybody.  But this other business, I just don't get. 

Please explain.  At your convenience, of course.

  

Thank you,

Sincerely,

(etc.)