Garrett Epps: Happy 14th Amendment Day!
What's better than a patriotic holiday in July? Pop a brew tonight, then, and let's celebrate our heritage of democracy and equal rights. We owe these freedoms not so much to the events commemorated every July 4, but to those of July 21.
On this day in 1868, after a bruising ratification struggle, Congress passed a resolution proclaiming that the 14th Amendment was part of the Constitution. More than the Declaration of Independence, more than the original Constitution, more than even the Bill of Rights, it is the 14th Amendment that makes America a democratic country.
But, as the beer commercials say, celebrate responsibly: Our current toxic immigration debate shows that, more than a century later, genuine democracy has powerful enemies. In 2006, the anti-immigrant movement is attacking the amendment's central meaning of equal protection of the law for all.
Please don't feel bad if the words "14th Amendment" don't immediately call to mind a list of rights. Most literate citizens -- and even many lawyers -- have trouble focusing on the radical changes this massive post-Civil War reform made in the original Constitution. The 14th Amendment is such a giant presence in our lives today that it's hard to see it as a single thing.
But consider this. Until the 14th Amendment, the idea of human equality, extolled in the Declaration of Independence, appeared nowhere in the Constitution. The word "equal," when written in the original document, referred mostly to voting privileges for the states. In addition, the Constitution contained no definition of American citizenship, seemingly leaving the matter to the states.
Even the Bill of Rights itself only covered the federal government -- overreaching state governments could, and did, restrict free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law and other basic rights. In short, the Framers of 1787 set up a flawed confederation of insular states, each of which was free to oppress, and even enslave, some or all of its population.
No matter what we've been taught in civics class, that original system was a failure. Its flaws led directly to the bloodiest war in American history. After nearly a million deaths, the anti-slavery leaders of Congress set out in 1865 to re-create the United States as a nation, with a powerful central government, democratic institutions at every level and a list of rights no government, state or federal, could violate. Far more than the Framers of 1787, John Bingham, Thaddeus Stevens, William P. Fessenden and the other authors of the 14th Amendment designed the America we live in today. It was, in their vision, to be a unified nation. Local majorities in states were to be barred by federal power from oppressing religious, political or racial minorities. And immigrants were to be a part of the nation as fully as those native-born, considered equal before the courts....
Read entire article at Salon
On this day in 1868, after a bruising ratification struggle, Congress passed a resolution proclaiming that the 14th Amendment was part of the Constitution. More than the Declaration of Independence, more than the original Constitution, more than even the Bill of Rights, it is the 14th Amendment that makes America a democratic country.
But, as the beer commercials say, celebrate responsibly: Our current toxic immigration debate shows that, more than a century later, genuine democracy has powerful enemies. In 2006, the anti-immigrant movement is attacking the amendment's central meaning of equal protection of the law for all.
Please don't feel bad if the words "14th Amendment" don't immediately call to mind a list of rights. Most literate citizens -- and even many lawyers -- have trouble focusing on the radical changes this massive post-Civil War reform made in the original Constitution. The 14th Amendment is such a giant presence in our lives today that it's hard to see it as a single thing.
But consider this. Until the 14th Amendment, the idea of human equality, extolled in the Declaration of Independence, appeared nowhere in the Constitution. The word "equal," when written in the original document, referred mostly to voting privileges for the states. In addition, the Constitution contained no definition of American citizenship, seemingly leaving the matter to the states.
Even the Bill of Rights itself only covered the federal government -- overreaching state governments could, and did, restrict free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law and other basic rights. In short, the Framers of 1787 set up a flawed confederation of insular states, each of which was free to oppress, and even enslave, some or all of its population.
No matter what we've been taught in civics class, that original system was a failure. Its flaws led directly to the bloodiest war in American history. After nearly a million deaths, the anti-slavery leaders of Congress set out in 1865 to re-create the United States as a nation, with a powerful central government, democratic institutions at every level and a list of rights no government, state or federal, could violate. Far more than the Framers of 1787, John Bingham, Thaddeus Stevens, William P. Fessenden and the other authors of the 14th Amendment designed the America we live in today. It was, in their vision, to be a unified nation. Local majorities in states were to be barred by federal power from oppressing religious, political or racial minorities. And immigrants were to be a part of the nation as fully as those native-born, considered equal before the courts....