THE GENIUS OF THE DECLARATION

Section 1. 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.

650,000 people died so that these sacred words could have the opportunity to breathe life into a new nation; fulfilling the promises of an antecedent document that had been more or less discarded by the time of the Constitutional Convention. Tens of thousands of other people were forced to die before their time in addition to those lost on the battle fields just to add these two sentences to our Constitution.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal….

Oh, the great changes promised by Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment were not immediately implemented.

Not like the dictates of the 13^th Amendment.

And the 15^th Amendment was immediately implemented upon its ratification and then, ten years later, all but ignored for almost a century.

Great changes take time, even when the blood of a large percentage of a population is shed in the historical blink of an eye.

The beauty of Section 1 is its simplicity. It is so short and soooooo very sweet; and so very hopeful.

And it includes the poetry of Jefferson molded by Radical Republicans into the most important Constitutional provision of all time; radicals who knew the importance of ratifying such poetry as soon as possible; as if those wise men knew that there was a window of opportunity that might slip away.

Oh our courts, pressured by less idealistic politicians and lobbyists were slow to apply the ideals present in Section 1.

Well the words never meant absolute equality, wrote the robed shamans who were chosen to implement this new ideal into their deliberations.

Well, due process is a little vague and might even be thought to be in the minds of the beholders said our shamans.

But beginning in the ‘30’s a new, more idealistic group of robed shamans came up with an idea; a new manner in which they could implement the ideals of Section 1.

Why not look to the list of Constitutional Protections created at the same time that our nation became a nation. Why not use the dictates contained in the Bill of Rights? Rights that only applied to the relationship between U.S. Citizens and the Federal Government but never to the relationship between U.S. Citizens and state governments.

And within 30 years, almost all of the promises contained in the Bill of Rights were adopted by our Supreme Court; and also with the necessary help of Congress and various Presidents.

Alabama could no longer maintain that the Bill of Rights applied only to Federal Law and had nothing to do with the citizens of Alabama.

And northern cities could no longer maintain that the Bill of Rights had nothing to do with property ownership.

And some local political group running some ‘machine’ could not cut off a person’s right to free speech in order to fend off competition in the voting booth.

There are thousands of pages containing some of the finest political and statesmanlike language ever written in those Supreme Court decisions.

However, those changes in our government’s perspective toward individual rights are always subject to attack. Individual rights might be written in a constitution, recited in court decisions and etched in stone but there has always been and will continue to be THE STRUGGLE to maintain those rights.

So it is written:

On Monday, Rand Paul announced that he is joining Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) in cosponsoring the Life at Conception Act. The law would declare that a person's life begins at conception. Paul and Wicker reason that by becoming legal persons protected under the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the laws, then it will override the constitutional right to an abortion that the Supreme Court found in Roe v. Wade.

Of course, if fetuses had all the rights of a person, it might lead to interpretations that—ironically, given that Paul campaigned on a strong commitment to privacy and liberty,—would vastly expand government power. For example, if a pregnant woman smokes or drinks alcohol, or simply eats unhealthily, could she face prosecution for reckless endangerment of a child? In any case, Paul confidently predicted that "passage of the Life at Conception Act would reverse Roe v. Wade without the need for a constitutional amendment."

But he is not averse to amending the Constitution when necessary. On Thursday, Paul and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a resolution that would amend the Constitution to prevent children born to illegal immigrants from gaining automatic citizenship. Under the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which Paul and Vitter oppose, citizenship is given automatically to anyone born on U.S. soil. So Paul wants to expand the 14th Amendment to cover the fertilized embryos of American citizens while restricting it to exclude the babies of illegal immigrants. It's not clear where the fetus in an illegal immigrant's uterus would fit into this equation.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-28/rand-pauls-abortion-immigration-hypocrisy/

These fascist pricks wish to screw with perfection, the perfection contained in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

And you should never FUCK WITH PERFECTION.

Before I get into possible language that would be used by the likes of Curly Rand Paul and Steve King et. al., let us examine the consequences of their ideas concerning new definitions of ‘citizenship’.

First, what would be the consequences of declaring that citizenship does not begin with birth, but upon coitus leading to birth.

You know the Japanese add 9 months to the age of their citizens. So a Japanese baby born on the same day as an American baby is 9 months older according to this Asian perspective.

So if a baby is born in the United States (simplifying the possibilities here), the normal course is for the doctor and nurse/midwife to note the date and time of the birth on some form provided by the state. Within due course, the mother signs a form along with the father (hopefully) and these forms are sent to the state birth records department.

And Vuella; a birth certificate issues.

But if we have a constitutional mandate that the individual was ‘born’ at the time the mother’s egg split in two, we have a problem.

If a sperm can take as long as two weeks to fertilize an egg, how does one determine when the individual is born?

And what if mommy and daddy had coitus on May 2^nd in Mexico and they immigrated to the U.S. on May 9^th and the baby was birthed in Minneapolis on December 9^th two months ‘early’?

Was the baby ‘born’ in Mexico on May 2^nd, the date of coitus?

Now what if the other constitutional provision proposed by the fascists demanding that the child be born in the USA and that at least one of the parents is a naturalized citizen. And assume further that the naturalized citizen was not naturalized officially until after the mother bore the child; and assume further that the child was ‘created’ in the Bahamas on some moonlit night?

Like some of those Constitutional Lawyers, we could go on and on here with four hundred pages of ‘what-ifs’.

I can only conclude with one simple thought:

DO NOT FUCK WITH PERFECTION!!

LEAVE MY 14^TH AMENDMENT ALONE!!!

First published @ http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/leave-my-14th-amendment-alone-8768