148 years ago today, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. In case you don't know, this was when the Constitution finally got America to the point where we recognized that all men are created equal.
Except that it really didn't.
While slavery wasn't exactly sanctioned by our founders, it wasn't banned, either, despite what some of them desired. The Constitution would've never been ratified with a ban on slavery, so a compromise was made to ensure the survival of our young nation. They passed the buck and didn't address it.
A lot of critics like to take the founders to task for this flaw but lest they forget, four score and seven years later, the nation paid the bloodiest sacrifice in American history to right the wrong.
In the aftermath, the 14th Amendment was America's way of righting that wrong from the prior century. The problem is, racism didn't die and the 14th Amendment prompted racists to come up with segregation. It would be another century before those laws would be removed.
I'm using this occasion to remind people on both sides of arguments like abortion and LGBT rights and even Obamacare that there is no such thing as the law of the land. If that argument had any validity, we'd still be living under the authority of the Plessy vs Ferguson case or even worse, the Dredd Scott case.
The Supreme Court can and does make bad decisions. From time to time, later courts can and must correct those mistakes. The present is no different than the past. As we head towards another Presidential election and as over 30 Senate seats are up for reelection, I'd like to use this platform to remind everyone of just how important it is that you do your civic duty.
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