Guy Chet__the 14th Amendment & the heart of the Constitution

Madison's Constitution reflected a starkly negative assessment of human nature & human governments. This belief system was commonplace among Anglo-Americans in the 18th century. During the 19th century, however, Americans embraced different beliefs, which allowed them to trust the Federal Government, identify with it, bond with it emotionally, look to it for moral and political leadership, and to expect numerous services and protections from it. This philosophical transformation explains Americans’ growing frustration with life under an eighteenth-century Constitution animated by distrust and fear of central governance.
Americans have tried, since 1791, to liberate their national government from the Constitutional constraints placed on it by Madison and his colleagues. This effort has accelerated dramatically in the twentieth century, when Americans devised a new way to read the Constitution; a new way to apply it to their daily lives. This innovation in Constitutional jurisprudence has been pivotal in the transformation of the United States from a federated republic in which local communities governed themselves into a modern managerial nation state that is governed from the center. The key to this transformation – of the Constitution & of the United States – was the 14th Amendment.