This is far from a novel thought. But it’s a timely one. We’re used to people who seem to think the 2nd Amendment is the whole Constitution. Others put the overriding focus on the 1st Amendment. But the one that deserves that focus is the 14th Amendment, the amendment which along with the groundbreaking but more straightforward 13th and 15th Amendments remakes the entire constitutional order. I remember in the late 1980s, I believe it was timed to the bicentennial of the federal constitution, then-Justice Thurgood Marshall gave a speech in which he argued that the original, pre-Civil War Constitution was a defective and even shameful instrument. It had, he argued, no claim on our respect or veneration. It’s only with the new founding in the post-Civil War settlement that we have a founding document that has a claim on our allegiance.
