I would think the post that immediately demanded to know if a teacher on the topic understood something extremely basic also stemmed from prior history between the two posters.
Incorporation and the Bill of Rights is not extremely basic. Or at least, it’s not extremely basic beyond merely knowing that it is a thing.
And when the lesson is supposed to be about textualism vs. originalism, and the text of the OP itself suggests some confusion (as identified by earlier posters in the thread) about how textualism and originalism relate to one another, I didn’t think it was out of line to first inquire into SC’s understanding of incorporation doctrine, before launching into a potentially lengthy aside about the evolving interpretations of 14th amendment. Because if you try to teach students about textualism or originalism without also making clear to them how the 14th amendment modifies the text of the Constitution both directly (through inserting words) and indirectly (by giving new meaning to earlier words, introducing a new set of authors, writing from a new time period, beyond just those present at the constitutional convention), then you have the potential to do active harm to the students’ understanding of the constitution.
And for the record, SC didn’t take it to the pit. I took it to the pit after SC resurrected a long dormant controversy from a year and a half old pit thread in FQ of all places.
And just to add onto that last bit. Had I responded to SC’s two (not just one) increasingly personal posts about me in that thread as was my initial knee jerk reaction to, I do suspect I’d have drawn my own warning for that.
One more thing, on whether it was necessary to lock the entire thread for being borderline to begin with. I 100% agree with that decision. Not necessarily for the OP itself, or even for SC’s response to me, but for the gratuitous “anchor baby” comment SC dropped in response to another poster. Which, to the present controversy, was yet another reason why I had concerns about SC’s understanding of the 14th amendment.
In fact, I very nearly reported that jab (at so-called “anchor babies”), as that was, IMHO, a completely unnecessary political jab in FQ.
As an example, my understanding of John Bingham’s writing of the 14th Amendment was that anchor babies were not a consideration so did the meaning of “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.” include a baby that is born in the US to a foreign national? And how would you really know if that was the intent?
Explain to all how that is a political jab and not a question of how originalism applies to new unforeseen circumstances. Or the problem in 2024 of what were they thinking when they wrote that. The idea of “anchor babies” of foreign nationals was not really a concept in 1866.
Yeah, that struck me as odd. I also asked if Saint_Cad was including the 14th, but I meant in that part of the lesson. I assumed as a teacher he or she is well aware of the concept of incorporation. It’s part of state standards in my state. When I was in school we did incorporation in the same lesson as the bill of rights.
I thought this too, but then maybe it’s possible to do bill of rights and incorporation separately by limiting to cases against the federal govt. There’s still the 5th due process. Dunno. Moot point anyways.
~Max
I think he’s saying the term itself is a political jab. Some people (esp. children of immigrants) do consider it pejorative.
Chris Cuomo had to apologize when he slipped the term maybe ten years ago, because it offended so many people.
~Max
Or maybe he thinks I was taking a jab at Sen. Bingham?