“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.” – Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution
For lovers of civil liberty and human rights, the Fourteenth Amendment is a great thing. It codified into law the legal doctrine—equal protection—that ensures that governments may not treat me differently than they treat you. Although it took far too long for it to take full effect, with grave missteps (like the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine) along the way, we all benefit from it today.
And yet some of the loudest and most insistent defenders of the Fourteenth Amendment are also some of the people most loudly calling for tax hikes on the ‘rich’ and a more ‘progressive’ taxation system that penalizes monetary success. Taxing one person at zero percent and another at thirty percent is the very definition of unequal protection.
Part of what the equal protection clause should foster is an attitude of social brotherhood . . . a feeling that we are all in this together. Each American citizen—black or white, man or woman, young or old, rich or poor—should be treated the same by their government, which helps to ensure that when government malfunctions it will affect all of those groups roughly equally, and all will have a vested interest in fixing it.