Equality (Dee Speaking)
		Comment				MAIN PATH: Vera
					Vera

I agree with Fred about the kind of equality guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. I think you are reading a much more substantive guarantee into it -especially when you start talking about medical care, poverty, and so on. It may be that universal medical care should be guaranteed, but that is a matter for legislatures to decide, not something to be found in the Constitution.

But I want to make another point. I think you are creating a rift between the First and the Fourteenth Amendments that does not exist. The First Amendment was extremely helpful during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. It helped African Americans to organize, speak, distribute information, rally, march, protest, and so on. In short, the First Amendment has repeatedly been one of the important means by which formal and substantive equality, including equality guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, has been achieved. Both amendments can work together. Your view is short sighted. Formal and substantive equality can and should be achieved through political organization and other means, but not by restricting speech. Your argument would only make sense if the ONLY way to guarantee a right guaranteed by one amendment was to restrict a right guaranteed by the other. You haven't shown that.

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