Well, two of the take-aways from all this as far as I’m concerned is
1) It is not the intent of the author of the amendment that matters, but the intent of the ratifiers. It appears Bingham, the author, wanted to expand federal power over the first eight amendments. But as Bork points out, that would require such a radical departure from the original Constitutional intent and American way of life, that there would have been heated debate and there is no such record of such a debate. The ratifiers’ silence favors therefore Miller’s narrow construction in Slaughterhouse of the 14A as a reconstruction amendment limited to ex-slaves.
2) The same is true with the P&I clause. Since it is not known what the ratifiers intended, it must be treated as a simple confirmation of ex-slaves citizenship rights the same as Clause 1 of Section 2 of Article IV.
As the Supreme Court had indicated out, federal power to protect all constitutionally enumerated privileges and immunities by stopping the states from abridging such rights which Section 1 of the 14th Amendment prohibited the states from doing was intended to have the effect of strengthening such rights.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
The problem is that we now have a corrupt federal government that is not lifiting a finger to strengthen such rights. This is exemplified by 1st Amendment protection of religious expression now being wrongly ignored by pro-gay activist states that are using PC, constutitionally unenumerated protections for the gay agenda to trump constitutionally enumerated religious expression.