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The need for a more solid foundation for the protection of freedmen as well as white citizens was recognized, and the result was a significant new proposal--the Fourteenth Amendment. A chief exponent of the amendment, Sen. Jacob M. Howard (R., Mich.), referred to "the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as freedom of speech and of the press; . . . the right to keep and bear arms. . . ."[35] Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment was necessary because presently these rights were not guaranteed against state legislation. "The great object of the first section of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees."

The notion you advance is called substantive due process. It is just another way of allowing judges to use their opinions of what the law ought to be to throw out laws enacted by the people.

Senator Howard may have made such a statement, but the language that was to have made this happen was stricken from the Amendment before it passed. This shows that the 14th Amendment was not intended to "incorporate" the Bill of Rights.

How, then, are we to interpret the language of the Amendment itself, WRT to the section that states "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"? What does that mean, if it does not mean what it plainly says?

Senator Howard may have made such a statement, but the language that was to have made this happen was stricken from the Amendment before it passed.

Nope; the privileges and immunities clause is right there in the final amendment text.