Posted on 11/28/2015 9:39:00 AM PST by Jim W N
Article V:
1) Congress must call for the convention upon application of 2/3 of the states
2) Congress decides the”Mode of Ratification”
If there’s a way to gum it up, Congress and the feds will find a way.
The idea that the monetary base needs to "grow" with the economy is a falsehood. There is no reason for it whatsoever. Given constant productivity and technological growth, with a hard currency, consumer prices would decline, and the value of real wages and savings would increase. Savings would actually be "savings" that maintained or grew in value.
This is a great good and absolute benefit to the working and saving classes. Federal Reserve money printing and debt creation is part of the reason real wages have stagnated over the last 40 years.
It is clear no politicians anywhere care about doing anything about this. Weve been waiting for decades. Lotta lip service and kabuki.
This is why progressives HATE the Constitution.
Scratch the almost.
Ronaldus Magnus said it best -
Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.
The following excerpt from an essay about our Constitution and involvement in international politics helped me understand the document. The American Dream never meant government largess ensuring home values, college funds, retirement accounts, savings, executive severance packages, affordable healthcare, homeownership, lifetime employment, corporate wealth, political careers, and union benefits. This country is transforming into a Gulag of Dependency from the Arsenal of Democracy.
Finally with these and other precedents we come to the founding of our country. Now human rights get synthesized into property as defined most prominently by John Locke and James Madison. Individual property is first of all sourced internally in opinion, religion, communications, use of abilities to labor physically and mentally, and in conscience. Only by application of these inherent rights does one come to the external and more traditional definition involving those things which man was to have dominion over ever since the Creation. Therefore the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happinessâ€. Here we have the internal attributes of property on which all external manifestations depend.
By keeping faith with this broad definition of property our Founding Fathers came to the unique idea that “We the people of the United States†would establish a federal government. In the Convention they displayed an ability to compromise sourced in gracious self-abnegation rather than being dominated by the cynical haggling expected of fallen beings. The outcome was an extraordinarily perilous experiment placing primary faith in the natural rights of fallen individuals judiciously constrained by a limited government recognizing the paradox of its own fragility.
Constitution Society: John Locke CHAP. V Of Property.
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm
Property by James Madison
http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/property-by-james-madison-march-29-1792.html
You are correct in your view that the "necessary and proper" clause was the gateway to an expansive federal government. Chief Justice Marshall interpreted that clause very broadly in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Please notice that date - 1819. For almost 200 years, the federal government has been on a growth trajectory because of Marshall's interpretation and because other branches of our government have accepted that interpretation.
My point- if a large federal government is the problem, then the theory supporting a large federal government was born almost 200 years ago. It is not going to be easy to reverse 200 years of Constitutional history without amending the Constitution.
Its a lot easier and faster to just invoke the 10th Ammendment. :-) Case in point: 31 Governors telling Barky not gonna take any refugees. See how easy that was?
Now how about 31 or more Governors telling the EPA to pack sand on the Waters of the whatever regs. or not gonna close down those coal fired power plants or a thousand other things that are not enumerated powers of the Federal Govt.
“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government....At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
“The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
— Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
— Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
Can Congress Block a Convention of States?
Answer:
No. As long as each states applies for a convention that deals with the same issue (i.e., limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government), Congress must call the convention. Congress can name the place and the time for the convention to begin. If it fails to exercise this power reasonably, either the courts or the states themselves can override Congressional inaction.
Monetary policy is “whole other country” and although important, not essential to the basic recovery of our Constitution.
So far I agree with Milton Friedman that modest annual momentary growth is a good thing, but should be done by an objective standard, not by the feds via the FED based on whatever political winds blow at the time.
Screw the politicians.
It’s time for AMERICANS to take back AMERICA.
The Fact is that We should have never lost it in the first place- Americans do not have what it takes to defend the constitution anymore
Your idea has been described as state nullification of a federal law. When South Carolina threatened to nullify some federal import taxes, President Andrew Jackson sent them a message in 1832. It is known to history as President Jackson's Proclamation Regarding Nullification. And, then, privately, Jackson sent messages to the bigwigs in South Carolina that, if necessary, he would personally come down to South Carolina and hang the bigwigs from the nearest trees.
A modern president would not hang state leaders from trees, but a modern president would just send into a state sufficient resources to enforce federal law. If we want to reverse the growth of the federal government (a 200 year trend) we are going to need the support of a majority of the people who are willing to make their feelings known at election time.
The actual problem is that we no longer have a constitutional republic. Our government has already deteriorated into an oligarchy. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page of Princeton have documented it in their 2014 study: “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizensâ€.
There have been 3 key corruptions of the Constitution that gave rise to the current oligarchy:
1. 16th Amendment allowing for federal taxation of income, making serfs of us all.
2. 17th Amendment taking the election of Federal Senators away from the States and changing it to general election, thereby emasculating the States.
3. House rule limiting House membership to 435 in 1928, which has eroded the influence of the citizenry over the House. The Constitution proscribed a maximum of 1 Representative for every 30,000 citizens, it has now waned to 1 for every 710,000 citizens making it nearly impossible for a true citizen statesman or woman to attain the office.
Until these 3 corruptions are reversed, the U.S. government will remain an oligarchy.
“[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?”
— Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:192
What does it take to regain political freedom? It takes first regaining SPIRITUAL freedom: a return to the God of the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ and the gospel of the grace of God. Trusting once again in the God of our fathers and eschewing trust and confidence in man.
People of faith are courageous, strong, and brave and I believe we will have a resurgence of faith so that once again we will be the home of the brave that we might be the land of the free.
Great passage, thanks.
How few get that.
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