Posted on 05/08/2016 11:33:19 AM PDT by Jacquerie
A government designed to secure our unalienable rights has become something of a black-hole that devours liberty. In the sum total of our three national branches, fewer than 1,500 (One president, 435 congressmen, 100 senators, and about 875 Article III judges) men and women push around over 320 million citizens without restraint or fear for their personal safety. What is to be done? If we weigh the potential benefit, meaning the restoration of our republic, against the remote disadvantages of an amendments convention, there is little reason to avoid one.
Some prominent conservatives have expressed concern over the possibility of a ‘runaway’ Article V state amendments convention. Their anxiety is such that actual runaway tyranny from Rome-on-the-Potomac pales in comparison to the possible horrors of the states getting together to relieve their people from oppression. Are these concerns fact-based or irrational or somewhere in between?
Article V opponents typically equate an Article V state amendments convention with congress, an institution in which freedoms and rights are easily traded away today for money, media support, and reelection tomorrow.
This is an erroneous comparison, for congress is popularly derived and thoroughly corrupted from its designed purposes. An Article V convention will be new, fresh, uncorrupted and federal, just like the only other remaining federal institution from 1787, the familiar Electoral College (EC).
Like an Article V amendments convention, the EC is extra-congressional and completely controlled by the states. Not only congress, but the executive and judiciary have no more authority to regulate or participate in the deliberations of an Article V Convention than they do to control the EC. Both of these federal institutions derive their independence from discrete sources in the constitution itself. Like the EC, and unlike congress, an Article V convention is temporary, and neither can be made subservient to any branch of the government. This renders the Article V convention distinct from, and superior to the three existing branches.
If the states are so wild and politically insane such as to fear the outcome of a convention, why haven’t we had a “runaway” session of the EC? States do not have to cast their votes for the nominee of any political party. The EC confab is a one-day event outside the control of congress or scotus. Why hasn’t the EC proved to be dangerous?
No state delegation to the EC “ran away” because the duties of presidential electors are defined by state statute. To illustrate through a thought experiment, replace “electors” of Article II § 1 clause 2, with the equivalent term “delegates,” and you have the identical situation when it comes to an Article V amendments convention. Delegates to Article V conventions will arrive with detailed commissions backed up by statute with felony punishment for violations. Unlike representatives to congress, delegates to an Article V convention will serve their states and the national interest, and not themselves.
Furthermore, there will be an additional, yet immeasurable factor at work. Within the parameters of detailed state commissions, delegates will be entrusted to use their judgement. These men and women know that history will examine and critique their work. Will the states actually send rogues and miscreants? It is possible, yet what is far more likely is that the delegates entrusted with crafting amendments to save the republic will rise to the occasion. Fame will be their quest, for “the audience that men who desire fame are incited to act before is the audience of the wise and the good in the future – that part of posterity that can discriminate between virtue and vice.”* Like the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787, they will seek the gratitude of history.
As with all things federal, the EC is loathed by liberals today just as an Article V state convention will be tomorrow. Both institutions are anti-democratic, which is why liberals work toward complete democratization of presidential elections. Witness the leftist National Popular Vote effort to effectively eliminate state participation in presidential elections. That Leftists love democracy is also reflected in the progressive 17th Amendment which turned federal ambassadors from the states into the equivalent of at-large, three-term, democratic and demagogic congressmen.
As federal remnants of a more perfect union, the EC and Article V amendments convention echo the importance of liberty preserving institutions ahead of fuzzy populism and democracy. No people, no civil society ever met to frame their ruling institutions in order to sell themselves into slavery. While the American tradition and society are certainly under duress, resistance is in the air. It is time to take advantage of the building wave of opposition to consolidated government.
Article V.
Please support the Convention of States project and Sign the COS Petition.
* Adair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1974.
Hope this thing can get off the ground and led with clarity in the proposed amendments - as SCOTUS-proof as possible.
So do I. There is little time.
Of course they will.
This.
fear for their personal safety
I think millions of Americans believe it is either conduct a successful Article 5 convention or the US breaks up into a number of different countries or unions of states.
So since the states don’t have to ratify a proposed amendment, let a ConCon run away all it wants to. Note that if the states ignore a proposed amendment then the ConCon was arguably a waste of time.
Also, since the biggest flaw in the original Constitution was to allow the Senate to confirm justices (2.2.2) imo, that clause needs to be repealed, the power to confirm justices given uniquely to state lawmakers.
And speaking of the Senate, a ConCon also needs to propose an amendment to repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution.
An amendment to repeal the 17th Amendment needs to include provisions to allow state lawakers to recall senators, and to allow citizens to recall representatives.
The states also need to amend the Constitution to give state lawmakers the same power to impeach and remove corrupt federal officials from office, including members of Congress, executives and justices, that Congress has.
The Constitution also needs an amendment to require all candidates for any federal office, elected or non-elected, especially candidates who attended an Ivy League law school, to pass a Free Republic constitutional proficiency test, the test emphasizing Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers and Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes. /semi-sarc
In fact, the following Supreme Court case excerpt needs to be amended to the Constitution.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Speaking of Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes, the Constitution also needs to be amended to require candidates for federal office, elected and non-elected, to qualify for federal office in the following way. Federal candidates first need to serve as state lawmakers so that they can learn about 10th Amendment-protected state powers and state budgets in conjunction with Congress’s Section 8-limited powers including Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes.
If we break up, other nations will not just stand by and watch.
As you postulate, we must conduct a successful Article V series of conventions.
It appears you have lost faith in republican government, of the sovereign people to govern themselves.
If that is so, there is nothing to lose in a convention of the states.
If that is so, there is nothing to lose in a convention of the states.
Illogical conclusion. The Founders of our country had very little faith in the People as well, which is why they created a tripartite internally adversarial form of republican government.
I'm just not seeing any controls against Leftists filing all the voting slots.
Do you have any information on or ideas about the delegate selection process for an Article V.
Do the states have to pass laws to govern that process? Do any states have such laws?
Would we have state elections, party caucuses, both?
Absolutely doomed to failure. Half the country and half the states want more federal power. Half the country and half the states want the federal government to have less power.
Well, there could be a “common defense” with all 50 former “states” contributing cash, real estate (i.e. Fort Hood for but one example), soldiers, marines, training and capital assets.
But, Washington D.C., 535 legislative offices, SCOTUS, ALL federal agencies and the White House would just close down with hard assets including real estate auctioned off just as the US Government has done with surplus property for centuries.
The only event that could delay the foregoing is an Article V Convention regardless of WHO gets mad or what other countries think. The cumulative weight of progressive social policies (a pervert can go in the bathroom with my 10 year old daughter to cite just one), 21 Trillion dollars hard money debt and 200 trillion in contingency liability will see to and eventually guarantee the collapse of the USG. We know this for certainty because HISTORY and common sense and countless experts tell us so.
Here for instance is the Indiana statute that will govern delegate commissions to an Article V convention.
I explained the opposite in my post.
The original “Constitutional Convention” was only supposed to make modifications to the “Articles of Confederation” (our original constitution).
Instead, they threw everything out and started over from scratch.
What is to prevent the next “Constitutional Convention” from doing the same thing the last one did?
Nothing.
Right and it is what some call a “false dichotomy”, a false choice.
The real answer is individual states standing up for their constitutional sovereignty and saying “NO” to and nullifying federal tyranny. It’s saying “We the states AND you the feds are under the Constitution. We the states are sovereign outside constitutional restraints and you, the feds, will get cut down to constitutional size and remain in your constitutional cage.”
Secession isn’t the first step, it is the last step if all else fails. There is much that can be done before the drastic step of secession is made.
But I won't have to explain to your kids why you don't think such rights are unalienable.
What does reforming our corrupt government have to do with rewriting the Constitution?
Do you know what country’s constitution secured the most rights for its citizens? The Soviet Unions, but since they ignored the text of their constitution, it didn’t matter.
The problem isn’t our Constitution. The problem is we allow our elected officials and judges to ignore its plain meaning.
Until we fix that, no amount of amendments or rewriting will solve the problem.
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