Publius Huldah vs. Article V: Part V

Publius Huldah. Near 30:30 minutes into her speech, Ms. Huldah posits that James Madison opposed the state convention method in Article V. She cites The Federalist #49, and a private letter from Madison to a Virginia legislator named George Lee Turberville.

Rodney Dodsworth Response. Considering that Madison made provision for amendments in his Virginia Plan of Government, and his notes of the federal convention do not reflect hostility to Article V, the bar must be set high for anyone to claim that Madison opposed a state convention to propose amendments.

Ms. Huldah failed to clear the bar. Those who rely on her interpretations of readily available source material do themselves a disservice. In a blog post here, I relate how Madison dealt with the problem of legislative usurpations raised in The Federalist #49 and #50. He emphasized the structure of government, rather than the virtue of its participants, in the form of natural checks and balances as the means to keep free government. Again, and again, from the early 1780s onward, James Madison emphasized the necessity of properly designed institutions to keep free government.

Ms. Huldah’s glib summary of Madison’s letter to George Turberville in late 1788 is an especially irritating rewrite of history. Earlier in 1788, Madison wrote of Article V in The Federalist #43, “(it) seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards equally against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty which might perpetuate its discovered faults.” Are we to believe that Madison bounced from support to opposition between January and November? I analyzed Madison’s letter in the context of 1788 politics in a November 2nd 2016 blog post.

Why don’t we say this about that.

At the present time, knowing human nature as we do and the founding fathers did, could it not be considered just a tiny bit dangerous to open the Constitution to whatever meddling someone might conceive in the misdirected effort to solve all of the nations problems, through the Article V.

Further, with the President elect someone with a bit more Constitutional savvy than the present occupant of the White House, I would say it might be counterproductive to consider an Article V Convention now that might be in direct conflict with what our President elect might have on his agenda.

Scared straight might just apply to the pansies in Congress to get their act together before someone makes a real issue out of their usurpation of rights belonging to the States and the people, not to mention their utter abandonment of their duty and power to control the executive and judicial branches of Government as well as themselves.

If you can’t trust 535 oath taking members of Congress to abide by their oath, you surely can’t trust delegates to an Article V convention to do what is right for America, especially when you have zero control over who the delegates will be.

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