“So, if the Congress today had been in charge, and had refused to insert the bill of rights then it would never have become possible to form the United States.”
We already HAVE the United States and its form of government, and have had it for 232 years since the Constitution was ratified. What Clyburn is saying is that today’s Congress would never re-pass it and/or today’s states would never re-ratify it. That, vs. the situation back then, is a completely different thing.
Today’s environment is way different from that of 232 years ago. People are much less well-educated and experienced in matters of government, economics, the nature of human beings (especially as related to power) and (most importantly) history. Oh, and at least 1/3 of the population is infected with the bacillus of socialism, which teaches and expounds the idea of group “rights” (really, power) trumping the rights of individuals. You think that those people and their representatives would vote for the BOR? But even so, that’s irrelevant - we already have our government, and lots of people like it just fine (and not always for the best reasons, either). If we had a Convention of the States, and that convention eliminated some or all of the BOR, I’m just not sure that things would blow up. We simply don’t know the exact events that would occur to get the Convention called in the first place, nor who would be appointed to it, nor the composition of the state legislatures. Given the utter hatred of the 1st and 2nd Amendment by the Left, and the Left’s completely unchecked-by-morality drive for power, there’s not a single person who could predict what would happen.
As an aside, you are incorrect about the Constitutional Convention amending the document - they did NOT do so. What happened is that when the Constitution was sent out to the state legislatures for ratification, so much opposition was encountered to the lack of controls on the government (in the form of a BOR) that the Federalists advocating for passage promised to pass a BOR and send it out to the states for ratification during the First Congress. Here’s a link to verify this: https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/bill-of-rights
The point of all of this is simple: THEN the pols promised something, and they actually delivered. Do you think that people who debate the meaning of the word “is,” or who can go in front of Congress and claim no memory about a whole host of things - and then go write their memoirs for several million dollars, are even 1% as trustworthy? I don’t, and since they already regularly (and many times proudly) violate the Constitution, what in the world makes you think that they’d give a rat’s ass about preserving the BOR? If they ignore the Constitution now, why would they abide by a further amended one in a few years?
This statement is inexcusably ignorant. A convention cannot change anything. It’s only function is to propose amendments which then must be ratified by three fourths of the states. It is no easier to change the bill of rights with a COS then if congress proposes the changes themselves. Amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by the states no matter how they are proposed.