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I accept second place to no FReeper in the breadth and depth of my replies and vanities describing the potential lawlessness and tyrannies to be feared of the Obama administration. These posts and vanities go back to 2008.

Article V is currently attacked by conservatives for a number of reasons all of which in my opinion are unpersuasive. My attempt is to cause conservatives who object to consider those objections rationally because I believe they will fall away upon examination because most of them are empty shibboleths. First we educate the base and motivate it and then the whole people.

You insist that we tell you how amendments which might come out of the process would be enforced and you insist that anyone who suggests that the post amendment process will evolve in many unanticipated but perfectly useful ways, simply do not understand the nature and degree of malevolence of our present government. We do not need to be told how naïve we are. We know who Barack Obama and his henchmen are. More broadly, we know the centrifugal forces at work which are spinning our government out of fiscal control. We know about the demographics which cause us to lose elections and which will ultimately and finally wrest the Republic out of what constitutional bounds still constrain it and condemn it to socialism.

We know these things but we think that it is better to fight in an arena in which we have a better chance of winning, (state legislatures rather than the federal legislature and the Obama administration) and, if we prevail in amending the Constitution, to fight upon a firmer legal, constitutional, political, and moral basis against the forces which are arrayed against us.

You label our present problem as being in a state of lawlessness but that is hardly an apt description. Our society operates within a state of law but the constitutionality and wisdom of those laws as well as the forces which influence the production of those laws are such as to be wrecking the Republic. But we are still a "lawful" society in the technical sense. We don't like the laws, we don't like the logic which rationalizes these laws with the Constitution, but the process is being played out at least on the surface and is fully rationalized by the institutions which govern us.

We are not operating with gulags or concentration camps yet. We are operating in the twilight zone of bizarre constitutional interpretation and elitist legislation. Those are quite different things from a lawless society. To the contrary we are a society operating at least under patina of the rule of law.

In a post constitutional amendment phase, if we remain as we are in terms of how the Constitution is interpreted, this corrupt process will be much improved because the baseline will have moved and it will be difficult for corrupt constitutional interpretation to prevail as easily as it is. The amendments which would be proposed undoubtedly will have much to do with process. It will make it more difficult for the powers which falsely interpret and imprudently legislate to continue to impose their will upon us.

If, on the other hand, the powers that be resort to violence to withstand the new constitutional environment, we at least can fight standing on a higher moral ground.

Yes, it is worthy to attempt to save the Republic, to be able to tell our children, "we tried." it is unworthy to take the counsel of despair. It is the fool's advice to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, to curse the darkness rather than light the candle. I will refrain from advocating Article V reform when I come to believe that those who knowingly risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor knew in advance the outcome of their revolution.

Very well said. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Bears repeating:

"First we educate the base and motivate it and then the whole people."

"The amendments. . will make it more difficult for the powers which falsely interpret and imprudently legislate to continue to impose their will upon us."

"Yes, it is worthy to attempt to save the Republic, to be able to tell our children, "we tried." it is unworthy to take the counsel of despair. It is the fool's advice to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, to curse the darkness rather than light the candle. I will refrain from advocating Article V reform when I come to believe that those who knowingly risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor knew in advance the outcome of their revolution."

You label our present problem as being in a state of lawlessness but that is hardly an apt description.

Levin himself refers to the current oligarchy running D.C as lawless. It is a excellent description perhaps surpassed only by referencing Obama, his ilk and the Ruling Class as facilitators of a velvet Coup.

Our society operates within a state of law but the constitutionality and wisdom of those laws as well as the forces which influence the production of those laws are such as to be wrecking the Republic.

The 'state of law' which runs the federal Beast is lawless when compared to the Constitution. If the Executive can "make law" and policy by decree outside the bounds of powers as ascribed in the Supreme Law, and the legislature abrogates and surrenders their duty to check such power, then at best the federal government has a form of law, but it's ends thereof are lawlessness and tyranny. Basically a long-winded way of saying that they are imposing tyranny under the color of law.

We are not operating with gulags or concentration camps yet.

I'm glad you said 'yet'. We are certainly on that trajectory given history.

If, on the other hand, the powers that be resort to violence to withstand the new constitutional environment, we at least can fight standing on a higher moral ground.

Finally we are getting somewhere in terms of an explanation that would benefit supporting an Article V process. I would submit to you that TPTB do not necessarily have to send out tanks to protect themselves from Amendments that limit their rule. They will use corruption, intimidation, extortion and many colors of law to derail the process and inhibit the implementation of whatever is ratified long before they resort to force.

My question then would be what this movement would be willing to do once that happens. Moral authority in their corner and all - despite what the Ruling Class and their media will undoubtedly convince a majority of.

it is unworthy to take the counsel of despair.

If you are going to fight a war, you better know your enemy, you better know yourself, you better know the ground you stand on and what the reality of the situation is. If you want to title that 'despair', then I submit you are not ready for war. You would be a Romantic who assumes rhetoric and bravado are enough to rally a lukewarm and complacent people to victory.