<>Meanwhile, we experience the rewriting of the Constitution on a piecemeal basis, every time the SCOTUS issues its rulings for the year.<>
Yes, from FDR until PDJT the Scotus was an almost annual amendments convention. Scotus inflicted enormous harm on a supposedly self-governing people.
Freepers have accused me of assuming only conservative oriented amendments will emerge from an A5 COS.
That just isn’t so. While I wish to return to pre-17th Amendment government, I would reluctantly settle for a non-tyrannical Scotus and elimination of the Deep State
At least with poor amendments like the 16th - 18th, we did them to ourselves and can repeal them, which we did with the 18th and which an informed people would do to the 16th and 17th.
For the most part, yes. Here's why:
The Constitution at its core is a conservative document -- more conservative than the country is at this moment. If you had a convention, the result is likely to reflect the current political makeup of the country, which means any Amendments that resulted are likely to move the Constitution to the left. Again, that's because we are not now as conservative a people as were the Founders and the people of that time.
That's not saying whatever emerged from the Convention would be hard left. Just that whatever amendments did emerge are much more likely to move the Constitution to the left than to the right.
Then there is the issue of ratification. I think ratification of any amendments that moved the country in a more conservative direction than the original Constitution would be DOA. The media could easily rally enough sentiment in 13 states to kill any such amendments.
But given the mass media influence, propaganda, etc., and the fact that the country is further to the left than it was at the time of ratification, there is some chance that we could see the ratification of some Amendments that essentially codify some leftist positions. Of course, they'd be sold to the public as something much less significant than they actually are. A "privacy" Amendment. An "equal rights" Amendment. An Amendment on "corporate" free speech that essentially would overrule Citizens United and permit the feds to regulate election advertising. Are you confident those things wouldn't be ratified 5-7 years down the road? Because I'm not.
Polls show that support for regulating free political speech, including so-called "hate speech" and "disinformation", have increased massively, especially among younger people. The free speech absolutism that used to be a bipartisan consensus has collapsed. Could a cleverly-drafted Amendment that permitted regulation of free speech be sold to enough gullible people to be ratified? Perhaps.
Right now, we have a rather unholy alliance between populists on the right railing against "elites" and "big corporations", and the left's traditional siding with government versus private business. I could see a well-planned PR campaign uniting those two factions to restrict the speech of "evil corporations", which would of course end up being applied to conservative public interest groups, etc..
So...yeah. I worry a lot about the results of an Article V convention given where we are today as a people, and how gullible people are all across the political spectrum. Conning them into voting for wording that is sold to them as one thing but actually could mean something quite different is entirely possible.
I think the only way to truly solve the immigration problem is with a constitutional amendment. The problem with any legislative compromise is that the compromise can easily be reversed by a subsequent Congress/President, just as happened to Reagan with IRCA in 1986.
For something like that to work, it has to be a compromise that both parties are willing to accept, which means both parties have to get something out of it. I drafted one for fun awhile back. The basic premise was that Democrats get partial amnesty for some number/classifications of illegals, and Republicans get a bunch of other stuff that amounts to border-tightening and limits. But my limits were pretty tight, so I'm not sure there's any number of illegals getting partial amnesty that would induce the Democrats to agree.
And by the way, when I say "partial" amnesty, one of the parts of my Amendment was a provision saying that anyone entering the country illegally, including those being granted the right to stay in the Amendment itself, were permanently ineligible for citizenship, so they could never vote. They'd only get permanent resident status. And that status would include a provision saying that only citizens could use their status to sponsor family members, relatives, or others to come over. So the group being legalized in the amendment could not then import a bunch of their relatives.
There was other stuff, including a reversal of Phyler v. Doe, and a statement saying that nothing in the Constitution could be interpreted to compel a right to any federal or state benefits to people in the country illegally. States would still be free to provide benefits if they wanted. Oh, and states would have the constitutional right to bar entry to illegals at their own borders, except at designated federal border crossings.
Again, though, I don't think the Democrats would ever support it.