I do hold one caution however. Mark says “impossible” for the state's convention to make wholesale changes and I agree that the Constitution’s wording clearly makes that structural confinement. However, the original constitutional convention convened under the Articles of Confederation was not envisioned to have the power to do what they did at the time and they did it anyway.
History and not structural confines must be our guide and we need to go into this with our eyes wide open as to the possibilities and have an arsenal of forces prepared in these conventions if that is the route chose.
I addressed that possibility in post #32.
The Articles of Confederation were more like a treaty among sovereign powers, the States.
If one state violated its obligations to another state, it would set a precedent for other states to do the same. The Articles in this sense were a failure.
When the Constitutional Convention came together the intent was to strengthen the AOC but it was quickly seen that a new structure was needed to enforce a constitution on all states.
Americans at the time of the AOC wanted interstate commerce to be uniform. The wanted their God given rights to be respected in every state.
So the AOC needed to be scrapped, a complete makeover was needed.
If a CC comes together in our time, it is highly unlikely that states could reinvent the US Constitution or scrap it altogether. The People in the flyover states do not want to grow government. They do not want socialism or the disease of Detroit from spreading into their emerging urban areas. So in effect People today (especially in flyover country) want to strengthen the original principles of limited government that formed the foundation of the original US Constitution.
So it’s a different intent and motivation that calls for a CC today. And because it is ratified at the State level (50 states), there is zero chance that a CC would install socialist or communist manifesto.
A CC today will give us:
1. An amendment to repeal the 16th Amendment. The 16th was never a people’s amendment nor beneficial to states. It about allowing the federal political class to suck wealth from free Americans.
2. An amendment to repeal the 17th Amendment OR a new amendment to allow state legislatures to recall their wayward US Senators would boost the 10th Amendment and bind US Senators to state interests.
3. An amendment to preserve the US dollar and to enact a process of governing its value.
4. A social amendment that prohibits the federal government from interfering in any religious belief that was prevalent at the time of the founding. New groups would not be able to circumvent or evade by defining themselves to be a religion. New proposed religions would be required to have a lead time before they were officially recognized by the US government by vote of 2/3s of both chambers of Congress. A marriage provision defining it to be between one man and one woman would fit in here.
5. An amendment to limit abuses of the commerce clause as Constitutional law professor Randy Barnett wrote about so well in the WSJ in 2011.