Yet, the founders were not unmindful of the need for government to represent to some degree in some matters the will of the majority. In other matters the imperishable truths of natural law must prevail. To effect this balance they constructed a government of limited powers, separated powers providing checks and balances, and guarantees of individual liberty. But to adhere to the natural law which called for consent of the governed, the founders also provided a procedure for changing the government and for changing the laws.
The procedure, the amendatory process outlined in the Constitution in Article V, is the very process which progressives have sought for more than a century to shortcut. All of the argument, all of the verbiage thrown up by Woodrow Wilson or John Dewey are but artful diversion to conceal their disdain for the amendatory process.
The historical record, alas, demonstrates all too clearly they have succeeded and the Constitution is in all practical effect being amended without the consent of the governed on a daily basis without even so much as a head fake for the constitutional process.
I presume to present here another reply:
Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of the American Constitution:
The Constitution has become so distorted in interpretation and application that it has become at best ineffective in protecting liberty and at worst an instrument inflicting tyranny.
Nathan Bedford's second Maxim of the American Constitution:
The American Constitution is being amended everyday without the consent of the governed.
In order to believe that a Convention of the States presents a greater threat to liberty than our current state of politics one must believe:
1. The Constitution is not being amended by three women in black robes +1 liberal in black robes +1 swing vote on a case by case basis.
2. The Constitution is not being amended at the caprice of the president by executive order.
3. The Constitution is not being amended at the caprice of the president when he chooses which laws he will "faithfully" execute.
4. The Constitution is not being amended daily by regulation done by an unaccountable bureaucracy.
5. The Constitution is not being amended by simply being ignored.
6. The Constitution is not being amended by international treaty.
7. The Constitution is not being amended by Executive Order creating treaty powers depriving citizens of liberty as codified in the Bill of Rights.
8. The Constitution is not being amended by international bureaucracies such as, UN, GATT, World Bank, etc.
9. The Constitution is not being amended by the Federal Reserve Bank without reference to the will of the people.
10. The federal government under our current "constitutional" regime has suddenly become capable of reforming itself, balancing the budget and containing the debt.
11. The national debt of the United States is sustainable and will not cause the American constitutional system and our economy to crash and with them our representative democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution, such as it is, itself.
12. The Republican Party, presuming it gains a majority in the House and the Senate and gains the White House, will now do what is failed to do even under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and balance the budget, reduce the debt, stop regulating, reform the tax system, end crony capitalism, appoint judges who will not betray us and, finally, listen to the people.
13. That a runaway Convention of the States will occur, that it will persuade the delegates from conservative states, that it will be ratified by three quarters of the states' legislatures among whom conservatives control a majority, and the end result will somehow be worse than what we have now.
14. If we do nothing everything will be fine; if we keep doing what we have been doing everything will be fine; we have all the time in the world.
