Strange Bedfellows – Conservative Article V Opponents and the Radical Left

Article V is the essence of the American Revolution, the right of all peoples to amend their governing form as “shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Conservative opposition groups curiously stand alongside those who, without Article V, handily and regularly amend our Constitution through the levers of a government corrupted far and away from its original and lofty purposes.

A common and erroneous belief among Article V opponents equates state delegates to a COS with congressional representatives. Certainly, they reason, since the takeover of the US House of Representatives by the radical Left, no sane people would jeopardize the remains of their liberty to similar psychos at a COS rummaging around our beloved Constitution. One guy, a former state coordinator for the John Birch Society, asked why I would want to risk all on the likes of AoC. I wouldn’t, of course, do any such thing, and no similar thing is at risk at a COS. I don’t hold him as responsible as I do the JBS for misleading the public through its shallow scholarship. There just isn’t any excuse.

In a column at the Convention of States website, self-described "red diaper baby" David Horowitz had a few things to say about conservative opposition groups:¹

Conservative COS opponents overlook the fact that the commissioners to the convention act as agents of the state legislatures who appoint and commission them. Any actions outside the scope of that authority would be void as a matter of common law agency principles, as well as any state laws adopted to specifically address the issue.

The sad thing is that the conservative opposition groups don’t even seem to realize that in stoking fears about an Article V convention, they are reading right out of the Left’s playbook.

Typically when articles such as this are published, the thread is populated with gainsayers who oppose Article V many of whom are prompted as noted in the article by considerations advanced by the John Birch society and the late Phyllis Schlafly.

The article fails to mention, however, that a principal source of objections to a convention of the states emanates from the National Rifle Association that professes fears for the Second Amendment. The arithmetic of a Convention of the States in which 13 separate legislative bodies out of 99 can absolutely stop a runaway amendment, makes the objection downright silly in a practical world.

I rather suspect that the NRA is acting not to protect the Second Amendment in this case but to increase their own funding, a matter which is likely to come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the charges by Oliver North.

Whatever the motivations of the leadership of the NRA, there is no reason why its members or anyone who respects the Second Amendment should play their useful idiot.

As I understand your argument, you fear the extremely unlikely event that 87 legislatures out of 99 will acquiesce in amending the Constitution to permit "reasonable regulations" of gun ownership or possession. But you also say:

every state already restricts gun rights in some way

So you are afraid that what is now happening in "every state" will now simply be explicitly authorized by the Constitution. What difference does it make to your right to own or bear a weapon that the damage is done one way as opposed to the other?

A basic impetus for convention of the states is to stop the unconstitutional incursions into our liberties done every day by the Congress, the courts, the deep state. You acknowledge that is also obstructing our right to own and bear arms. Are we to forfeit all chances of stopping this unconstitutional path to tyranny and obstruction of all our fundamental rights to favor the illusory fears concerning guns?

The difference it makes is that constitutional challenges to gun restrictions today can pass muster, whereas under a changed constitution it would not.

Existing intrusions to liberty can be handled the same way, like some recent EPA wins.

To claim that threats to guns are illusory is wildly out of touch with reality and is itself illusory.

If the other tyrannies get bad enough they at least can be fought with guns.

In spite of some recent gun victories, I think there are just too many RINOs out there to trust w/Article V.

Bottom line with me is not a problem w the existing constitution but how it’s being abused. Hence the solution in my mind is to defeat the abuse, not rewrite the constitution.

Conservatives (in general) are not fond of chaos. If we are able to call a Convention of States there will be a great deal of ensuing chaos. It will disrupt our comfortable lives in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. It may hasten our downfall as a nation or it may save us. Or we may land at any point along the continuum. What I do know is that we are currently on a slow march to oblivion and I prefer to not go quietly. The ideals that founded America are alive and strong in many of her people. No one should be able to tell us that we are not strong enough to weather the storm or that we should accept our fate as voiceless peons in thrall to the deep state. If there is a method enshrined in the Constitution that provides an opportunity to enforce the will of the people we should take it and use it. For our children and grandchildren and all of those that follow. Our 1st and most precious responsibility is to preserve their ability to choose their own fate. I believe Freedom is far more valuable than comfort. Indeed, without Freedom there can be no comfort.

When the left loses the argument in a democracy it seeks to correct the peoples' error by a variety of stratagems: (1) it seeks to change the venue, in other words, it moves typically from the local to the general from the city, to the state, to the nationstate, to the deep state, to the super national agency such as the world court or the United Nations; (II) it seeks to change the people who make up the democracy so they will get the results they want, hence the in-flood of immigrants as the Democrats make it impossible to control our borders; (III) they change the previously understood plain meaning of the words which obstruct them such as we have seen concerning the Second Amendment and the 14th amendment.

Justice Scalia had no difficulty in doing is historical homework and determining the true meaning of the words of the Second Amendment. I was going to say he won the day for us who believe in the right to keep and bear arms but it might be more accurate to say that he won the split-second because the left is simply reverted to its redefinition of language and history to obtain the result it wants in state after state. That is an instance of lack of political will to enforce a Supreme Court decision. That can conceivably happen immediately after the passage of an amendment but it is highly unlikely that it would occur immediately in the wake of passage.

The 14th amendment, as another example, was never designed to generate birthright citizenship, that appears to have emerged fully grown out of the deep state and a footnote from Justice Brennan.

When our framers wrote the Constitution, and when the 14th amendment was written, there was a basic understanding among these men who were students of the common law and the Anglo-Saxon inheritance about the meaning of the words they were using, such as "treason or high crimes and misdemeanors or, emoluments." As these terms retreated into history, the left found an opening.

So the left has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to win by playing these games. Why, you quite properly ask, should we bother amending the Constitution when that might involve risk when the left will simply play it's old game and undo all the good? We who advocate on behalf of the Article V movement understand these risks and note that the nature of the amendment, whether process or substantive, together with careful wording can immunize, at least during our lifetime and the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, from the contrivances of the left.

For example, there has been no slavery on a public level at least since the 13th amendment. There has been no president serving more than two terms since that amendment. There has been no Senator elected by state legislatures alone since the 17th amendment. The left was simply unable to craft a workaround of these amendments and others. Against the relentless grinding of the left that against the meaning of the Constitution and its formal amendments, we have the undeniable reality that the left is merrily amending the Constitution virtually every day through the courts, throughout law enforcement, through the deep state, through federal legislation, and by any other means at hand to evade what the democratic process had wrought.

fruser1: the "illusory fears" concerning guns to which I made reference had to do with fears that there would be a runaway convention of the states, a possibility so remote as to be discounted as perfectly silly. There is no silliness about the actual and real threats to the possession of guns which occur, as you point out, every day on the state level and will again occur on the federal level. Your risk is not from a convention of the states, your risk is from doing nothing, opposing Article V, and failing to turn Article V to your service.

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