200 years from now...
Posted on 07/04/2022 3:44:22 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Must revolution be violent? Must revolution upend an older society and replace it with a new one? Wouldn’t a 21st century restoration of free American government without resort to violence be revolutionary?
Pennsylvania’s Framer James Wilson thought so:
Sovereignty in the people was not a novel concept; the hundred years since the Glorious Revolution and eleven years since the Declaration of Independence reinforced in English minds the people’s natural right to govern themselves as they please. This is all well and good in Wilson’s “flattering theory,” but what, despite written Constitutional precautions, if the people’s government goes awry or governing forms ill-serve society? What was novel was that revolution need not instill “discord, rancor or war.”
Revolution need not be violent.
Man is fatally incapable of forming any enduring system free from corruption. The idea of incorporating a plan of reformation in the Constitution, which formalized peaceful means to return to first principles in a rational revolution, was a new contribution to political science. Our Framers discovered a constitutional cure wholly popular, and strictly republican for the ancient diseases of a republican polity. In rational revolution the people do not burn down cities or decapitate high government criminals in fits of rage. Well before society explodes, they act within the supreme law of the land to avoid destruction. Thanks to the Framers’ structure of government and especially Article V, the decay and death of the new American republic seemed far less likely.
Article V institutionalized and legitimated peaceful, ongoing, rational revolution. It tempered the historically and infrequently exercised natural right to violent revolution into, when needed, a non-violent amendment convention in which state delegates coolly and rationally consider antidotes to the fever of unconstitutional rule or simply wish to improve their governing forms. Within the American system of government are the means to eternal improvements without bloodshed.
People are not free under a Constitution closed to amendments. A frozen Constitution negates rational revolution and guarantees the opposite of our Framers’ gift; instead of “melioration, contentment, and peace,” a frozen Constitution invites “discord, rancor, and war.”
Contrary to the fear-mongering from Article V opponents, our Framers did not plant a bomb in the Constitution. No Constitution provides for its own destruction, and no people or their delegates ever gathered to enslave themselves.
The contest between Article V proponents and opponents revolves around their perceptions of the solution to the problem of un-free government. To opponents, all that need be done is to expel the corruptors of our existing system. Despite the lessons of history, they believe electing “better” men and women can restore free government. Without saying, they endorse a frozen Constitution and deny the benefits of rational revolution.
Article V supporters agree the self-serving politicians, rogues, and high criminals that infest Washington must go, but they also reason this is an insufficient and impossible remedy. It is a societal placebo in that voters feel good about themselves if they vote for the better of two candidates. Even if one of the candidates is “good,” experience teaches when we send such people to corrupt institutions, the good men and women do not reform the institutions; corrupt institutions corrupt the men and women.
To abandon the gift of Article V’s rational revolution is to abandon sovereignty. The evidence is all around. Consider the long train of abuses from a corrupt Supreme Court that amends the Constitution at-will.
Constitutions change, and they change through:
1.) Corruption.
2.) Article V rational revolution.
3.) Violent revolution.
The question is WHO, the people or those entrusted with political, not sovereign power, will make the changes. Sovereignty abandoned is sovereignty surrendered to others.
Article V ping!
Democrat delight!
The biggest subterfuge since the Trojan Horse.
An Article V convention can only propose Constitutional Amendments that must be ratified by the states in the usual manner. How is that a “Trojan horse?”
Article V needs an point A to B explanation of process and the proposed amendments.
Too many people can’t grasp this because it’s rarely done.
Why do you think the communists, who do not follow the constitution, will follow the Article V rules?
Seems to me you would just be moving the fighting until after the amendments. The grievances, conflict and anger would still be there.
The Article 5 process won’t work when the government is controlled by self-serving bureaucrats who care nothing for the good of the people. They will merely change the law to better suit themselves.
Art in Idaho may he rest in peace, has passed on, which is exactly what should happen with any Article V fantasy.
I will answer your question when you answer mine.
Legislators and senators refuse to do their jobs.
Rogue judges still sit on benches they should have been removed from long ago.
Alphabet agencies run this country now.
The only way out is through an Article 5 convention.
Bring back strict constitutionalism
Childish of you. But I did not claim it was a trojan horse. So get your answer from that poster.
Here is how to do it:
Toward an Annual Article V State Amendments Convention Part I.
All that is necessary is to meet once, and upon completion of the business at hand, adjourn until a specified date the next year. By never adjourning sine die, and always rescheduling, the states establish a de facto standing and regular amendments convention. America has the means at her fingertips to regularly improve her institutions, to keep them on the straight path which could lead them to perfection.
The problem I see with it as far as I’ve been able to determine over the years this Article V movement has been around is that once convened, there is NOTHING to stop the ensuing proceedings to change the original charter/purpose/goal. There is just not enough experience with it in our history, frankly.
The arguments I’ve gotten back range from “we wouldn’t do that” to “that can’t happen....” and so on. Of COURSE it can happen. There is NOTHING to stop the convention from being infested with leftists and progressives masquerading like they want to strengthen our founding. They’re already doing it with DAs all around the country, with Secretaries of States, with elections clerks and poll workers and WILLING collusion from Democrat judges.
In truth, Article V is a great idea. But it depends on honest and ethical peoples to execute - Just like our current Constitution needs. I’ve seen NONE of this in my lifetime and I’m not about to support a convention. To me you might as well check yourself into a euthanasia clinic and say, “I give up.”
NO!!!!!!
<>Why do you think the communists, who do not follow the constitution . . . <>
That’s a common straw man argument typical of those who react to article titles instead of reading the material.
200 years from now...
Please read the article.
I did read it. It does illustrate the need to do something but it still does not explain how to keep the convention from being hijacked.
Not one Article V proponent can explain in specificity exactly how it cannot be hijacked once convened, period.
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