Posted on 07/01/2015 3:56:31 PM PDT by betty boop
67 States to advance,
75 States to ratify...
How did we get so many States? That’s even more than Obama’s 57!
....”change the Constitution to ‘restore state control over the selection of Senators’.... if we expect the Senate to be the enforcers of the Constitution”.....
I don’t think most of the current Senators care one iotta about the Constitution...rather they see it as something they have to work around or bypass entirely....and anymore they aren’t even concerned one way or the other about anybody stopping them.
So very true, dearest sister in Christ!
Caww, I agree with your frustration.
However, remember, the Tea Party movement was new and barely a year old. Although one Million marched 09/12/2009, and made noise, the trouble is there was not sustained momentum, unified plank, and Ted Cruz-like spokespersons.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Conservatives need to be a persistent force to be reckoned with.
A strong unified political cultural movement comes first, before an effort to trust 30+ states to agree on passing beneficial conservative constitutional ammendments.
-PJ
.....”A strong unified political cultural movement comes first”.....
I agree but there is no “group” leadership to rally the people...let alone the will to sustain it for long. The Tea Party did not want leadership and it was understood why....but I think they made a mistake not getting strong leaders, like Cruz and others, to move it beyond where it was.
I want to believe it’s possible...I really do...but I cannot see people taking the time needed to carry any movement through to the desired end apart from strong leaders holding it together. Not to mention the time to even bring it together.
We have an election coming...and already Cruz has warned about Article V , that if Congress etc. doesn’t change the sound of that is going to get louder.
I continue to hope that there are those working together behind the scene waiting for the moment when they reveal themselves....Cruz said that the people don’t realize how close we are to taking back our country....I remember those words often.
....” This is why state legislatures need to appoint their Senators”.....
Yes, but is there not just as much political corruption among them as well?
....”We can’t afford to piss away years trying to get a majority of states to agree on what needs to change”.....
That’s true.....so why not do both? Have the convention of states in play as well as a groundswell conservative movement? Why does it have to be one or the other?
Sorry, but I believe that's magical thinking. I've observed the same venality in state legislations as in the congress.
Which Constitution was that? The Constitution before the Bill of Rights was added? The Constitution before slavery was abolished? The idea that there is some "Constitution" that came into existence whole and perfect is belied by history. Just because modern opponents of Article V are historically ignorant as well as confused in the present is not grounds to say that the Framers were confused, or ignorant of history or misguided about the future of constitutional government. Out of their perspicacity they contemplated new amendments.
Much of the resistance on the Right to Article V comes from the NRA who would put the whole nation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, at risk of extinction rather than suffer any supposed risk to their precious Second Amendment. They define liberty downward into a corner consisting only of the right to bear arms and would sacrifice all other liberties to defend this narrow patch.
Many of the posters on these threads motivated by Second Amendment concerns are fully familiar with the arithmetic that renders derisory any argument that a convention of the would possibly restrict their precious right (I might add my precious right) to bear arms. The arithmetic is dispositive: only 13 legislative bodies from 13 different states out of 99 legislative bodies from 50 states would be required to defeat any such pernicious amendments. If the confirmation process is to be conducted by state conventions rather than state legislatures, the same arithmetic would apply because if both houses of a state legislature cannot agree on a position, they cannot vote for the amendment. There is no realistic possibility of loss of Second Amendment rights or any right vouchsafed us under the Bill of Rights. Thread after thread reveals that the same posters raise the same objection over and over even though they had been informed of the arithmetic. They simply ignore the arithmetic and repeat their conclusionary language but they rarely reveal their concerns about keeping their guns or other even darker motives.
Do not be deceived by those who conceal their motives.
There is another group of conservatives who oppose attempts to save the Republic through the amendment process and they are those who would actually prefer bloodshed to an orderly constitutional process of reform. These people will never be convinced. They are the kind of people who give excuse to those equally crazy people who presently control our government and who define the greater danger to our security to be domestic terrorists on the right.
There is a group, most prominently identified as the John Birch Society, which favors nullification, interposition, or secession as the solution. The short answer to that proposition is to point hundreds of thousands of graves of Americans who died to preserve the union.
Some object by arguing that the Article V movement is a diversion from more productive avenues of reform. This argument says that the electorate has limited attention span, limited capacity to entertain political ideas. In effect, the argument is that the nation cannot walk and chew gum. I say that an electorate that has passively submitted to the gradual erosion of its liberties in exchange for Obama phones and cable television has plenty of time for whatever catches its fancy. The media knows how to focus the country's attention on irrelevancies and does so routinely. However, the nation is also quite capable in the television age of being transfixed by Robert Bork hearings, the Clarence Thomas hearings, the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, the trial of O.J. Simpson, etc. This assumption about the limited attention span of the American people is a question of media savvy not inherent genetic disorders. Just as the media manipulates the people, conservatives should learn how to manipulate the media. Watch Donald Trump.
The most often voiced objection is to say that it simply will not work. I have treated of these objections in an old reply which I reproduce here:
So far it seems to me that opposition to Article V boils down to about four objections:
1. It won't work -so don't bother trying.
2. It won't work, even if it does work, because "they" will undo it, ignore it, or somehow overrule it, so don't bother trying.
3. It will work, but don't try it because it will work only for the other side.
4. No opinion on whether it will work or will not work, but the Constitution we have is just fine so the solution offered by the Constitution itself in Article V should be ignored in favor of redoubling our efforts and doing more of the same every election cycle because this time we will get different results.
That reply concludes with the question: "Which category are you in?"
Stonewall Jackson exhorts us, "never take counsel of your fears." Do not succumb to the counsel of despair. The road is long and arduous, the way clear is not yet apparent, yet we know the destination, the Shining City on the Hill.
Well, nathanbedford, where do you stand?
Last week, Scotus completed a leftist putsch of our feeble republic. The ignorant here at FR offer nothing to stop and reverse our headlong dive into collective misery.
You are absolutely correct, the arithmetic cuts both ways, although more in favor of conservatives but only moderately so. That means that we are at a stalemate situation as far as Article Vis concerned but that means that the left prevails as long as the situation is static because they control the electoral process, the judiciary, the media etc. If our politics proceed as they have, we will drift ever more to the left, ever deeper in debt, ever weaker abroad, ever more divided at home.
The whole idea ofArticle V is to move the game to a new board where the rules favor conservatives more and that new game will occur in the state legislatures. But to break the deadlock we will need some sort of a "Black Swan" event to energize the electorate and breakthrough the inertia which we unfortunately read on these boards even from conservatives and to overcome leftist minority in state legislatures.
As I said in another post, luck goes to the prepared and we have very good reason to believe that some sort of a reckoning cannot be long delayed. While Nathan Bedford's Maxim, "failed socialism does not result in reform but in more socialism," is often true it is also possible that the country will react in common sense against what has been done to us and actually turn toward conservative reforms.
All we can do is try. If we do not try, what will we tell our kids as they survey the wreckage of their country?
Thanks for your reply. I haven’t kept up on your postings, in awhile. Most children today, are fully incapable of recognizing damage to Our Nation, much less- surveying such as comparative fact. The die is cast. Civilization is in for a very, very hard ride.
Add an intro, and your post would make a fine stand alone vanity.
At the risk of casting everyone into deepest despair, I ask if you have seen Marc Steyn's latest article posted only a few steps away from this thread? His assessment of the odds are as accurate as his assessment of the current situation.
Our duty is to soldier on.
Yes and I agree.
Can agree, but it won't be enforced unless the States INSIST. Until States start telling the Feds and the courts to go pound sand, and dare them to come in with guns blazing, it will not get better.
5. An article V will not work because of the math. A 3/4 of states ratification threshold which prevents destruction of the BOR also prevents anything but the most tepid of measures emerging, as at least 1/4 of the states actively support the trajectory we’re currently on. It’s a double edged sword. That is one practical problem.
Another practical problem and another reason I do not support it is because the root issues which are more at the personal level. Conservatives in the US are a minority, and an aging one at that. Our populace doesn’t think in terms of limiting the scope and breadth of governance. They may not be happy with the current set of rulers, but the thought patterns are not focused on looking at ways to reduce that governance, but installing a new set of kleptocrats who will doit better and more efficiently. If that kneejerk tendency to want the government to deal with any and all problems is not corrected, then all of the structural changes in the world aren’t going to matter.
I also do not support it because the black swan events that we are likely to see will render much of this discussion moot. Those events in my view are most likely to be economic. To the extent they are political, they’re going to be tending more towards divorce rather than a new form of reconciliation.
I have no objection to people trying article V.I think it’s generally harmless. Some positives might emerge with regards to education. For me, I don’t think it a wise expenditure of time. Then again I don’t think going to casinos is a wise expenditure of time, either. People are going to go to Harrah’s anyway regardless of what I think.
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