Nor am I naïve enough to believe that state legislators are inherently more virtuous than federal legislators, only that they have different self interests which for the present operate in favor of liberty. That is why it is important to know the players in a convention of the states would be, to understand the governors play no role as governors, to understand that the president of the United States plays no role whatsoever, to understand how article 5 limits severely the power of Congress to defend itself.
Against this we have business as usual. Here is an old post which sums up my view of continuing business as usual:
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 will contain 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.
