I expect this kind of howling from the left. Unfortunately, I expect it from the IGNORANT right, as well. There is a sort of mind numbed hand-ringing hysteria that arises from the right and the left on this subject which infuriates me.
These sorts of claims are based in nothing but an absolute and total complete ignorance of the process of an article 5 convention coupled with the kind of paranoid hysteria one normally finds only in Q-bots and people claiming that the hospital ships that came into New York City during the covid pandemic were to offload children coming out of giant underground complexes where they had been systematically tortured and had their adrenochrome extracted.
I expect the sort of bawling shrieking idiocy from the left which asserts that anything that threatens to take power away from DC is a horrible sinister force that should be resisted at all costs. I expect that.
I also have a great deal of sympathy for conservatives who don't trust the process of political change and are skeptical about people wishing to use anything to leave her more power to themselves. I get that. I really do. I have sympathy for anyone who smells a rat and wishes to exterminate it (historical allusion there. You get it or you don't).
That said, please, for God's sake, will you just take the time to educate yourself on the process of an article 5 convention? It is not empowered to rewrite the Constitution. It's not empowered to strip out a Second Amendment right (face palming with force and enough vigor to give myself a headache).
An article 5 convention was PUT INTO THE CONSTITUTION. did you get that? Do you really believe its authors put that in there so that it could be subverted? Really?
It was put into the Constitution BY ITS AUTHORS. Did you read that?? One more time. It was put into the Constitution by the authors. It was done so in order to protect the rule of law when Powers have aggregated to DC in order that the Constitutional form of government itself is threatened. Does that sound just a wee bit like what we have now?
It is fashionable among conservatives who don't even bother to look at the process to raise spectres of a runaway convention, stripped out amendments, blah blah blah. I can't tell you how contemptible those arguments are. They really do remind me of dealing with Qbots who will embrace the most idiotic fantasies..., not because they are stupid, but because they are deliberately ignorant. That is, they don't bother to look at the objections that have been raised to an Article V convention (or if they do, confine themselves to a few John Birch remonstrants) and they CERTAINLY don't check with the excellent responses to objections byMichael Farris (one is here) https://www.audible.com/pd/Michael-Farris-at-Article-V-Symposium-Podcast/B0B34N36N5
Farris has gone over, in detail, EVERY objection by Common Cause and New American and demonstrated them to be specious.
If you are refusing to support an article 5 convention because of some bogeyman about them rewriting the Constitution and taking away all of our liberties and blah blah blah blah, you are simply tiresome. No other way to say it. Just ignorant and tiresome.
You are throwing away possibly the only weapon short of an armed Revolution that is left to you in the tool chest to arrest the progress of tyranny. And you are doing so because you are frankly too lazy to look at what is a wonderfully wise prescient and would be effective tool to reverse the course of tyranny in what used to be a republic. So go ahead and hang on to your myth that the Second Amendment will save you if you wish. Or, you can continue to hold on to a dessicated dream about amber waves of grain and a shining city on a hill and the last best hope for freedom while the whole thing collapses around you.
I’d like to see an amendment to move the capital district every 20-25 years to a randomely selected state.
No, they are not.
Leftists have demonstrated superior skills at organizing political movements and subverting institutions for the last 50 years. Quite bluntly, they are better at these things than we are. We need to catch up, at the very least.
Concerns that Leftists will hijack an Article V convention are well-founded and should be met with serious discussion of how that is to be prevented. Passionate hand-waving assertions about procedural and legal limitations of such a convention are not good enough.
Accusing critics of "ignorance" is not good enough.
Leftists ignore procedure and legal restrictions whenever it suits them. And with major revisions to the Constitution in play, "by any means necessary" is the only rule they will follow to get what they want.
Every possible change to the Constitution that is under consideration must include detailed planning to defeat Leftist attempts at subversion or poisonous "compromises". I hear mostly silence or denial about this problem from proponents of an article 5 convention. Which is why I am not a supporter of that proposal.
It oughtn’t to be necessary, but an original intent amendment would be useful. It should be obvious that all laws should only be interpreted as the legislators who enacted them had intended, but apparently it isn’t.
Given the state of the country, the best outcome of a convention would be no ratified amendments, it's probable that any amendments which could be ratified by 38 states would be bad, maybe very bad.
Welcome to our world here at FR. Good to see new face
emerge.
You neglected to point out the difference between a (federal controlled) ‘Constitutional Convention’ and a (state controlled) ‘Article 5 Convention of states’
Bookmark
At first, I wasn’t convinced. But when you deployed all of those exciting ALL CAPS, it totally changed my mind.
The establishment politicians must be getting scared now as the Convention of States inches ever so closer to the goal. So now they want to make it sound like an ‘evil orange man conservative’ effort to rewrite the constitution. Morons.
I will say that over the years I first found it astounding and incredulous, but now just find it amusing and contemptible that the people who bellow the loudest about “following the Consitution” are unwilling to follow this particular part of the Constitution.
The founders certainly did not imagine Congress being in exclusive control of the process of amending the legal foundations of the USA. They envisioned the states being vibrant, virile and active participants in framing how the Constitution would maintain those original immovable legal principles in a changing world. The people screaming loudest about how they would “preserve” the document only mean everything EXCEPT this part, I guess.
LOL....Can you tell us what the process of choosing electors is? Who is empowered with creating the rules in the states?
Did it work the way it is REQUIRED to work in 2020?
What in God’s name makes you think an Article 5 Convention will work the way it is supposed to work?
Do you really think the deep state billionaire oligarchs who run the country are going to roll over and say, “Welp, we had a good run but now we have to follow the Constitution and give up our power.” ???
The sooner the people realize that we HAVE LOST our country, the better. We are not “losing” the country. It is not “on the verge of collapse”. There is no Deus Ex Machina ending to this story where brave patriots sweep in to fix the Constitution and everyone lives happily ever after.
Our culture is gone.
Our patriotism is gone.
Our belief system is gone.
Our heritage is gone.
Our demographic makeup is gone.
Our national cohesion is gone.
Our country is dead. The vultures are picking over the carcass.
With all the rinos we have, now you want to rewrite the constitution?
No way!
The most obvious amendment to propose through a convention of the states is term limits on Congressman and Senators, as it is obvious that the Congress will never propose such a amendment.
Some people might feel the following are too lax, but I’d go with 24 years for Senators, and 12 years for Congressmen.
Specially, that a person could not be elected to a term that would exceed 24 years for Senators, or 12 years for Congressmen.
I would also consider 24-year terms for Judges and Justices.
Specifically, that once a judge or Justice is confirmed for a district court judge, an appellate court judge or a Supreme Court justice, they would have a non-renewable term of 24 years at that level. They could be nominated for a higher court and, if confirmed, have a fresh, non-renewable term of 24 years.
After this, a lot of clean-up of elections could be proposed.
I’d like to see D.C. vote along with Maryland in federal elections. I’d also like to see incorporated territories vote along with a state in federal elections, where the two places agree. The experiment with a non-voting capital district hasn’t worked out. And, there are some territories that are too small for statehood.
Then, there should be a balanced budget amendment. I’d recommend the balanced budget we have in Mississippi, Ohio and Virginia (involving the budgeting of a surplus and a build-up of a rainy day fund, that could be drawn on during a recession).
There could be yet other amendments, but getting 3/4ths of the states to ratify is going to be tough. Besides, if this convention of the states works out well, we could have another.
Maybe the US Constitution, as written, isn’t perfect.
However, I doubt a rewrite would make it better. Much more likely is it will be worse, in ways we won’t know until it happens.
The idea of Conservatism is to conserve that which is good and not replace it with a potential better solution or system.
If this happens, we’ll look back at the “old” Constitution, and wish we could have it back, but then it will be too late.
More specifically, ALL the states can effectively "secede" from the unconstitutionally big federal government, putting a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes by doing so, with an amendment that does nothing more than repeal the 16th (direct taxes) and 17th (popular vote for federal senators) Amendments (16&17A).
Little or no discussion would be required for such an amendment imo.
Unconstitutional federal taxing and spending is whatever taxes the very corrupt, alleged election-stealing, desperate Democratic-pirated Congress cannot reasonably justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers and other constitutionally enumerated expenses.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.In fact, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had clarified that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, not the feds.
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
Once 16&17A are gone, unconstitutional federal taxes permanently stopped, each state will ultimately find a tsunami of new revenues (imo) that can be used to increase teacher salaries, also salaries of police and fire departments for starters.
Let's also include new state funding for infrastructure maintenance in that list. Undoubtedly many other state social spending programs as well to replace former unconstitutional federal spending programs.
Additionally, no more forced compliance with Democratic politically correct but unconstitutional federal gender-related civil rights protections in order for school kids to eat likewise unconstitutional federal lunches paid for with stolen state revenues for example.
In fact, Justice Louis Brandeis had seemingly reflected on Bingham's words (above) when Brandeis volunteered his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor to emphasize the power of the states to serve the people, ultimately depending on the kind of state social spending programs that the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.
"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.
Corrections, insights welcome.
why?
what part of the Constitution does not work?
are the christian nationslists/dominionists aytempting to change the 1sr amendment to disallow other citizens - not christian?
why?
I see some confusing responses in here:
1) People are claiming we should OBEY the constitution, rather than “re-writing” it. No one is proposing we “re-write” it. No one. Your hysterical fears notwithstanding, we are arguing that following the specifice mandated IN the constitution provide far better “protections” for it than hobgoblins of paranoid fantasies born out of ignorance.
2) The people talking the loudest about “following” the Constitution are actually arguing we should ignore its own internal guidelines to avoid what has already happened, and ignore its on prescription for how to reverse this, which is the transfer of power to a federal imperium.
This strikes me as most odd, like someone saying “WE ARE FOR THE CONSTITUTION!!!... just not THAT part of the Constitution”
Amusing if it weren’t so harmful.
This is so scary.
We should all go and hide under a rock until the election is over and the constitution gets rewritten.
tanstaafl.72555 wrote: “An Article 5 convention is within reach, potentially ROLLING BACK the accretion of power to DC in a manner that makes Justice Thomas look like a cheerleader from the stands. This is the last best hope for the true restoration of the USA as a REPUBLIC.”
Do the liberals in the blue states get a vote?
The math does not look promising unless some states switch their position. I am on the fence as to the pros and cons of the idea.