Free Republic

In 1776, Great Britain’s American colonists revolted in response to George III’s corruption of the British constitution. The twenty-seven indictments of him in our Declaration detailed his assaults. Americans didn’t have an Article V or its equivalent to peacefully secure the rights enjoyed by Englishmen in England. Similarly, 21st century America is witness to a dying Constitution in which its open corruption is the subject of endless opinion columns and appeals. Article V opponents curiously admonish Article V supporters to “enforce the Constitution we have.” Through the election of better Representatives, Senators, and Presidents, they say, is the road to...

Subtitle: The Framers’ Electoral College. If I could get through to Dennis Prager’s radio show, I’d encourage him to read Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist No. 68 on Presidential elections. Should he do so, I’m confident he would give it airtime. I also believe he would edit his Prager U videos on the Electoral College (EC). While they are informative, his videos do not address the EC’s purposes, the first of which is to appoint men preeminent in their ability and public virtue. Of equal importance is that they arrive in office without political debts to pay. The Framers’ President, like the...

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...

America doesn’t have a classic aristocracy. But, does it have an order set above the people? In Chapter IX of The Prince, Niccolo’ Machiavelli paused for a moment from advising kings who clawed their way to the crown through crimes and violence. Instead, in the constitutional principality, citizens elect one of their fellows to the kingship. Mentally replace the words aristocracy/nobility with Deep State when reading Chapter IX, and this lesson is as pertinent today as it was in the early 16th century. In the constitutional principality, Machiavelli observed that one of two groups of citizens make the new prince:...

The next generation of conservative leaders have been watching and waiting for a cause where they can make a tangible difference and be a part of history in the making. For years, they felt hopeless. But today, the scene looks very different. Ben Shapiro has teamed up with Convention of States to funnel his millions of young listeners into the fight to call a Convention of States. In a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of young activists have flooded into the movement, taking on leadership positions, and being trained to take back their power from Washington, D.C. These are...

The Golden Age of Virtue which Article V opponents attach to our early republics, never existed. This isn’t to say the literature and political writings by gentry and revolutionary leaders of the day did not appeal to virtue. After Benjamin Franklin wrote, “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” he warned that without virtue, people are doomed to ever more oppressive masters. Similarly is John Adams’ famous, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”1 We read these reminders, especially those of John Adams, on a...

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again—or just hide your idea in a giant piece of legislation, where you hope it won’t get noticed. The National Popular Vote campaign hopes that Minnesota voters won’t see its sneaky maneuver until it’s too late. Perhaps National Popular Vote supporters feel desperate. They’ve been trying to get their controversial interstate compact approved in Minnesota since 2009, but the legislation always flounders. This year, National Popular Vote is trying something new in Minnesota. Its compact has been introduced as standalone legislation, just as it normally is. Meanwhile, the compact also has been...

Subtitle: Render the Constitution Enforceable. While we enjoy yet another year of the Trump Renaissance, we should still consider the future. One thing is certain. The Trump era ends no later than January 20th 2025. Then what? Shall we risk our Liberty on replacing President Trump with another person of superior public virtue The horrid fact remains that Congress is but a shadow of its 1787 design. Most members would gladly never cast another recorded vote if it ensured reelection. As a consequence, Congress, through both neglect and assignment, watches without complaint the drift of its powers to the executive...

On March 5, 2019, Utah voted to become the 14th state to pass our Article V application to call a Convention of States to propose term limits, fiscal restraints, and limits on the power of the federal government.

SALT LAKE CITY — It's official: Utah's game. The Utah House of Representatives in a late 42-32 vote Tuesday night gave final approval to a joint resolution calling for a convention to consider amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The resolution, which does not need approval from Gov. Gary Herbert, adds Utah to the list of states seeking to convene a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution to address what the resolution's House sponsor, Rep. Merrill Nelson, called a "broken" federal government. "The checks and balances in our Constitution have been stretched and broken," said Nelson, R-Grantsville. "All three...

When did a republic extricate itself from imminent tyranny through the election of better or more virtuous people? Perhaps Article V opponents will point to the election of President Trump. There’s no doubt that he is a reprieve, but a reprieve is just that, a temporary interruption, a finger in the dike to the tide of tyranny.1 Can we somehow do likewise with Congress and Scotus? Just elect better congressmen and senators who in turn will only consent to conservative judges? Is it reasonable to believe we can do with Congress in the future what we haven’t done since the...

Little Rock, AR, February 14, 2019 – Convention of States Action, the largest Article V grassroots organization in the country, is pleased to announce that today Arkansas became the 13th state to call for an Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments that impose fiscal restraints on Washington, limit its power and jurisdiction, and set term limits for federal officials. “We are very excited that Arkansas has become the 13th state to pass the Convention of States resolution,” said Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action. “This success is the result of incredible grassroots effort in conjunction with great...

I am at a loss to explain why the many patriots who defend the natural right of self-defense in the Second Amendment often do not extend this fundamental right to society. Perhaps it’s because those who occupy the heights of media, entertainment, academe, and government over-emphasize individual rights. They do so without regard to the effect their expansive view of personal rights (typically so-called “human rights”) has on societal well-being. Reason rejects a supposed individual right if it harms society. People gather together in political society to defend themselves. As John Locke wrote, “the first and fundamental natural Law, which...

Over the next few squibs I will show why Scotus has no Constitutional business fabricating rights. As opposed to its assumed authority to invent rights, it is instead duty-bound to defend the Constitution. Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Ninth Amendment deserves equal protection from the Scotus. Despite this presumption, Scotus has generally interpreted the Ninth Amendment in a manner that denies the sovereign people’s prerogative to assert the rights that Scotus is Constitutionally bound to accept.1Background. Thanks to the assurances of James Madison and other Federalists, the draft Constitution made its way unscathed through a rough...

NEW YORK (AP) — Whatever success Republicans have amassed in taking control of all three branches of U.S. government, and whatever fate awaits them as midterm elections near, some on the right are working to cement change by amending the Constitution. And to the mounting alarm of others on all parts of the spectrum, they want to bypass the usual process. They’re pushing for an unprecedented Constitutional convention of the states. While opponents are afraid of what such a convention would do, supporters say it is the only way to deal with the federal government’s overreach and ineptitude. “They literally...

President Trump said Wednesday he’s still committed to ending birthright citizenship for babies born to illegal immigrants, but would prefer to go through Congress rather than use an executive order. That’s a softening of his stance from an interview published Tuesday, where he told Axios, an online political outlet, that he was preparing an executive order to test the boundaries of the Constitution’s definitions of automatic citizenship. Mr. Trump, who during the 2016 campaign had called President Obama’s executive actions on immigration unconstitutional and illegal, also cited those as precedent for his own plans. “If he can do DACA we...

Full Title: Judge Andrew Napolitano Officially Endorses Convention of States to Chain Down the Federal Government. The Convention of States Project announces an endorsement from Judge Andrew Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News Channel and author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution. Judge Andrew Napolitano says, “For generations, long before the Convention of States Project, I have joined many of my ideological and political friends in recognizing the need to call an Article V Convention. American history and human nature teach that Washington, D.C., will never actually restrain itself and restore the foundations of personal liberty that the Constitution...

Over a long radio career, Rush Limbaugh regularly slammed the Congressional Budget Office for its static analysis of tax cuts. It is natural to think in linear terms. If Congress cuts taxes by X, then government revenue should fall by X. Right? Except, it often doesn’t work that way. Man and men in society aren’t linear thinkers. Sometimes the output is a magnitude larger and opposite to the input. Cut taxes by X and the output isn’t an X tax loss, but typically a dynamic increase in tax revenue several times the tax cuts. Dynamic response isn’t limited to economics....

Sovereignty: Use it or lose it. Sovereignty unattended is sovereignty lost, and We the People have precious little of it left. I challenge anyone to argue that our sovereignty isn’t slipping away. Oh, it is ultimately still ours, and we can always reclaim it through revolution, but the outcome of revolution is far dicier than the minimal risk of holding an Article V COS. What is certain is government officials and institutions are exercising sovereign powers never granted. Through quiet acceptance of rogue federal court decisions and the regulatory and administrative states, We the People silently abandon that which is...

Subtitle: Toward an Annual Article V Convention. To most historians of the 17th Century Stuart era, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government rationalized the Glorious Revolution of 1688. At least one historian, Peter Laslett, disagrees. To Laslett, Locke’s texts were instead a call for revolutions yet to come. Not only did Locke’s philosophy call for our 1776 revolution, it reaches out to us today . . . but with a twist. Where Locke gave little attention to the nuts and bolts of how a community goes about restoring free government after its dissolution, our Framers provided the solution in Article...