Why I've Changed My Mind On The Need For A Convention Of States
I have been wary about the call for a Convention of States, an option in the US Constitution under Article V that allows two-thirds of the states to call for a convention to propose amendments to the US Constitution. My reasoning has always been one seated in deference to the Framers’ higher-level political thinking skills and legitimate fear about how political opportunists might damage our Constitution for all time. Today, my thinking has changed.
And while my fears are still legitimate – that the politically opportune, the financial elite, and those connected to the establishment may attempt to influence the outcome of such a convention toward the benefit of the status quo, it has become clear that our two-party system – with all of its power junkies and Deep State players, is wholly incapable of policing itself or operating in the best interests of the American people and all of the fifty states.
The next-step actions of our nation’s people must be to both implore our state governors to immediately embrace nullification as a tool to protect the people from an unconstitutionally overreaching federal government and to establish permanent solutions via a Convention of States.
The Fears Of My Past
Whenever someone I knew brought up the convening of a Convention of the States my fear centered around a runaway convention that resulted in amendments to the Constitution that veered away from a limited form of government. My chief fear was that checks and balances to centralized power would be derailed forever and the genius of the Framers would be nothing but an entry in the history books.
And who could blame me for my reservations? As a constitutionalist, election cycle after election cycle I was fed the same political propaganda about how this candidate was going to stand for the constitution and that candidate was going to fight the power in Washington, DC to facilitate the federal government’s return to some semblance of fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution. Yet cycle after cycle all that happens is the replenishment of “the cogs” into the Deep State abattoir that continuously encroaches on our freedoms.
My entire politically aware life I have supported the Republican Party as they were doing the least amount of damage to our nation through their inside-the-beltway policies. I learned early on that it is not that there is a “best candidate,” rather, it is always about the choice of the better candidate. Today, that choice has been relegated to the lesser of two evils in just about every case. The national Republican political apparatus is just as corroded and corrupt as the national Democrat Party. They have become the “it’s my turn for leadership” party with Deep State insiders and professional politicians at the helm.
The idea that a mumbling grifter with deep ties to Communist China is the leader of the Republican Party in the US Senate and the head of the National Republican Committee is directly related to a sitting Republican US Senator who thought socialized healthcare wasn’t that bad of an idea and who consistently hands radical Democrats a lifeline in legislative votes should turn everyone’s stomach and drive people to the streets in protest.
The Ineffective Leadership Of The Right Has Put Us Here
But rank-and-file Republicans don’t take to the streets as the fascist Left does in the United States. We show up at ticketed rallies like we were going to concerts and cheer when cued, buy the shirts and hats, and believe that going to one rally and wearing paraphernalia makes a difference. We pontificate on social media and share memes and tell the echo chamber to make sure to get out the vote because “this is the most important election of our lifetime.”
Meanwhile, the toadies of the fascist Left know how to community organize. They know how to threaten boycotts and apply subversive pressure on the media so the narrative is always in their favor. They consistently go to rallies not in well-staged arena locations to hear words that, for all intents and purposes do little more than make them feel as though they aren’t alone and, instead, target meaningful and effective venues that shake the foundations of the societally and politically fragile to bully their will into existence legislatively.
They financially support groups that think outside the box about how to manipulate the public into voting for their ideas (read: script-spewing, emotionally-based neophytes like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) even as they incrementally infiltrate and change core intellectual institutions in our nation to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”
A perfect example of how the fascist, Constitution-hating Left uses nefarious avenues to coerce Americans; to intimidate them, came in the 2012 General Election when the Obama team colluded with the AFL-CIO to employ behavioral psychology to shape how the voters thought through the creation of the Analyst Institute. Using data collected on each of us, the Obama team was able to craft a profile of every single voter in the country, profiles they used to intimidate individuals to vote their way. The Romney team, cocky and with the vision of a blind squirrel, was caught flat-footed because they were married to the antiquated political gaming of the past. Because of that lack of vision and the arrogance that comes with elitism, Romney lost.
With the nation screaming about the implementation of Obamacare and the divide – racial, gender, economic – the Obama White House was foisting on the American people any Republican should have been able to win in 2012. That Obama won is a testimony to how out of touch and antiquated national Republican party leadership thinking is.
So, how can we trust them when they take to the podiums and microphones again saying, “I know we’ve screwed up in the past but hey, we’ve got it all figured out. Here’s 80-year-old Mitch McConnell with some new avenues and ideas that will change everything.”
Absolute Power & Power Longevity Corrupts Absolutely
Lord Acton is quoted as saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Truer words have seldom been uttered. But I would amend that thought by including the idea that extended longevity in power achieves the same intellectual cancer.
We witness this truth with every elected politician who has held office for a decade or more. The inside-the-beltway status quo, the lobbyists, the special interest groups, the money, the influence, they all start chipping away at any semblance of constitutional fidelity the second a newly elected office holder sits in the chair across from their party leader.
During the elections, most of those who are on the ballot listen intently to what the voters have to say, feign that they are hearing our concerns, and swear they are going to be different than all those who came before. That usually ends the moment they are elected and the national political party leadership puts the slow drip of the status quo into their veins. The fact that the congressional aids never change on Capitol Hill from election to election says it all.
Mark Meckler, who you might remember from Silicon Valley’s assassination of the social media platform Parler, is the President of Convention of States Action, the group spearheading the effort to convene a convention under Article V of the Constitution. He is quoted as saying:
“The truth is the Washington establishment will never, ever limit its own power. We just can’t rely on the politicians who got us into this mess to get us out of it.”
Again, truer words have seldom been spoken. Today, every politician who has ever promised change, promised to “clean up Washington,” promised that they would make a difference, is guilty to one degree or another of delivering to us:
Consistent deficit spending
Continuously increasing debt
An ever-expanding Deep State bureaucracy
Increasingly poor and overly-generalized legislation that enables the aforementioned bureaucracy
And the continued erosion of the constitutionally mandated balance of power between the federal government and the states and the federal government and the people.
Anyone who believes their elected representative or senator couldn’t possibly be included in the cabal that has delivered us this evil is blind to the truth.
Crossing The Convention Of States Rubicon
The breaking point for me in embracing the need for a Convention of States was multi-faceted. Learning more about the actual process and safeguards built into the initiative to placate my reservations was a large part of the reason. Investigating who stands behind the effort today also went a long way to convincing me that a Convention of the States could actually succeed in rescuing the nation.
But it was the immediate threats to the United States that moved me solidly into support of a convention of the States threats facilitated by the puppet government of President Joe Biden (read: the continuation of the fascist Obama regime. These threats include:
The purposeful destruction of the economy to create financial instability and dependence on government
The establishment’s relentless attacks on the cryptocurrency sphere meant to deny free market decentralized finance (read: carve out the charlatan banker middlemen who charge you fees to use your own money) to not only American citizens but to all the peoples of the world
The unelected and unaccountable Federal Reserve’s grotesque and, some would say, purposeful manipulation of the economy to benefit – exclusively – the globalists and globalist banking institutions
The purposeful destruction of the US energy sector to enrich the Green energy syndicate, while devastating the financial well-being of each and every American family
The Biden administration’s announced intention to cede American sovereignty to the World Health Organization regarding authoritative control during pandemics
And the Deep State and Washington establishment’s desire to deliver the United States to the altar of the World Economic Forum through the Great Reset, an abdication of sovereignty that would end Americanism.
From the manipulative gender divide to the institutionalization of Critical Race Theory to political persecution, we have crossed the Rubicon to a place where we cannot trust or count on any candidate or elected official to provide relief or meaningful solutions to these issues. Not only will the Deep State crush any agent of change (look what they did to Donald Trump), the majority of inside-the-beltway political creatures don’t want to relinquish the power they have illegitimately co-opted from the states.
There Are Dark Forces Against Us
In the free pocket guide issued by Convention of States Action when you sign-up for their free email (very informative and engaging), the question is broached, “Why is the opposition to a Convention of States issuing dire warnings about its potential for national disaster?” The answer is chillingly telling:
“Nearly all opposition comes from the hard Left, as was revealed in April of 2017. Led by the George Soros-funded Common Cause, a coalition of radically anti-constitutional activist groups united in their opposition to this constitutional solution. The nearly 250 signers include the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, La Raza, the NAACP, and Clinton-founded groups like MoveOn.org. These nearly 250 groups depend on a corrupt, runaway federal government to preserve their power, fill their coffers with taxpayer dollars, and advance their radical agendas. This kind of organized opposition means one thing: We are right above the target and they know it. These organizations share one goal: Keep the disastrous status quo of our federal government unchanged...”
Quite honestly, they had me at the mention of Clinton and Soros.
The Choice Is Clear
It is clear that any solutions to the threats facing our country by – and this is very sad to have to say – our own federal government must be countered by the citizenry. Our federal government has undergone a hostile takeover by special interests, globalists, and disingenuous power brokers who see the United States as nothing more than a financial avenue for their own greed and ambitions.
Today, we must do – actually do – two things: 1) implore our state governors and legislatures to embrace and execute nullification to refuse any and all unconstitutional edicts from the federal government to grant relief in the immediate; and 2) move those same governors and state legislators to ascend to a Convention of the States to effect permanent solutions.
Nullification, for which a precedent has already been set through sanctuary city, county, and state declarations accepted by the federal government, would provide immediate relief from the draconian dictates of a federal government that has ceased serving the people.
But while this would be an effective “tunicate” to stop the bleeding in the immediate, the totalitarians in the federal government would soon deny states that enacted nullification “federal funding” for various projects and services, most of which exist as unfunded mandates forced upon the states. Therefore the additional step of enacted constitutional amendments to provide permanent solutions is required.
The list of subjects slated to be debated during any convention emanating from the current effort include:
Limiting the US Supreme Court Justices to nine members
Preventing the addition of states without the affirmative consent of three-quarters of the existing states
Requiring members of Congress to live under the same laws they pass for the rest of us
Imposing term limits on all members of Congress in both chambers
Requiring a balanced federal budget
Imposing limits on federal spending and/or taxation
Getting the federal government out of our healthcare system
Getting the federal government out of our education system
Prohibiting unelected federal bureaucrats from imposing regulations with the weight of law
My friend, Andy Limbaugh, who worked on the Hill in his youth as a staffer, also suggested that term limits be applied to congressional staffers, agency staffers, and department and agency appointees; the “fixtures” in the Deep State apparatus that enable the machine to rollover any change agents who may make it passed the two-party election cabal.
These issues and points are embraced by over 85 percent of Americans but they are issues and points our elected officials and political party leaders fail – and fail miserably – in executing on their own. They are incapable and unwilling.
Does this mean that all of these points would be adopted at a Convention of States? No, it does not and, in all probability, several would fall by the wayside just as several original points debated at the original Constitutional Convention did.
But a simulation of a Convention of States resulted in the adoption of the following amendments to the US Constitution being successfully passed, some of which will surprise you in a good way:
The public debt shall not be increased except upon a super-majority vote in Congress
Term limits on members of Congress
Limiting federal overreach by restoring the Commerce Clause to its original meaning
Limiting the power of federal regulations by allowing for a congressional override
Requiring a super-majority of Congress to increase federal taxes
Repealing the 16th Amendment that created the income tax
Giving the states, by a 3/5ths vote, the power to abrogate (read: nullify) any federal law, regulation, or executive order
These amendment points, which are without question or debate, reasonable – and reset the balance of power between the federal government and the state governments, as well as the federal government and the American people – would only be objectionable to nefarious actors; those who have abused their positions – and the people – for personal and ideological gain while diminishing the freedoms guaranteed every American by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It is time that those of us who have been tolerant of the disingenuous platitudes of the politicians, special interest groups, establishment 501c3 organizations, and self-anointed potentates on the Right side of the aisle abandon any sufferance for their words and any belief they ever could have succeeded in serving the American people to effect solutions to the erosion of our freedoms.
Please familiarize yourself with the efforts underway by Convention of States Action as I did. It changed my mind. And then get active and make the change; take the reins and make this convention happen.
Nineteen states have already passed a Convention of States resolution including Alaska, Arizona, Utah, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Florida.
Fourteen states have legislation pending in their State Houses to ratify this year, including Wyoming, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine.
Six states have passed a Convention of States resolution in one chamber, including New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia, and North Carolina.
The will is there and we must make this happen; we can depend on no one but ourselves to make this Republic saving effort a reality.
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” – John Stuart Mill
