Due to my profession being absolutely uninteresting to the typical individual, I rarely discuss it. But for the sake of my particular understanding on the long overdue necessity of our application for an Article V Convention of States, I need to share some background.
My career as an Insurance Broker and Certified Risk Manager involves serving business owner clients through protecting them from risk, primarily through insurance. But risk can be Pure Risk (loss or no loss) and speculative business risk (financial gain or loss).
Organizations must consider economic, legal, reputational, political, social, physical, and juridicial risks. Some risk is insurable. Some risk is not. Organizations can take several approaches to control their risks to loss, rather it be through avoidance, prevention, reduction, separation, or contractual transfer.
We take different approaches on financing risk through appropriate levels of retention, insurance, and contractual transfer. The ultimate objective is to protect the organization from catastrophe while using strategic approaches to maximize an organization’s bottom line and assure continued prosperity.
In 2008, I was 26 years old, just coming of age being interested in politics and getting a firmer understanding of our founding principles. Understand that I was not too far out of college having tenured professors peddling their worldviews.
With my knowledge of risk finance and adverse selection, the drumbeat of more nationalization of our healthcare system, which later came to be known as Obamacare, triggered my passion. I soon came to realize how entrenched the federal leviathan was becoming in every part of our lives. The realization of Bush 43's profligate spending followed by Obama's doubling down on it became concerning, not to mention the feckless Congress, the judicial activist tyranny, and the growth of government.
Moving through Obama’s first term into the second, I felt like so many other Americans along the political spectrum. The general impression was that Washington is broken beyond repair, and citizens have no voice. I was accepting our inevitable decline into a European-style collectivist state.
But in 2013 I read Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments, and it completely inspired me. I realized that our Constitution’s Framers gave We the People a mechanism in Article V as a final check on the eventual out-of-control federal government.
For a risk manager, this revelation was particularly fascinating. Our Framers understood the ultimate risk: the nature of man. This control on human nature--using the Constitution to save it--serves as the final protection against a federal government run amok, centralizing, and advancing policies which eventually devours civil societies.
Through their understanding of history, various forms of government, and philosophers, both ancient (like Aristotle and Cicero) and more recent (like John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu), our Framers knew they had to create a constitutional republic that included state representation and appropriate checks and balances for each branch.
These techniques would protect the minority and our natural rights--the inalienable rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws. Some of these universal rights were enshrined in our Bill of Rights.
A risk management technique is "separation." In other words, this approach is diversifying the risk. This was the approach of the Framers. The Declaration of Independence clearly asserted what the colonies didn't want to be: subjects of an all-powerful monarch or oligopoly.
But they understood pure democracy resulted in mob rule. Due to this wisdom, the Framers built a government based on federalism. This was a key component to decrease exposures to catastrophic risk of centralized government. It's the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" approach.
But the question remained "How do you restrain the necessary federal government? How do you keep the creation from ruling the creator? How do you control this risk?"
On September 15th, 1787, mere days before ratification, Col. George Mason brought forth a second mode to propose constitutional reforms. It was unanimously supported without debate. It was obvious then as it is today that when the federal government exceeds its constitutional authority, the states need to be able to convene, just as Congress can, and propose necessary amendments.
Any proposals would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, exactly as amendments proposed by Congress do. It's the final back stop, a fire alarm, the last risk management tool to preserve the constitutional republic before it is permanently unrecognizable.
This second mode in Article V gave me hope knowing there is a lawful, peaceful, constitutional recourse to manage the risk of our country falling apart. The citizens, through their state legislators, have the final say in the event the federal government evolves into something unrecognizable to our founding structure.
We just have to have the wisdom and courage to use it.
Here we are in 2018, and the point of no return is even closer. We have outrageous debt and unfunded liabilities with ballooning interest costs. All three branches are unmoored from the Constitution, usurping each other’s power. We have an unaccountable bureaucracy, a lawless immigration system, and industries such as healthcare and education on the ropes due to government intervention.
The list goes on and on.
The Trump Administration can only do so much to push back on the 115 years of structural damage. Washington can’t fix these problems. We are an election away from facing more threats to our liberty and our way of life. And what does financial catastrophe look like a few decades from now?
Convening the states for proposing amendments would get our government structure back within the confines of our Constitution. Washington should not have so much influence on our economy, the states, and its citizens.
Since 2013, Convention of States has built the largest grassroots movement in the history of the United States. It is taking the nation by storm. I have witnessed countless individuals, from well-known national conservatives and libertarians to average citizens of all stripes, go from being uncertain about our effort to being completely behind us. America is coming together through Convention of States.
Anyone who spends the time to research the history and scholarship on the subject will become as convinced as I did in 2013. It becomes undeniable. So I recommend you regularly visit conventionofstates.com. Watch some videos and read the short whitepapers.
Join the risk management team by signing the petition and calling your state legislators. We have 12 states. We need 22 more.
We need your help.
