Ben Shapiro should be the biggest fan of Convention of States

In a recent episode of “The Search”, popular commentator Ben Shapiro joined Princeton’s beloved conservative professor, Robert George, for a discussion about the future of Western Civilization and how Americans have prostituted our national understanding of rights.

Their conversation eventually turned to a dialogue about how Red and Blue America can ever be reconciled — or at least coaxed into coexisting — if both sides have such diametrically opposed definitions of “rights.” The former, for example, argues that the latter does not have a right to raise their kids in discordance with biological sex. The latter argues that the former does not have the right to “indoctrinate” against same-sex marriage. Both are so vehemently opposed to the prospect that the other might exercise their so-called “rights” to the perceived harm of the impressionable, they cannot simply live and let be: they might actually try to deprive the other side of the right to rear kids at all, or at least severely restrict that right.

Such a threat is only amplified when fostered on the national level, in a government that has grossly overstepped its bounds. Forget settling for “live and let be”; the government might forcibly constrain one side’s agenda even on the half of the nation that is diametrically opposed. The national government, exactly as Madison feared, has become, in some cases, far too responsive to the populist whims of the people. At any given moment, it is an existential threat to at least half the nation. It does not matter who or what party is at the helm.

“People like me are moving out of California,” said Shapiro, “taking my family… out of California, moving to Florida, taking my company, putting it in Nashville. These are things that people are going to increasingly do. Red states are going to turn redder, and Blue states are going to turn bluer. And that has some beneficial effects, in the sense that homogeneity may allow for a certain pluralism because maybe people care less what people in Florida do than they would about their neighbors….”

“But on a federal level… if we’re going to share a country,” he continued, “there has to be some reduction in federal authority. Otherwise, it’s just going to be competition over 51 percent at the federal level to decide if California crams down California on Florida or Florida crams down Florida on California. And so either the government has to go weapons down on the federal level, and Florida gets to be Florida, and California gets to be California, or things will really start to get out of hand.”

Ben Shapiro has said similar things many times over the past several months. But despite having fully endorsed Convention of States in the past, he always seems to stop short of actually prescribing the means by which “some reduction in federal authority” can be enacted. Yes, the federal government “has to go weapons down.” But will it ever do so of its own accord? As the Reagan truism goes, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.” How then does Mr. Shapiro expect to see federal reduction realized?

It must be through an Article V amendatory convention. Thanks to the Founders’ genius in the Constitution, the American people, through their state legislatures, can call for a convention at which delegates would propose amendments limiting the size and scope of the federal government, imposing fiscal restraints on Washington, and enacting term limits on elected officials and unelected bureaucrats. The amendments would then go back to the states for approval before taking effect. The brilliance of an Article V convention is that there is nothing Congress or the executive can do to stop it, meaning it empowers us to forcibly rein in an unwilling, runaway government.

“I absolutely support the Convention of States Project, designed for fulfilling the Constitutional methodologies for protecting our rights,” said Ben Shapiro in the past. “Article V exists so that the people have the final say, not the federal government. Yes, it can happen – and yes, it should happen. We should begin by completely restructuring the unconstitutional federal executive bureaucracy; only Congress has constitutional legislative authority. Administrative agencies should not be making law. If you believe the people should decide instead of Washington, DC, then you should support the Convention of States Project."

Having fled California with his family, Mr. Shapiro knows firsthand the dangers of Washington’s unconstitutional, top-down style of governance. Even as he rightly pushes for a “reduction in federal authority,” we must realize our options are limited.

It’s time for an Article V convention.

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