Fear, ignorance, arrogance and lies: an open letter to the North Carolina Senate

In North Carolina, the COS Resolution passed the House in May 2021, but recently died in the Senate. After this third attempt in North Carolina to pass the Resolution, we will start again in the 2023/24 legislative session. 

What happened? 

Fear is a powerful emotion. Fear of the process, or the fallacy of the “runaway convention” argument drove many self-proclaimed constitutional conservatives to allow fear and emotion to control their behavior rather than be guided by logic and truth. 

We have seen what fear has done to this country during the pandemic. I wonder what the 56 Founders who signed the Declaration of Independence would think of those legislators who balked? We are fortunate that fear did not drive our Founder’s resolve. 

Then there is pure ignorance. It is hard to imagine – given what’s happening in this country – that a state legislator would be blind to the constitutional tools available to them. But that’s another factor in the North Carolina Senate’s inaction. We deserve better from our elected officials.  

Third is arrogance. Do our legislators believe they know more than the respected constitutional scholars, nationally known conservative voices and national and local political figures, including Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who supports this effort? It seems that is the case.  

Those opposing the COS Resolution apparently align with George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood, and other liberal and progressive voices who are working against it. And these same legislators consider themselves constitutional conservatives worthy of support from the 90,000 COS activists in this state? 

Furthermore, by opposing this effort, they are communicating to the citizens of North Carolina that they are incapable of self-governance. That is the essence of an Article V Convention of states. It is a tool the Founders provided for We the People to take back power from the federal government and return it to the states where it belongs. 

And finally, there are the lies. Over the last three legislative sessions, we have been told one thing by those who supposedly support the Resolution, then those same legislators take the opposite position behind closed doors. It is shameful. 

Senators who promised to support the Resolution behind the scenes in this session must not have done so. If it had moved to the Senate floor, there would have been enough votes to pass. Instead, those who would have voted “no” were protected from standing up and going on record. The grassroots are not amused. 

While we have lost this battle, we will win the war. Our tens of thousands of phone calls, letters, rallies and even our campaign efforts have been ignored, but for those in the North Carolina General Assembly who might wish we would go away, you are sorely mistaken. We will not quit and we will not go away. We will only grow stronger, with more resolve.

Jeff Groh resides in western North Carolina and is a small business owner. He is also a Regional Captain for the Convention of States Project, a non-partisan effort to rein in the expanding role of the federal government.