Two weeks ago 11 members of our Delaware State Convention of States Team attended the Convention of States Leadership Summit in Orlando Florida.
There were many amazing speakers including Mark Levin, James O’Keefe, Matt and Mercades Schlapp from CPAC, Lt. Colonel Allen West, and others.
Of course, our COS President and Co-Founder Mark Meckler spoke several times at the event as did COS’s other Co-Founder Michael Farris, who announced that he is returning to once again help us with our COS mission after many successful years with Alliance Defending Freedom.
There were so many great topics addressed that it’s hard to pick which one to share with you. But the point that stuck out the most came from one of Mark Meckler’s speeches. He pointed out that although it feels like our country is more divided than ever before, we have had this level of conflict many times over our nearly 250 years of existence.
It started right at the beginning when the colonies decided that they needed to work together to stand against Great Britain and other outside forces. Representatives from each of the 13 colonies came together and created the Articles of Confederation.
This governing document only lasted eight years because the colonies could not agree on many issues, which left the central government very weak and practically useless.
In fact, a large part of why the Revolutionary War was so difficult for our country was because George Washington could not get the men or the resources necessary for his army. This was due to the fact that there was no central governing body over the colonies that could agree on how to get soldiers to serve in the armed forces nor on how to get badly needed money and supplies to them.
Six years after the Revolutionary War ended the Articles of Confederation were replaced with the infinitely more effective Constitution of the United States of America that created federalism. This new document clearly defined the rights of the states versus the enumerated rights of the central government so that the states could work more effectively together when needed but also maintain the majority of control over their own lives.
Less than 100 years later in 1861, the American Civil War began when the southern states seceded from the Union upon the election of Abraham Lincoln who ran on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories. The war lasted 4 years and ended in 1865.
One might think that at this point the country would have experienced unity. But that would be wrong. There was much resentment between the North and the South. This began the period known as Reconstruction which lasted from 1865 to 1877 and was filled with conflict between the North and South over issues related to civil rights.
Following Reconstruction was the era of Jim Crow which lasted from 1877 to 1950. These laws enforced racial segregation in the South.
Finally, the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 stated that segregation was illegal but this did not stop racial discrimination. The state of Virginia defied the Supreme Court ruling and adopted a policy of “Massive Resistance” in 1956 to avoid desegregating their schools. They preferred to entirely close schools slated to be desegregated rather than allow black students to be educated alongside white students. Unbelievably this was only 66 years ago!
Then we went through WWII where for a time our country was united as we fought side by side against a common enemy. After the war, there was much prosperity and commonality as store chains and chain restaurants began to pop up around the country along with national sports leagues and national news outlets. This gave us experiences that the whole country shared in common and gave us a sense of unity.
But now that there is no longer an imminent threat to our lives we have become separated again. We saw a short-lived national unity reappear after September 11, 2001. Once again this was due to a common threat that our whole country faced. But since that time we have again drifted apart and become less unified.
Those of us now living do not recall a period where we were as divided as we are now because we have been living in the aftermath of WWII for decades. But the further we move away from that period where our citizens faced a common existential threat, the further we move from the temporary unity that defined that era.
So are we more divided than ever before? In our lifetimes, maybe. But over our country’s lifetime, no. Ecclesiastes 1:9 states “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The disunity that we are experiencing now is nothing new.
Our country is divided but it has always been so - with only short time periods where we have come together to work toward a common end. The problem today is that our federal government has so overreached its original boundaries as laid out in the Constitution that almost no rights are left to the state or to “We the People.”
This is why we need to call a Convention of States to propose amendments to rein in our federal government. We need to return power to the individual states and to “We the People.” Convention of States is proposing amendments in three areas: limiting term lengths for those in the federal government, limiting the spending of the federal government, and limiting the power of the federal government by removing the “ABC” agencies and their thousands of unelected bureaucrats who make all of the rules that govern our lives.
If we call a Convention of States and return the power to the states as was intended in the Constitution, the states will be able to govern themselves and there would not be the intense division and hostility that exists now in our country. Each state would be able to make its own rules. An added benefit of this is that there would not be the wild swings in policy that occur as the power moves from one party to the other in Washington, DC.
Depending on which party is in charge, half the country is exultant while the other half is miserable. This was not the design or intent for our nation. We were meant to govern ourselves and those who want greater government control can choose to live in states where that is the case while those who want to govern themselves can choose to live in states where “We the People” make most of the decisions for ourselves.
Please join us in allowing “We the People” to once again rule ourselves by calling a Convention of States. Sign the petition at conventionofstates.com.
