How much longer will it take to bring about a convention of states? Two more years? Three more years? God forbid — ten years?
When our founders, Michael Farris and Mark Meckler, started the Convention of States Project, they were optimistic that they could see it happen in just a few years. At this point the effort has been going on for over eight years and we are not quite half-way to our goal of 34 states.
It is natural to become a little discouraged. In fact we frequently see comments on social media asking, “Why is COS taking so long?”
But these questions reveal the mindset typical of conservatives. While we highly value the principles and traditions that have made the American way of life possible, we take them somewhat for granted, and find it hard to imagine they could actually disappear. Surely with just a little effort, we think, we can restore things to what they were few years ago.
So conservatives tend to think in terms of election cycles. We’ll get the Senate back next year, and then things won’t be so bad, we tell ourselves. In a few years we’ll elect a president who values the Constitution, and then happy days will be here again.
What we’ve failed to realize is that while we are focused on short term political goals, anti-Constitution progressives have been investing in long-term transformation of society. They’ve understood for generations what conservatives heard from Andrew Breitbart just a few years ago: that politics is downstream of culture.
Fox News personality and COS endorser Pete Hegseth reminded us of this truth on the COS At Home event in December. His recent research on the history of American education revealed “a hundred-year very intentional targeting of the classroom—because the left understands the power of enculturing future youth.”
He said that the progressive education movement deliberately worked to undermine the Western Christian model of transferring culture to the next generation, targeting the faith, the Bible, and the foundation of Western civilization. “They were very intentional and successful at doing so.”
Politics is downstream of culture, and culture doesn’t change in one or two election cycles. In fact the progressive project took 100 years. The phenomena that seem so sudden and shocking to conservatives in the last few years — suppression of free speech, state-sponsored racism, the weaponization the Deep State, an Orwellian post-truth culture — have been germinating for many decades in the soil carefully planted and watered by progressives.
“Here’s what I know the progressives do,” Pete pointed out. “They didn’t know if it was going to be 1970 or 1990 or 2010 or 2019. They didn’t know when their gains would consolidate…they just did their work in their moment, believing that it would eventually pay off.” Right now it is paying off for them in spades.
“I think that’s the way we also have to look at it, as guardians of the Republic.” Pete added.
This deeply entrenched leftist fruit won’t be dug up or replaced overnight. There are multiple areas of society that need to be addressed: education, the media, and the legal system, to name a few. COS is just one part of the strategy, albeit an essential one.
And it’s possible that without deeper cultural changes, COS will turn out to be a futile exercise or even one that furthers the political chaos.
I believe there is Divine Providence behind COS, and if so, there is also a divine timing and strategy. It seems likely that the timing involves a set of political, cultural, and spiritual factors that need to align in order for COS to have the intended impact.
But perhaps another purpose of the divine delay is to wean us from the hope of a quickly-achieved victory, to harden the troops and even purge the “summer soldiers” who lack staying power for the heat of the campaign.
Recently we’ve seen hopeful signs — the recent election in Virginia, the newly conservative Supreme Court, and the growth of Convention of States itself, for instance. But even if the predicted “red wave” materializes in the 2022 midterms, we will be nowhere near the point of declaring victory.
In fact, our Article V convention won’t be victory either; it will just be an opportunity to engage in one particularly strategic battle. We need to accept the hard truth that victory, whatever it looks like, may be several generations away.
Yes, it’s appropriate to have a feeling of urgency with regard to an Article V convention. But there is a sense in which it doesn’t matter how long it takes.
As long as the convention is the solution to federal overreach, we must work for it.
As long as government tyranny exists, we must fight it.
As long as we live under our Constitution, We the People must practice self-governance.
