As noted in an earlier post, the Article V convention of states resolution in the Massachusetts legislature (known as the General Court) passed one committee earlier this year, and is now in front of the House Steering, Policy & Scheduling Committee.
This committee will decide whether the resolution will be moved to the floor for general discussion and debate.
Due to the volume of legislation and resolutions the committee must review, public hearings will not be held for the COS resolution, H 3660.
As a result, the Mass COS team has sent the following statement -- and enhanced version of the testimony delivered by the team earlier this year -- to each member of the committee in support of H 3660.
Ladies and gentlemen of this committee:
The resolution before you – H 3660 – provides the General Court with another opportunity to demonstrate the Commonwealth’s traditional role in securing and advancing first principles of self-government.
The principles of government by consent of the governed have been articulated in these halls by the most renowned and celebrated statesman of Massachusetts.
Just prior to his January 1961 inauguration as 35th president of this republic, John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of the General Court. He reminded the assembled that during his time as a United States representative and senator, he had
“...been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella…We must always consider that we shall be a city on a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.’”
Those members of the Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs who voted to move this resolution for broader consideration here embodied another historic standard recalled by the president-elect:
“For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this Commonwealth: ‘We do not imitate – for we are a model to others.’”
President-elect Kennedy argued that public officials would be measured by, among other qualities, whether you “were truly men of dedication – with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest.”
We believe that calling a Convention of States to limit the power and scope of the federal government is in full service to the public good and national interest. Now you have the opportunity to build upon the foundation established by your colleagues to meet the historic standard set by this state, and truly make Massachusetts a model to others.
The State of the Union
By any objective measure, a significant and significantly growing majority of Americans believe that our republic has veered completely off course, far afield from the principles and limitations established by the United States Constitution.
Not only has the federal government long strayed from its enumerated powers, it has become totally incompetent. That incompetence can be measured in wasted lives, trillions of wasted dollars and debt, and the erosion of the liberty of every American citizens.
Far from a limited government dedicated to sustaining ordered liberty, the federal government has descended into a lawless oligarchy that regularly abuses its power and bifurcates the citizenry.
Too many in the federal government – regardless of party – act as rulers rather than representatives, and see constituents not as fellow citizens, but as subjects who are to be mastered. This is in spite of, as the philosopher Russell Kirk wrote, “Our Constitution is republican – designed to secure the public good through the sharing of political power among many people.” In this republic, the people are sovereign.
Now, in great and growing numbers, the people are prepared to peacefully and lawfully reclaim our authority. That reclamation begins with utilizing the constitutional mechanism put in place to address the expansion of federal power and the abuse thereof.
This document is submitted in support of H 3660 to advance the activation of Article V of the United States Constitution for the purposes of calling a convention of states to discuss and propose amendments limiting the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.
It will explain the origin and purpose of Article V, some of the reasons why supporters of a conventions of states believe it is necessary, and what you are being asked – and not asked – to do.
What is Article V?
Article V of the Constitution provides the sovereign citizens, through our state legislatures, the method by which to return to first principles of a balanced and limited government. Put crudely, Article V is the “break glass in case of emergency” option for the states. We are in such an emergency.
Article V outlines two methods for amending the Constitution. The second is our focus. It states that Congress, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments.” (italics added)
Years prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Virginia delegate Col. George Mason had written the initial draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the first document in history that recognized the rights of the individual citizen as sovereign. During the Convention, Mason insisted upon preventing what could be termed as a runaway Congress from blocking the right of the people to amend the proposed Constitution.
The notion that the states – without interference from Congress – would have the ability to re-balance constitutional order was presented as part of the Virginia Plan, which was authored by James Madison and heavily influenced by Mason.
John Adams would echo this vital emphasis on balance in the construction of the federal government in his work Defence of the Constitution, to which this document will later refer.
Some delegates to the convention believed that any such language as contained in the Virginia Plan unnecessary. However, as Madison noted:
"Col: Mason urged the necessity of such a provision. The plan now to be formed will certainly be defective, as the Confederation has been found on trial to be. Amendments will therefore be necessary, and it will be better to provide for them, in any easy, regular and Constitutional way than to trust chance and violence. It would be improper to require the consent of the Natl Legislature, because they may abuse their power, and refuse their consent on that very account...”
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman suggested a plan by which Congress would propose amendments for ratification by the states. Yet Mason, ever skeptical of overarching centralized power and all too familiar with the temptations of mortal men when met with wielding such power, would not be moved. Again, from Madison’s Notes:
“Col: Mason thought the plan of amending the Constitution exceptionable & dangerous. As the proposing of amendments is in both the modes to depend...on Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case.”
In other words, why would a central government that becomes tyrannical ever propose legislation or amendments to restrain its tyranny?
The second clause of Article V was included and, according to Madison, approved unanimously and without debate.
Mason’s persistence was a wise and noble gift. We must put that inheritance to good use.
As Mason and many others – including Adams – feared, the federal government has indeed become outsized, wasteful, and thoroughly corrupt; a soft tyranny transforming into something worse.
An Article V convention of states is necessary to propose limits upon that government to benefit all citizens.
Politicians and power brokers of all stripes in Washington and elsewhere enjoy appealing to the fallacy that the United States is a democracy. This or that piece of legislation or statement or social media post is “a danger to our democracy.” “Democracy dies in darkness.” Etc., etc.
We do not live in a democracy. As Adams said, “No democracy ever did exist or can exist.”
Fisher Ames of Dedham, who would serve in the Massachusetts convention that ratified the Constitution and as a U.S. representative, was even more explicit: “Our disease is democracy. It is not the skin that festers – our very bones are carious, and their marrow blackens with gangrene. Which rogues shall be first, is no moment...”
The United States was constructed as a representative republic with all power not explicitly given to the federal government granted to the several states. But this arrangement has become inverted. As Calvin Coolidge said to the Massachusetts State Senate upon his election as president of the Senate:
“The latest, most modern, and nearest perfect system that statesmanship has devised is representative government...No nation has discarded it and retained liberty. Representative government must be preserved.”
Restraint and Balance
An Article V convention of states would certainly discuss and propose an amendment or amendments that place restraints upon the power of the federal government to tax and spend.
The United States is broke. We are worse than broke. We need to pay somewhere between $30 trillion and $150 trillion of our obligations to get to broke.
Citizens helplessly watch Continuing Resolutions being enacted by Congress and signed by presidents of both major parties that violate the Budget Act. Debt ceilings are raised; the term captures the absurdity. How many times have you raised the ceiling of your house?
Coolidge put it elegantly in his Autobiography:
“Both men and nations should live in accordance with their means and devote their substance not only to productive industry, but to the creation of the various forms of beauty and the pursuit of culture which gives adornments to the art of life.
Wise words from one of the noblest men to have ever served in the government of Massachusetts. But as the author L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
Today money is printed uncontrollably by the federal government to adorn ever-increasing benefits that disincentivize work and increase the tax burden on a populace already stretched to the limits. There is nothing beautiful or cultured about such an arrangement.
While previous generations of Americans seemed to sacrifice for others not yet born, our federal government seems to be on a quest to see what can be inflicted upon others not yet born.
Congress has consistently adopted gigantic omnibus spending bills. While relatively novel in the context of the full history of the republic, such bills have been passed for decades.
In 1989, Congress pushed through a budget reconciliation act that a then-member described as
“So voluminous...that it was hauled into the chamber in an oversized box. Its thousands of pages, which the clerk hadn’t even time to number, had to be tied together with rope, like newspapers bundled for recycling. While reading it was obviously out of the question, it’s true that I was permitted to walk around the box and gaze upon it from several angles, and even to touch it.”
Describing a piece of legislation not as something that can be read in 15 minutes, but as an attraction at the Franklin Zoo or the New England Aquarium, is the opposite of limited government in a representative republic.
An Article V convention of states would most certainly consider an amendment or amendments that would require that General Accepted Accounting Principles be forced upon the federal government, and a requirement that annual federal budgets be balanced.
First-Hand Knowledge
During nearly a decade as an employee at the U.S. Department of Defense, one of our COS volunteers regularly witnessed the abhorrent waste of taxpayer funds first-hand.
To cite just one example, a piece of research equipment requisitioned at a cost of $500,000 went unused for years. It was finally returned as “excess equipment”. Half-a-million dollars in exchange for nothing.
The expenditure did not protect our border. It did not deter a terrorist attack. It did not bring any military personnel home. It was simply wasted.
The only purpose that the equipment served was an attempt to justify the prevention of cuts to the defense budget. It is standard practice within the federal government to spend allocated funds on unnecessary items and services in order to extinguish those funds and ensure that the next year’s budget is not cut – and perhaps increased.
Our volunteer has read numerous email alerts sent by the heads of finance divisions that urge Department of Defense employees to purchase equipment and supplies to exhaust all available funds. In the example cited, $500,000 can be a decade or more of salary for many, yet the federal government nonchalantly considers such a sum to be of relative insignificance. That is just one line item within one division within one federal agency.
It is self-evident that this is a broken system. We are robbing untold numbers of generations to fund waste and sloth. Prior to our volunteer’s time in government, he wondered where trillions of dollars could have gone. He no longer wonders.
That is why, in part, he and millions of others support an Article V convention of states. We must at least consider and propose restraints such as balanced budget amendments and the application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to stop and prevent such waste and abuse in the federal government.
Time’s Up
Read the op-ed section of most any local newspaper on any given day, and you will likely find calls for term limits for members of Congress. An Article V convention of states will certainly address such calls and the reasons for congressional term limits, which are legion.
Thomas Jefferson claimed in personal correspondence that “I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty.”
So wrote the author of the Declaration of Independence. Anyone remotely familiar with Jefferson’s financial troubles knows that he was telling the truth and likely one of the most in need of money among his peers in government.
Yet read those words aloud to a group of contemporary members of Congress and they would likely burst out laughing. Jefferson: What a fool!
Countless members of Congress have dirtied their hands while adding plenty to their private fortunes during their time in office – time that expands due to the advantages of incumbency.
Those members would do well to be reminded of Calvin Coolidge’s 1919 message to this General Court when vetoing a proposed salary increase. In it, he reiterates the first principles of the citizen-legislator that the Founders envisioned – the diametric opposite of the parasites devouring their host that comprise most of the United States Congress today, the same body that the Convention of States movement intends to – and will -- bypass.
“Service in the General Court is not obligatory but optional. It is not to be undertaken as a profession of a means of livelihood…
“There are services rendered to the Commonwealth by senators and representatives that are priceless. For the searching out of great principles on which legislation is based there is no adequate compensation...When membership is sought as a means of livelihood, legislation will pass from a public function to a private enterprise…
“The place each member of the General Court will hold in the estimation of his constituents will never depend on his salary, but on the ability and integrity with which he does his duty; not on what he receives, but on what he gives; and only out of the bountifulness of his own giving will his constituents raise him to power.”
Unable or unwilling to heed Coolidge’s words, members of Congress have a real faculty for treating federal funds as a personal bank under the cover of bearing gifts to their constituencies.
Consider the case of a former Senate Budget Committee chairman who earmarked around $66 million in treasury funds to convert an air force base into a business park. That business park just happened to be developed by the senator’s brother. The senator also just happened to have invested somewhere between half-a-million and $1 million in the project, eventually raking in hundreds of thousands on those investments.
The senator answered questions about such earmarks by saying that he had not broken any of the Senate’s ethical rules. Quite true – and the absolute problem. Congress makes the rules and comically “polices” itself.
Legislating in such a fashion is not in line with the principle of equality before the law. It establishes a hierarchy of privilege and influence. Insiders, wealthy corporations armed with lobbying divisions, and political donors are granted exemptions and/or benefits that most citizens do not enjoy. Any mandate or law that is not equally applied is invalid and unacceptable.
And in legislating in such fashion, Members of Congress need only worry about preferred clients – donors who can assist in the primary objective: Re-election.
The advantages of incumbency are endless. Name-recognition and fundraising build upon themselves over the years, making it difficult for even the most able of citizens to make elections competitive.
As alluded to earlier, entrenched members of Congress in both major political parties often award monies and rights to family members and preferred constituencies that can assist them in holding and increasing power.
The seniority system in Congress rewards longevity with committee chairmanships or ranking minority status on committees, regardless of competence or fidelity to the Constitution.
Many of the Framers of that Constitution did not envision such concentration and continuation of power. If they had, they never would have bothered George III in the first place. Jefferson expressed disapproval to James Madison in December 1787 concerning a lack of term limits in the then-proposed Constitution.
Yet rotation was well-observed and respected by members of Congress until 1901 and the dawn of what is called the Progressive movement. To that point, most members of Congress did not seek re-election after one term. By custom, one such congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln served only a single term by choice. As he demonstrated, rotation in office did not ban individuals from public affairs. Term limits would merely place what has become a necessary restraint upon endless federal office-holding.
Political careerism and the advantages of the incumbency necessitate the need for an Article V convention of states to consider a constitutional amendment that places term limits upon members of Congress.
Self term-limiting was also exhibited in the office of the presidency. Presidents faithfully adhered to the standard set by George Washington until Franklin D. Roosevelt defied it in 1940, necessitating the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, codifying the two-term limit for presidents.
Because there is no such amendment for the House and Senate, the advantages of incumbency, the ability to direct gifts from the Treasury, and the amassing of power has fostered hundreds of careerists in Congress.
They claim unlimited power, vote themselves pay raises, and exempt themselves from legislation that they pass, proving George Mason’s point over and over. Congress as presently constructed would never consent to limiting its power and privilege.
John Adams was not only one of the most accomplished politicians the Commonwealth has produced, but one of the most far-seeing political philosophers. Of such power and privilege he wrote:
“It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power. The passions are all unlimited; nature has left them so; if they could be bounded they would be extinct...If they surrender the guidance for any course of time to any one passion, they may depend upon finding it, in the end, a usurping, domineering, cruel tyrant. They were intended by nature to live together in society, and in this way to restrain one another...”
Term limits would limit power and passion, and force careerists to emulate Lincoln and found other outlets for their ambition. Establishing such limits would more perfectly align the Constitution with the philosophy and principles of limited government favored by most of the Founders. It would also result in the election of true citizen-legislators who work not to secure their next victory and sinecure, but the hard-won liberty of the people.
The unreadable bills mentioned earlier, cobbled together by unelected staffers and money-no-object lobbying operations, are not reflective of representative government and are, in fact, its demise.
As a late congressman who was in office for 47 years said of one 3,000-page monstrosity:
“I love these members, they get up and say ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”
It’s true. No legislator can read or comprehend the bills on which he or she is voting. That is why most of those responsibilities should be left to the state and local governments to consider.
An Article V convention of states considering amendments to restrain the federal government might also consider repealing the 17th Amendment to restore balance to Congress and give back to states their proper seat in federal affairs.
Adams wrote of the significance of balance in his Defence of the Constitution of the United States:
“Where the people have a voice, and there is no balance, there will be everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors, until a standing army, with a general at its head, commands the peace, or the necessity of an equilibrium is made appear to all, and is adopted by all.”
Senators were to be the voice of you, the state legislatures, in Washington. They were to provide necessary checks upon the executive and quell the potential tyranny of the majority in the House. The 17th Amendment, written and ratified in the so-called populist progressive movement of the early 20th century, obliterated that arrangement. Upon its April 8, 1913, ratification, senators were transformed from ambassadors to free agents, and have largely acted as such ever since.
This stands against the founders’ vision and has come at great cost to the two houses of Congress, state sovereignty, and republican government. Direct election of senators was said to be more democratic than the language of Article I of the Constitution. But the founders, as noted earlier, did not establish a pure democracy. They established a federal republic and wrote the Constitution accordingly.
The Judiciary
It is difficult to argue against the assertion that the United States Supreme Court has become totally unmoored from its original purpose.
Decisions from the Court are treated with a breathless anticipation equaled perhaps only by the faithful awaiting the white smoke at the Vatican. Those decisions are regarded as the final say in constitutional law. A current member of the House once said of a pronouncement from the tribunal: “It is a decision of the Supreme Court. So this is almost as if God has spoken.”
Justices and federal judges are accorded undue reverence and significance. They increasingly encroach upon the lives of sovereign citizens. Yet matters of commerce, liberty, and life and death were not to be in the hands of a few robed attorneys.
How did this come to pass and what can be done about it?
Judicial independence is vital in a constitutional republic. This was recognized by those who foresaw the incremental expansion of judicial power.
One of those was Brutus, writing in Anti-Federalist 13. Brutus, who was thought to be New York judge Robert Yates, was particularly concerned about how the expansion of judicial power would impact the states. He wrote:
“Perhaps nothing could have been better conceived to facilitate the abolition of the state governments than the constitution of the judicial. They will be able to extend the limits of the general government gradually, and by insensible degrees, and to accommodate themselves to the temper of the people. Their decisions on the meaning of the constitution will commonly take place in cases which arise between individuals; with which the public will not be generally acquainted; one ajudication will form a precedent to the next, and this to a following one.”
As is evident – and as Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the infamous case Marbury v. Madison demonstrated – Yates was proven correct. Marbury confirmed the assertion made by Yates and expanded the authority of the Court. As Marshall wrote in his opinion: “The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”
That expansion of power – unauthorized in the Constitution or by any subsequent amendment – resulted in disastrous interpretations and rulings.
Consider just the most obvious, then-Chief Justice Roger Taney’s terrible decision and reasoning in the Dred Scott case of 1856. Taney and a few other justices ruled that Scott, a slave, had no standing to sue for his freedom. This did much to bring about the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln’s response to this decision was delivered within his first inaugural address:
“At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
Ruling after ruling and edict after edict has followed.
Wickard Opens the Barn Door
One of the worst decisions the Court ever made was in the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn. The Court ruled that the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution enveloped intra-state commerce. Nowhere in the Constitution is this power granted.
This increased the power and scope of federal agencies to regulate commerce in an extraconstitutional fashion. Wickard established the dangerous and evil precedent that the federal government can deny access to something or prevent the individual from saying “No.”
Wickard involved a farmer who grew excess wheat that he was not planning to sell, and for which he was going to use on his own land – not trading across state or county lines. The Court deemed his choice to have somehow impacted demand, and that the government could compel economic consumption. This is a gross violation of not only the language of the Constitution, but of individual liberty and decision-making – the creation of serfs.
Because of the undue and unconstitutional influence given the Supreme Court, nominations and confirmations regarding the lifetime appointment of potential Supreme Court justices have taken on a dramatic importance that is out of proportion for a representative government by an order of magnitude.
These usually devolve into circuses and further divide the republic. Federal judicial nominees are portrayed as divinely inspired or evil incarnate. Neither is true. Judges are fallible human beings to whom excess power should never be given – particularly if it is unchecked by those who abdicate their constitutional duty to balance and see the Court as God.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, between 2010 and 2018, no less than 131 federal judges not only failed to recuse themselves while hearing cases involving firms in which they or family members held shares, but, in two-thirds of those cases, ruled in favor of their own financial self-interest.
Participation in those cases violated the code of conduct for federal judges, who are required to recuse themselves if a case in which they have any “ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small” comes before them.
Whether such oversights were, as some judges claim, “honest mistakes” is immaterial. The judges violated the code of conduct. Such behavior does nothing to alter the appearance that the federal government is an oligarchy, in which its privileged members are not merely immune from the rules and the consequences of breaking those rules, but profit financially.
One of the judges involved was as saying of her $218,000 annual taxpayer subsidized federal salary:
“I have my judicial salary, buy the law really restricts what else judges can do for additional income.”
If an annual salary of nearly a quarter of a million dollars is insufficient, perhaps the federal judiciary is not for you.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed banning members of Congress from owning and trading stocks while in office. That should go for federal judges as well.
Fixed terms for federal bench would go far in cycling out judges who are themselves incapable of, or unwilling to, recuse themselves from cases in which they or their families have a financial stake. Judicial term limits would also apply the concept of rotation and true public service to the judiciary.
An Article V convention of states would likely discuss and propose amendments to limit the terms of service for the federal judiciary. A convention might also consider ideas such as giving Congress or state legislatures the ability to override decisions by the Supreme Court via a super majority so that the Court’s power can be properly checked.
The Fourth Branch
In the 1970s, political scientist Theodore Lowi pointed out that when Congress established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it did not explicitly state any policy goals for those agencies, nor provide any standards for their operation or conduct. The agencies were given a free pass to make it up as they went.
The fourth branch of government – the administrative state – was never intended to exist. The rule of the administrative state is anti-constitutional and allows for a vast array of policymaking. It is an oligarchy, meaning a rule by the few for their own purposes and supported by interest groups. This leads to the disenfranchisement of the sovereign citizen.
Congress further ignores its role by permitting the president to issue executive orders that are often extra-constitutional in nature and practice. Such orders and regulations, no matter who is issuing them, can undo decades of positive accomplishments in weeks or months. They are not subject to review or rebuke by the sovereign people.
This abandonment of proper roles and duties violates one of the most fundamental principles of limited government and ordered liberty. The founders of this republic were significantly influenced by the political philosopher John Locke. He wrote that the lawmaking power was the legislature’s alone:
“The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive and voluntary grant and institutions, can be no other than what the positive grant conveyed, which being only to make law, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in other hands.”
Even if, amid the monstrous bills passed by Congress, there are provisions that are outlawed, federal agencies can put them back in because of the authority granted to secretaries of those agencies. In any given piece of legislation there are hundreds of references to the Secretary “shall” or the Secretary “may” or the Secretary “determines.”
Who elected the Secretary to shall, may, or determine anything?
In such a hyper-regulated nation as ours has become, who among us is not in violation of a law or regulation several times a day? The federal government dictates, among other things, details such as how much water an individual may have in his dishwasher, the composition of gas can spouts, and the angle of step ladder placement. Did Washington’s men endure Valley Forge in order that their ancestors might one day regulate the placement of step ladders?
The weaponization of federal agencies such as the IRS, FBI, and CIA – none of which were established in the Constitution – against American citizens for their political beliefs is an insult to a free republic. Any citizen, regardless of political affiliation – or no political affiliation at all – is subject to the ever-encompassing power of the unelected administrative state for violating the myriad of regulations, edicts, and decisions that are made in a distant capital.
An Article V convention of states would likely consider an amendment or amendments limiting the power and scope of the federal bureaucracy, likely via a requirement that Congress be made to reauthorize individual departments by stand-alone reauthorization bills every two or three years.
A Diminished Citizenry
Instead of a people governed by a document that can be held between thumb and forefinger, American citizens are ruled by an ever-expanding annotated Constitution. It weighs ten pounds and comprises thousands of pages of interpretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court. It is the product of the expansion of judicial power that began with Marbury v. Madison, tangible proof of the all-encompassing federal government.
That government has fostered a loss of confidence in the sovereignty of this republic, pushing ever-increasing burdens upon the individual and the small businessperson. It has produced bulky legislation spilling over hundreds or thousands of pages and contrived thousands upon thousands of regulations in The Federal Registry.
It employs legions of lawyers to interpret such regulations and has permitted swarms of compliance officers to brandish them like a sword. It has yawned at the piling up of debt and the erosion of the credit of the United States, accepting and encouraging judicial fiat and a creeping encroachment into the private affairs of citizens and private institutions.
Taken as a whole, the federal government now
“...covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules...The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power...compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
That was the French writer and philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th century, unknowingly describing today’s United States.
Such an environment drains the spirit of independence nobly won by our forefathers and successfully defended by their descendants. It drains the spirit of self-respect, sensitivity to one’s neighbors, and the proper relationship between citizen and government that is vital to liberty.
Now it is time to restrain the federal government from acting beyond its bounds. The states can and must do so. Article V grants that power.
How it Works
Amending the Constitution is rightly an involved and difficult process that must clear significant hurdles.
Upon 34 state legislatures agreeing to the adoption of the uniform convention of states resolution that has been introduced:
1. Congress is required by Article V to call a convention of states.
2. All 50 state legislatures name commissioners to the convention as each legislature sees fit.
3. The convention of states is limited in purpose; that is, to discuss and propose amendments to the United States Constitution that narrow the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government. These are the possible amendments that were earlier mentioned and could include congressional and/or judicial term limits, fiscal restraints, and restraints upon the administrative (or fourth) branch of the federal government.
4. Should a majority of the states agree to one or any of the proposed amendments, Congress can either direct the state legislatures to vote upon those amendments, or establish ratification conventions in each state to debate and vote upon the ratification of the proposed amendments.
5. As stipulated by the Constitution, three-fourths of the states – 38 states – must ratify an amendment or amendments to be added to the Constitution.
Suggestions that a convention of states would nullify or disfigure the Constitution are unfounded.
A convention of states is not a Constitutional Convention such as that of 1787. As outlined, 38 states must ratify a proposed amendment to add it to the Constitution. It is difficult to imagine a dozen state legislatures – let alone 38 of them – that would ratify an amendment or series of amendments that would so alter the Constitution as to destroy its basic protections and freedoms.
Furthermore, if an Article V convention of states could so easily alter or erase the Constitution, why would the mechanism have been included in the original document? As Madison argues in Federalist 43:
“It was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing [amendments] should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable...It, moreover, equally enables the general and the State governments to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by experience on one side, or the other...”
Your support for this resolution merely advances it to the larger legislative body for further discussion and reasonable debate.
It DOES NOT establish or even advance a call for a Constitutional Convention. A convention of states is not a Constitutional Convention. It is a limited-purpose convention for discussing and proposing amendments that limit the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.
It DOES do the bidding of the people to advance a conversation among and between the sovereign constituents and their state representatives about how best to rein in the federal government and assert for the Commonwealth the responsibilities and power designated to it by the founders. This is the definition of republican government – federalism in action.
Utilizing the Constitution to preserve the Constitution is under no circumstances reckless or risky. It is our duty.
First Principles
The strength of the republic depends upon adherence to the first principles that were largely established by the leading lights of this Commonwealth, including Coolidge who said: “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to law, and obedience to law is to liberty.”
The federal government in its current form is a tyranny, dispensing unequal justice under color of law, often the color of regulation or judicial fiat.
We are demanding that our federal government adhere to those principles, and asking you to again pick up the standard set in Massachusetts. We are asking you to exercise the power given to you through us in Article V.
We do not seek to overthrow the government, disfigure the Constitution, or withdraw our consent to be governed. Ours is a nonpartisan and nonviolent effort dedicated to strengthening the Constitution by returning power not granted to the federal government back to the several states where it belongs.
But do not mistake our civility for casual purpose or lack of deep anger. We are joined by millions of citizens whose patience is not wearing thin, but at an end. No federal representative, senator, president, judge, or bureaucrat has the authority to stray from fidelity to the Constitution.
Citizens who consent to be governed delegate our authority by communicating how we wish to be represented. We are communicating our support for this resolution. We urge that it be moved to the floor or referred to another committee so that the whole of the General Court and the whole of the Commonwealth can engage and be heard.
Have Faith in Massachusetts
Patriotism takes many forms, including honest conversation and debate about what is wrong with our country and how it can be peacefully resolved in a way that benefits all citizens.
Supporters of an Article V convention of states believe in the design, necessity, and process of Article V. Your support of this resolution is an important step in reclaiming limited government by, of, and for the people.
Our spirit is that of Massachusetts farmer Levi Preston. His stated motivation for having fought in the American Revolution echoes across the centuries. It animates our efforts and should animate your support for this resolution. Why did Mr. Preston fight Britain, then the most powerful military in the world? As he put it, “We had always governed ourselves, and them redcoats meant that we shouldn’t.”
You can reaffirm what President Kennedy called to mind in this building in January 1961: Concerning matters essential to self-government and ordered liberty, Massachusetts is a model to all, and serves as a beacon of light for our sister states.
Supporters of an Article V convention of states are confident that you have the courage, judgment, integrity, and dedication to let that light shine on the necessary conversation that must occur in order to protect and advance the first principles so long cherished, nurtured, and advanced here.
You can perform the role that the founders, many of whom were also members of their state legislatures, envisioned for you – to stand in the breach when the federal government exceeds its limits and becomes tyrannical, and to declare that the Constitution is not a dead letter.
