The following is an excerpt from an article published in the Roanoke (VA) Times by James Willis.
After several days of defending their resolution calling for an Article V Convention of States, Virginia lawmakers withdrew their bills in both the House of Delegates and the state Senate, conceding that they simply didn’t have the votes (“House scraps states convention bid,” Feb. 6 news story).
According to an email sent out by the Convention of States Project, the move was a strategic retreat rather than a defeat.
Call it what you will, I think it is pathetic that so many lawmakers in the state that produced men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and James Madison are so timid in their defense of liberty. Jefferson was certainly right when he referred to: “ . . . timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.” [...]
No one but proponents of a big, all-powerful government would disagree that the federal government has encroached on the powers intended to be reserved to the states and the people, allowing it to grow too large and too powerful.
The government we have now bears little resemblance to what the Founding Fathers had in mind, and it has become the No. 1 threat to the freedoms it was created to protect.
Reducing the size, scope and power of the federal government is essential to protecting the freedom we inherited, and it is our responsibility to get the job done. Ronald Reagan warned us that “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size” and those who expect Congress to fix this are delusional.
