Robert Malone MD, MS is a white hat hero of the COVID-19 war for dragging the truth into the light of day against all odds, and at great personal expense. He recently published an article on his web site entitled, What An Article V Convention Might Mean: Is this country ready to open Pandora's box?
Suffice it to say that he is a brave and trustworthy man who got snookered into taking the wrong side on this issue. Believe it or not, I was once misled on the same topic by the same people, so I am in good company.
Runaway
Dr. Malone expresses his concern that an Article V Convention of States to amend the Constitution would become a runaway convention and produce a whole new Constitution that would horrify the average patriot. He got this idea from the John Birch Society. He quotes a JBS article about their history, and reprints another that will be addressed below.
JBS has a blind spot on the mission of an Article V Convention of States.
Your author was Section Leader of the Greater Baltimore Chapters of the John Birch Society for several years in the 1980s. I met John McManus, Alan Stang, Gen. Singlaub, Larry McDonald’s son, Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Shuman), Pastor Everett Silevan, Paul Snyder, and so on. I booked all of these people on various Baltimore media for the American Opinion Speakers Bureau. I provided the benediction for JBS’s national convention in the 1990s.
So I was well placed to form educated opinions of the JBS. I even attended a few JBS meetings not too many years ago.
I was taught by JBS to believe that an Article V Convention would likely lead to overturning the entire Constitution: it would be taken over by “Liberals” and they’d scuttle the Second Amendment, etc., was the fear, which is of course rubbish.
Dr. Malone presented a JBS article on his blog, linked above, authored by “Christian Gomez for the John Birch Society,” which we will now engage with. It didn’t take Mr. Gomez long to tip his hand to the wary.
He writes, “… there are some conservatives clamoring for a convention to amend the Constitution (a Constitutional Convention) that also possesses the power to entirely rewrite the Constitution.” There may be conservatives “clamoring” for a Constitutional Convention, but it isn’t Convention of States.
Ignorant or slapdash?
Mr. Gomez is either ignorant or slapdash or worse. He further states, “For example, this past July, three Republican members of Congress introduced H.Con.Res.101, a resolution in which ‘Congress hereby calls a Convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States.’ And earlier this year, in a separate on-going effort, the Convention of States (COS) Project persuaded mostly Republican state legislators in Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin to pass applications to Congress to call a Constitutional Convention.”
The problem is that these and other states have not called for a “Constitutional Convention,” but an Article V Convention of States “for proposing amendments to the Constitution.” Then in the next sentence he again calls it a constitutional convention.
This mislabeling evokes fear in some minds because it is accompanied by the idea that this is exactly what led to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that totally rewrote the Articles of Confederation and gave us the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is correct, more on this momentarily.
However, here is Convention of States’ model application for calling a Convention of States. As you can see, it’s pretty specific about what is being called for and that does not include a constitutional convention.
This was the same switcheroo JBS used on me when I was of a more tender age. Here are the facts though. In reality, regarding the states’ 1786 call for a convention to address the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation, “The goal of the upcoming convention was ‘to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate for the exigencies of the Union,’” and this is exactly what happened.
After describing the Article V convention process, Mr. Gomez writes, “If a new constitution comes out of the convention, however, it could have its own mode of ratification.” It could? This is not what is being specifically called for. Where is this “own mode of ratification” spelled out, or is this just speculation? It’s just speculation.
The model application and its enumerated concerns, linked above, are clear about the reasons for the Convention of States we are seeking.
If two-thirds of states ratify COS amendments to the Constitution, their applications must be at least generally similar. If the convention is called and, let’s say, two amendments pass for terms limits and a balanced budget, and the amendments are presented to the states, then three-fourths of the states must ratify these amendments.
This is a rigorous and lengthy process that contains its own bars against the abuse of a Convention of States. The goal is to pass specific amendments solving specific problems. Each state only gets one vote at the convention, and if anyone would suggest that e.g. language endorsing “abortion rights” be included, how far in today’s climate does any reasonable person think that would get?
Strange bedfellows
More from Mr. Gomez: “Gordon S. Woods, the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history emeritus at Brown University, notes in The Creation of the American Republic 1776 – 1787 that the delegates to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention recognized their authority as sovereign, being directly derived from the people-at-large, who are the ultimate sovereigns of political authority. George Washington likewise acknowledged this very concept of sovereignty residing in the people-at-large in his 1796 farewell address. In it, Washington said:
“’The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all.’
“As such, the delegates to the 1787 Convention were not legally bound to any limitations on their authority imposed upon them by either the state legislatures or even by Congress Assembled (or Confederation Congress).”
“As such”? This is a non sequitur. Washington simply recognized that the people have the final say in their form of government, to abolish it or amend it or whatever they want to do. Fair enough. Thank God. If the people, however, sent delegates to a convention of states and they produced a whole new Constitution as opposed to a few amendments, the will of The People would have been thwarted, not exercised.
There would therefore be no approval gained of three-fourths of the states, in the most likely event, and all subterfuge would have failed.
There is a process, unless someone is calling for a revolution, and Article V is that peaceful, legal process by which The People are to handle serious problems when Congress is off the leash and threatens our liberties. Like right now.
During the Constitutional Convention, George Mason brought to James Madison’s attention that Article V empowered the people’s representatives to amend the Constitution, but not We the People ourselves, so the clause, “or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States” was added to Article V.
Tomorrow you will probably not remember Christian Gomez’s name, or John Campbell’s, but George Mason and James Madison are immortals of American history for good reason.
Mr. Gomez quotes James Madison of all people, the author of Article V, from the Federalist Papers, to argue against an Article V Convention of States. Madison is saying in effect little more than that objections to the original Convention were possibly many, but here’s the money quote from Federalist 40, from the last paragraph: “The sum of what has been here advanced and proved is, that the charge against the convention of exceeding their powers, except in one instance little urged by the objectors, has no foundation to support it.” [Emphasis mine.]
If the people want to abolish their government and start over, it’s their right. Madison is only acknowledging that fact. He clearly states, however, that the convention did not exceed its powers.
This is true because the Constitutional Convention did exactly what it was charged with by the Annapolis Convention of States of 1786: to update the Articles of Confederation “to meet the exigencies of the Union,” not merely to amend the Articles of Confederation.
It would have taken 100 amendments to fix the problems caused by the ineffective Articles of Confederation, leaving it a bigger mess than it already was.
Our organization is called Convention of States
Is JBS wiser than our Founding Fathers who gave us the Convention of States option in Article V of the Constitution? It passed without debate at the Philadelphia Convention, so self-evident was its need.
Article V’s Convention of States option is not a self-destruct switch.
So please, JBS, bear in mind that our organization is called Convention of States, not Constitutional Convention, and for good reason.
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Convention of States is here to stop government overreach, e.g. governments at all levels ignoring the Second Amendment and other constitutional guarantees of our God-given rights. Using the Article V procedure to bypass the DC swamp, we are on our way to collecting enough states to call a convention of states to amend the Constitution and fix our broken nation. We want to end multi-decade tenure of elected officials with term limits. We also aim to balance the budget, and end unconstitutional laws and regulations. We’ll keep fighting for you until you join us, then we’ll fight together.
Editor's Note: We have reviewed and updated this article to better reflect the mission and core values of COS.
