The following was written by C. David Swanson. Click here to read Part 1.
Many today are in favor of rule by experts, the so-called “best and brightest” appointed rather than elected, as a safeguard against inconvenient election results that occasionally occur in our representative democracy.
Because of the growth of statism in the U.S. government, we are at a point where elections and the voice of the people are taken as mere suggestions, and mandates are cast aside if they don’t comport with the now-dominant top-down plan for the country.
This elitist “vision” now dominates education, media, entertainment, government bureaucracies and agencies, both major political parties, in many legislatures, and even in the federal and some state judiciaries.
Today the Constitution is seen by these several sectors as obsolete and an impediment, as it has been for more than 100 years.
By their diligent efforts, the Constitution has been nearly obscured by many thousands of pages of case law precedent that has so often served to undermine it, especially in the last 70-80 years.
In fact, it requires earnest, informed study to understand our founding documents--through the smokescreen of decades of misinterpretation and misapplication--to recognize how the drift has occurred.
If readers are discomfited by these fact-based opinions, you are not alone. Approximately half the country (perhaps more) is decidedly not in favor of what has become a Euro-style society.
The one decisive remedy left to us is a state-driven convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution, as per Article V of that document. By a few well-chosen amendments, the country might be returned to a more constitutional form of governance with an emphasis on individual liberty and greater state sovereignty.
Today’s three-million-strong, citizen-lead Convention of States movement exists for this express purpose. The Convention of States resolutions call for an Article V convention that would allow only proposed amendments which:
- impose fiscal restraints on the federal government,
- limit its power and jurisdiction, and
- impose term limits on its officials, including members of Congress.
A resolution to this precise effect must be passed by thirty-four states for the convention to be mandated and called.
Presciently and providentially, Col. George Mason, in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, saw the need for this clause, to balance the scales of government power in a future where our federal rulers would lose their sense of propriety.
We are now there. Without taking this rigorous action, those of us who desire the salvation of our constitutional republican form of government will see it irretrievably gone.
If this article has prompted concern and you feel Montana should be join the call, visit the Convention of States website for a primer and advanced studies in the rectitude of, and necessary action for, bringing about a Convention of States for proposing amendments to the Constitution.
This is not a “constitutional convention” or “con-con,” as some have mislabeled it. It is a "convention for proposing amendments,” the first essential step in the peoples’ constitutional amending process.
