Convention of States is Committed to our Constitution
The Convention of States effort is rooted in constitutionalism, which is committed to respecting and faithfully abiding by constitutional principles and the constitutional structure.
These principles and structure were established for the purposes of securing a functional federal republic, while protecting individual rights.
Decades of opposition to our constitutional structure and principles has resulted in their erosion and damage. We believe the best means to restore them are to apply more accountability and checks on the power of all three branches of government (reasserting their constitutional limits on power), address the abuse of power by today’s giant administrative state, and require fiscal responsibility in the federal government.
Opposition from Two Extremes
As you can imagine, there are segments of American society that oppose our efforts.
On one extreme, there are those who want to discard our constitutional structure and push the federal government toward continual growth in size and authority, with the goal of establishing some form of statism.
On the other extreme are fringe libertarians who purposely mislabel themselves as conservatives to sow confusion and seem to be pushing for secession.
This is not to suggest that all libertarians are of this radical mindset. There are many common-sense libertarians involved with Convention of States.
Fringe libertarians, such as the John Birch Society, advocate for the unconstitutional, illegitimate, and dangerous idea of “single state nullification” whereby individual states get to decide for themselves which federal laws to follow and which not to.
Their hope is to string together enough states who all assert the same position to form a nullification alliance on a given issue. The problem is they don’t support a constitutional means to do this. These folks say they want to restore the Constitution but then oppose the Convention of States Project's use of Article V, the true means by which to restore our constitutional structure.
They characterize America’s great Constitutional Convention of 1787 as a “runaway convention” whereby the Framers exceeded their instructions and conspired against the Confederation Congress, underhandedly changing the ratification rules to enact the Constitution.
This is the same argument the leftists have been circulating for years. Extremist libertarians often speak of secession and civil war as the inevitable end to our broken federal government. Thankfully, most Americans are in the middle and support a peaceful means of restoring our constitutional structure.
Attacks against Convention of States Project
Groups from both of these extremist positions attack our effort to restore our constitutional principles and structure and restore health to our federal government.
In fact, they often copy the others’ tactics in spreading disinformation and fear-mongering. They attempt to delegitimize our Constitution by referring to an Article V convention as a “con-con.” They also attempt to dishonestly spread seeds of fear that it can be a “runaway convention,” which they claim would rewrite the entire Constitution, rather than portraying it truthfully as a safe, difficult, and carefully-designed constitutional process to procure necessary amendments.
They also attempt to associate us with one or the other extremist positions. For example, Hillary Clinton publicly voiced her concocted characterization of the Convention of States Project:
“The right-wing, aided and funded by Mercers, Koch Brothers, etc., is very serious about calling a Constitutional Convention. Part of their gerrymandering is to control state legislatures, elect Republican governors. If you really get deep into what they are advocating: limits on the First Amendment, no limits on the Second Amendment, limits on criminal justice. I mean there is a very insidious right-wing agenda that is hard for Americans to really kinda wrap our heads around…”
The New American, affiliate of the John Birch Society, issued a deceptively dishonest (and intellectually shallow) hit-piece entitled “Socialists and Soros Fight for Article V Convention” wherein they attempt to link Convention of States with certain extreme left Article V efforts funded by George Soros (which thankfully have absolutely NO chance of ever coming close to meeting the threshold of garnering the support of two-thirds of the state legislatures).
This New American article states:
“It's doubtful that Mark Levin’s legion of listeners would be as eager to get behind his Article V con-con agenda if they knew whom they were fighting beside and how radically their new allies want to change our beloved Constitution. And that’s the problem. Regardless of the soothing words of Levin or others in the con-con camp, they cannot guarantee the outcome of such a convention. In fact, in light of the lists of leftist groups provided above, the results of the convention could be an outright scrapping of the Constitution written by the Founders in favor of one more in line with the progressive ideologies of Wolf-Pac, the Sierra Club, Code Pink, and others.”
Notice the similarities in deceptive language between the “far left” and the “far right” attacks on Convention of States, even though their end goals for the federal government are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Notice that their intentions are the same: to spread malicious disinformation, divide, and allow the federal overreach to continue.
We Will Prevail Because America’s Future Depends On It
These attacks are attempts to undermine our legitimate efforts, and they undermine America’s best chance at restoring our constitutional principles and structure, and repairing our federal government.
They want to stop the American people from using a constitutional provision gifted to us by our Framers for the very purpose for which it was intended.
Ultimately, truth and goodness will prevail.
