This year, the Idaho legislature will consider a resolution to join 19 other states calling for an Article V convention to propose Constitutional amendments. As momentum for the resolution builds, an army of opponents will argue against it using the rationale provided by globalization advocates.
There’s no problem to fix
Opponents will claim that there’s nothing to be fixed. What we’re seeing in Washington is merely the normal ebb and flow of politics – the pendulum swinging if you will. But while this Republican/Democrat pendulum has been swinging right, left, and back again
- The federal government has amassed $37,000,000,000,000 of debt – over $100K for every man, woman, and child in America,
- Our elected representatives exempt themselves from the laws they impose on us, and
- The bureaucrats in Washington are challenging our rights to religion, expression, due process, and self-defense.
There is a problem. A prosperous, self-governed America is unsustainable on our current path.
Not a state issue
Critics of an Article V convention will suggest that the shenanigans of Washington are not a state problem – that states should focus on their own fiscal, physical, and moral issues.
But when (not if) the dollar crashes, the savings of all Idahoans will be wiped out. When the federal government backs social justice over individual rights, Idahoans will lose their ability to worship, parent, and exercise their freedoms as they wish.
The problems in Washington are a state problem – and a critical one at that.
The solution is at the ballot box
Both political parties will suggest that Washington’s problems can only be solved at the ballot box, by voting for them. How has that been working for us? Occasionally, our votes have slowed America’s march towards socialism – but electoral politics has not arrested it since the New Deal.
Albert Einstein had an observation about doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result. He considered it lunacy. Sanity suggests that if we want a different result, it’s time to try a different approach.
The myth of the runaway convention
Critics of an Article V convention spin doom and gloom predictions that the states will lose control of the process and radicals will use a convention to undermine the bill of rights; and codify new requirements for reproductive rights, gender fluidity, and climate justice.
Those critics are suggesting that Idaho legislators – and those in other states – are incapable of appointing trustworthy delegates. Professor Robert Natelson, the foremost expert on Article V, argues convincingly that there are numerous safeguards which would prevent such a runaway convention.
However, the most important safeguard against the radicalization of our Constitution is the ratification process. An Article V convention does not have the authority to amend the Constitution. It is merely empowered to propose amendments, which must be ratified by ¾ of the states. Critics never explain how elimination of the 2nd Amendment, or codifying a Constitutional requirement to fight climate change, would garner the approval of 38 states. If 38 states supported such radical amendments, Congress would already be sending them to the states for ratification. That Congress hasn't, is evidence that such radical amendments from a convention would never be ratified
The Constitution is already being ignored
When all other arguments fail, Article V opponents claim they’re fiscal hawks. They suggest that an Article V convention will be a useless waste of money, which at best will create additional impotent constraints which the federal government will ignore.
Let me translate that: The Constitution no longer constrains government operations. The United States is terminal, so let’s not waste any time or money trying to fix it while we wait for its final death rattle.
Article V proponents do not accept that the American experiment is over, or that our continued self-governance is near its end. We believe that enough people still love America that it can be saved.
Our founding fathers understood that every government attempts to expand its power, until tyranny rules. Anticipating our current crisis, they gave us the means to address federal overreach without taking up arms, seceding from the Union, or violating our mutual pact of civilized behavior (the Constitution).
Article V gives us the means to reassert authority over the federal government – by working through our states – to collectively change the rules under which the federal government operates. We can
- Make elected office a service rather than an entitlement,
- Require fiscal restraint as a normal order of business, and
- Deny the federal government the ability to resist the will of the people.
We merely need to use the instrument those wise men who wrote the Constitution gave us – the second clause of Article V.
To learn more about an Article V convention, or become part of this grassroots movement in Idaho, visit this link.
