The following excerpt is from a great letter to the editor written by Convention of States supporter Richard Williams and published on The Daily Courier.
The Daily Courier reported on the first meeting held in the Quad City area to gin up support for it. It's called a Convention of States. I am getting personally involved in this movement because I believe it is necessary to correct the erosion to our form of government. It is one of two ways to propose and pass amendments to our Constitution. Both ways are found in Article V of the Constitution of the United States. The first way is for Congress to propose Amendments, "whenever two thirds of both houses deem it necessary." After the first 10 Amendments, the Bill of Rights was passed, and the other Amendments were passed in this manner.
The second course of action to amend our Constitution is a Convention of the States. Again, Article V states, "Congress...on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments." Our Founding Fathers purposefully made it difficult to amend the Constitution, but they didn't make it impossible. The wording of Article V makes it apparent that the Founders, in their wisdom, thought that it was important that there were two ways to amend our foundational document.
The first way is for the Federal government to propose amendments. The second way, as is more than appropriate in our system of 'checks and balances,' is for the individual state governments to propose amendments at a Convention of the States. Many of our Founders had a fear of the Federal government usurping power that belonged to the States. The Convention of the States is the way to combat a corrupt and broken Federal Government by proposing amendments that will attack the causes of the problems.
This is not a partisan issue. Those who believe our country is run by multinational corporations have just as much at stake as those who think we should amend the Constitution so that Congress cannot delegate its law making responsibilities to bureaucracies, especially those under control of the Executive Branch of the government. Crony capitalism is wrong whether the recipient of this government largess is Solyndra or Haliburton. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, et al. would have rebelled again against government that would 'bail out' private companies that the government deemed were 'too big to fail.'
Everyone knows, or should know, in the Declaration of Independence we find the phrase, "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The Founders were very precise in their language. If rights are given by a Creator, (God), they are by definition, 'unalienable.' If the rights are given by the government, or a court, they can be taken away by those same entities. [...]
The Washington establishment, Congress, the President and the courts have all been involved in the systemic erosion of the Constitution. They cannot be relied on to fix the problems they have created and, from which they benefit. The answer is a Convention of the States. Locally, we need to encourage all of our state legislators to vote for an Application to Congress to call for this Convention. Four states already have. We just need thirty more to start the restoration of our Constitutional Republic.
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