A common objection against a Convention of States launched by those who support the status quo in D.C. is that the convention would "run away."
They imagine a doomsday scenario involving backroom deals, deep state bureaucrats, and powerful lobbies that totally transform the Constitution as we know it.
But as Tom Lindsay explained at Forbes.com, those who fall for such a hypothetical suffer from a severe lack of imagination. In reality, a Convention of States will spark major national interest and all but ensure maximum oversight over the proceedings:
Now I turn to a still-deeper reason not to fear a runaway convention. If 34 state legislatures actually were to sink the “long-shot,” that is, were they to make history and agree on a convention call, consider the vast multiplicity of coalitions that would need to be formed in each state, between and among states, and across the country. Such a massive nationwide coalition would both require and, in turn, enhance significantly a substantial increase in public knowledge of the nature and causes of federal overreach and of the power of the states and their citizens to combat it through Article V.
The educational effect that such a nationwide debate would have on the American people would be so transformative that it should mollify any runaway-convention concerns, which underestimate the effect on Congress, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court of such an unprecedented movement. Faced with an historic uprising by We the People, unscrupulous delegates and/or Congress would be unable to pull strings from behind closed doors without triggering a national uproar.
Through underestimating the salutary political consequences that would follow a successful effort by 34 states to apply for an Article V convention of states, those fearing its unintended consequences also miss something else: They miss the fact that, in proportion as the Article V movement grows, it will educate everyday Americans in the liberating power of our Constitution.
Today, through no fault of their own, Americans know less and less about the Constitution. This is because our schools teach it less and less. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only one in every three college students graduates having taken even one course in American Government. The reason for this lapse is that over the past half-century, the majority of American colleges and universities have come to no longer require study of the political, moral, and philosophic foundation of the American experiment in self-government.[...]
In this light, an additional benefit of the Article V movement would be to provide Americans the knowledge they need to restore the Constitution. Americans would learn again that the people already possess their natural rights, before government is ever instituted. That is what “natural rights” means. Through the compact that is our Constitution, the people agree to delegate some of their natural authority to government, but only so long as the government remains faithful to the liberty-promoting purposes for which it was established. Learning this lesson alone would be of immense help to the American people.
Lindsay goes on to point out that even the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia supported the effort to call a Convention of States to rein in federal power.
The Founders anticipated Congress might one day grow out of control and would resist giving due “attention to many issues the people are concerned with, particularly those involving restrictions on the federal government's own power,” Scalia said. For this reason, they provided the remedy in Article V. “If the only way to get that convention is to take this minimal risk, then it is a reasonable one,” concluded Scalia.
Bottom line? A Convention of States will benefit our country in numerous ways, and the risk of a runaway is mitigated by, among other things, the people themselves. We can and we will hold our state representatives accountable, and the result will be a smaller, more limited, more fiscally responsible federal government.
The only question is, what are we waiting for? Sign the Convention of States Petition below to show your support!
