MORE CALLS FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
Over the yeas I've been occasionally sounding the warning against the idea of convening an article V constitutional convention, and as we've taken yet another step closer to that goal recently (as the following article reveals), I do so again here. Most people know that I am an anti-Federalist. I think our current constitution - the product of the 1787 convention - is a mess and have said so on many occasions. My principal reason for saying it is a mess is that the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments - is really a Bill of Afterthoughts that were, as we know, amended to the Constitution to win the support of us anti-Federalists at the time. Had the Philadelphia conventioners have been that concerned about natural human rights that come from God, they would have been enumerated in the preamble ab initio and in the original proposed document, rather than tacked on after the fact as a political sop. Here as elsewhere, I am a firm believer that an ordo theologiae exposes the mentality of the people using or advocating it. The telltale clue was in fact provided by Alexander Hamilton in the very first paragraph of the very first Federalist paper, where the country is referred to as an "empire", and not a republic, and we've been living in Hamilton's Horror of an empire - with all its attendant imperial ambitions and corruptions - since then.
Bad as all that is, however, I have also stated repeatedly that I believe the idea of a constitutional convention is even worse, for the simple reason, which again I have stated many times, that we certainly do not want a constitution of the sort that our current political class - the Jeb Bushes, Hillary Clintons, Barack Obamas, Chuck Schumers, Nancy Pelosis - would cobble together. It would make Hamilton's Horror look like a kindergarten nap, and forget about a Bill of Rights, afterthought or no, and there would be no Patrick Henry's or Elbridge Gerry's or even James Madison's to put on any brakes.
With that in mind, ponder the following article shared by V.T., an article with which I am agreed (with the exception of the bad name it gives wolves):
Notice what the inherent problems of a constitutional convention are, because this article spells out the problems point by point, and explicitly:
What are the dangers associated with convening a Con-Con?:
There is no constitutional authority for a limited convention.
There is no guidance on how delegates would be selected.
There is no guidance on who could qualify as a delegate.
There is no guidance on how many delegates each state could send.
There is no provision for stopping a runaway convention.
There is no provision for how rules would be established.
There is no provision for how rules would be enforced.
There is no role provided for the people to play in the process.
There is no power provided for the people to stop a convention once it starts.
There is no description of the ratification conventions Congress could choose to call.
There are no rules governing the ratification conventions Congress could choose to call.
There is no means provided for either the states or the people to challenge Congress’s choice of the method of ratification.
There is no test provided for a qualifying application submitted by a state.
The acceptance by one Congress of a state application for a convention does not bind subsequent Congresses from accepting that application.
Application for a convention submitted by one state legislature does not prevent subsequent state legislatures from revoking the previous application.
All these issues would be challenged in court and would take years to be decided.
The issues to be addressed at a convention to propose amendments would likely be moot by the time the challenges reached the U.S. Supreme Court for final adjudication.
If 100 percent of registered voters opposed an amendment proposed by a convention, but the requisite number of state legislatures or ratifying conventions (according to the process determined by Congress for consideration of proposed amendments) supported it, then that amendment would become part of the Constitution regardless of the will of the people.
The same scenario is true if a proposed amendment were approved by 100 percent of registered voters but rejected by the ratification conventions or state legislatures (according to the process determined by Congress for consideration of proposed amendments).
If you're wondering why there are no such guidelines, a close examination of these nineteen points in comparison to the original convention will reveal that the original convention - by exceeding its mandate to adjust the original articles of confederation - basically established this state of affairs.
In short, any future constitutional convention is merely an excuse for yet another coup d'etat. Bad as the current system, Hamilton's Horror, is, it is much better than anything our current political class would propose, and I would also aver that calling such a convention when one political party is rabidly Jacobin, and the other nothing but disguised technocracy, is an incredibly bad idea. We have no Madisons, Henrys, or Gerrys, and our problem isn't our current system, but rather, that our current system is being ignored. Don't believe me? Just look at the recent decades' scuffles over the budget, and the fact that every few years or so we have a threat of another government shutdown which is averted at the last minute by yet another "continuing resolution". But does Congress even really author the budgets it passes? No. Does it exercise its oversight in a constitutional manner? And what about money itself? Is the current system constitutional? Are the bills being voted into law actually being read by the people passing it? Do you remember Nancy Pelosi's comment regarding Obamacare that we'll just have to pass it to find out what's in it?
So, no... we do not need another Constitutional Convention to "fix" what is wrong. The original one did not "fix" the Articles of Confederation (which, incidentally, were adequate to the successful prosecution of the war with Britain, but inadequate to the purposes of empire, as Hamilton himself noted in that all important first Federalist paper's first paragraph). The original constitutional convention concocted an entirely new system of government. And maybe we should take those observations of the Philadelphia conventioners to heart, when they observed that it was an adequate system to a religious people. Maybe the problem is therefore not political, or systemic, but rather, cultural, spiritual, and theological. Mis-diagnose the cultural problem as a constitutional problem and summon the wrong solution - a constitutional convention - to deal with that problem? By a bunch of Jacobins and technocrats?
No thank you!
See you on the flip side...
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