Posted on 10/30/2013 10:38:13 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Any teacher, lawyer, or politician will tell you that word choice matters. The words we use (and how we use them) can mean the difference between successful communication and horrible misunderstanding.
Over the last few months, many folks have asked, “What is the difference between a ‘constitutional convention’ and a Convention of States?” Those who oppose the use of Article V like to use these terms interchangeably. They say that a “con-con” is dangerous and could result in the destruction of the American system of government. Any sane person, they say, wouldn’t dream of pursuing a “con-con.” Well, we agree. A constitutional convention would be dangerous and could very well result in disaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at conventionofstates.com ...
Watch this video. An expert addresses the issues:
http://conventionofstates.com/media/prof-rob-natelson-speaks-alec-full-speech
Watch this video. You are mistaken. Listen to an expert:
http://conventionofstates.com/media/prof-rob-natelson-speaks-alec-full-speech
You are mistaken. Watch this video:
http://conventionofstates.com/media/prof-rob-natelson-speaks-alec-full-speech
No can do - work - but thanks for the link.
When you get a chance—it addresses al the issues very succinctly.
“I for one, am tired of people who talk themselves out of action because they presume a worst-case scenario as a foregone conclusion, and then give up entirely before even engaging the opposition.”
Who said anything about being talked out of action? There is much that States can do, short of a Art V. that would go far to take back the gov’t. The Federalist Papers talk about this at length. The authors defended a federal government because the States were armed with enough tools to ensure that the fedgov didn’t get out of its box.
Try reading Federalist #46. It talks about the civil disobedience of States, basically telling the fedgov to go shove it.
The bottom line is this; you won’t get the Art V you want, telling the fedgov to go shove it unless and/or until the States decide that it’s more important to exert their autonomy than it is to drink from the fedtrough.
AT THAT MOMENT, when the States come around to pointed action, you don’t need an Art V. and you don’t need a majority of States to take back the gov’t. All you need is enough States to turn the tide and make operating the fedgov difficult.
Look at Obamacare. They did not expect so many States to opt out, and they’re in a bind because of it.
When the States are ready to act, they have the power to do so. IF, AFTER they’ve exhausted the tools of active disobedience, they find no other option, then an Art V. might be in order.
Who said anything about not acting? I’ve said that the States standing up for their sovereignty is enough. Until they do, there won’t be any change, and there certainly won’t be an Art V. convention.
“I for one, am tired of people who talk themselves out of action because they presume a worst-case scenario as a foregone conclusion, and then give up entirely before even engaging the opposition.”
Who said anything about being talked out of action? There is much that States can do, short of a Art V. that would go far to take back the gov’t. The Federalist Papers talk about this at length. The authors defended a federal government because the States were armed with enough tools to ensure that the fedgov didn’t get out of its box.
Try reading Federalist #46. It talks about the civil disobedience of States, basically telling the fedgov to go shove it.
The bottom line is this; you won’t get the Art V you want, telling the fedgov to go shove it unless and/or until the States decide that it’s more important to exert their autonomy than it is to drink from the fedtrough.
AT THAT MOMENT, when the States come around to pointed action, you don’t need an Art V. and you don’t need a majority of States to take back the gov’t. All you need is enough States to turn the tide and make operating the fedgov difficult.
Look at Obamacare. They did not expect so many States to opt out, and they’re in a bind because of it.
When the States are ready to act, they have the power to do so. IF, AFTER they’ve exhausted the tools of active disobedience, they find no other option, then an Art V. might be in order.
Who said anything about not acting? I’ve said that the States standing up for their sovereignty is enough. Until they do, there won’t be any change, and there certainly won’t be an Art V. convention.
I don't think is the case anymore. Federal handouts have made people more beholden to the federal government. In fact, liberals are at war with state governments. Take Gay Marriage as an example. They pit one state against another, taking an advantageous result in one state to the federal level to force it upon the rest.
Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their respective States. Into the administration of these a greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and emoluments will flow.
People have become more partial to the federal government, but not because of better administration. They're being bought by taxpayer monies approved by a Congress that no longer feels beholden to their respective states. The states have much to fear, because of federal encroachment of federal power.
If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered.
The 17th amendment has upended this assumption. The roles have been reversed.
It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more on the side of the State governments, than of the federal government. So far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced by these causes, the State governments must clearly have the advantage. But in a distinct and very important point of view, the advantage will lie on the same side. The prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the federal government, will generally be favorable to the States; whilst it will rarely happen, that the members of the State governments will carry into the public councils a bias in favor of the general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.
And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations?
Because of the 17th amendment and the need for raising campaign funds, Senators are now more interested in the "collective welfare of their particular" party, not their state, because it is the party that drives much of their campaign financing. All of the liberal agenda in Washington was driven by party and national special interest, not state issues. States are pawns, a means to a national agenda end.
Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.
We saw this play out in Arizona over their immigration policy. Holder sued Arizona to prevent them from enforcing state immigration laws that the federal laws already permitted them to do.
On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.
We saw this play out with the recent federal government shutdown and retaliation of closing national parks in all the states. The militarization of civil police are becoming much more intimidating to the average citizen of a state who is considering civil unrest.
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole.
This is exactly what the Article V movement is trying to accomplish. Rally the states around the idea of taking back control of the federal government through exercising their Article V power to propose the amendments of change that Congress is unwilling to.
But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.
We would have to see if this plays out. Would the whole of the people align with the states in support of an Article V convention, or would they align with the Congress and the President to maintain the status quo? There's the rub.
The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.
This reads like a Nostradamus prophecy. It is exactly what has happened over the last decade, most recently accelerated.
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence... Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Here is a gem for the 2nd Amendment people. It is clear from this passage that the 2nd amendment was specifically intended to prevent a tyrannical government from forming, for fear of an armed populace.
And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
The argument here is that the people will rise up in arms against a federal government that encroaches beyonds its limited, enumerated powers. And knowing that, it would be madness for the federal government to even try to engage with force, knowing that death and destruction that would naturally follow. Given the stockpiling of hollow-point bullets, and military anti-mine personnel carriers now being distributed across the United States, I think that our government is actually planning to do something just like this.
Given this dissection of Federalist #46, where in here do you see your hypothesis that the "were armed with enough tools to ensure that the fedgov didn’t get out of its box" and that "It talks about the civil disobedience of States, basically telling the fedgov to go shove it?"
On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.
What I see is a discussion of brinksmanship and inevitable civil war instigated by a federal government that refuses to back down to states that push back on encroachment.
I see signs that our current federal government is planning for exactly such a crisis, and is actively trying to incite it.
The proponents of an Article V convention is an attempt to avoid a direct head-to-head conflict with the federal government by side-stepping them and taking a parallel path to making Constitutional change.
-PJ
Article V... if you believe this current crop of congress critters is capable of self-correcting....
If not, might have to hit the reset button.
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The STATES have not, in this generation EVER yet said, "Stop"
The states have been overruled and outgunned for so long that they've become little more than provinces for the "national" government, but that could all change if they understood their power.
This convention gives them the "Paddle", so to speak. We haven't seen what they will make of it. All I can say is, I don't think most state legislators really realize the power they could wield to get this country back on track, and if they did, they would jump at the chance. The last time a group of states got really, really crosswise with the federal government in 1860 it started a war. That is how strongly they believed (even if their cause might have been wrong.)
I think some of these states are ready to fight (politically) against the federal leviathan,and if the federal government decides to ignore or step in and try to take over, the motivation will be EXTREMELY high to actively nullify any fed disruption. I think the more we can educate our state legislators, state senators and state governors on this whole process, they more they will like the idea. And if the fed gov or Supreme court tries to overrule it or intervene, then I truly believe, if the state leadership has been educated properly, they will say:
"COME AND TRY TO STOP US!! GAME ON!!"
The fear at the time, and what was to be prevented, was the possibility of the states rolling the new government just as they had the confederation congress.
The simple fact is that that over the past hundred years, state powers were slowly relinquished by the states or seized by the three branches in Washington. That trend accelerated in recent years, and congress has illegally assigned most of its powers to the president. We the people granted congress and congress alone the law making authority.
Unless we the people demand a return to federalism, a renewal of separation of power, this grand experiment in self-government is over. It may already be.
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
That is the part I think they would rely on in their attempt to set the rules for an article 5 convention. Successfully? Maybe not. But that's one of the things they will use to justify them running the convention.
No offense, but Barack Obama is also an “expert”...
Thank you for your opinion.
Not my opinion. It’s James Madison’s.
Together, the counter argument is strong that an Article V convention of the states is "owned" by the states.
But you're right that the federal government will try to control it.
I will repeat this following passage from Federalist 46 from my above post, it speaks to this very issue.
But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.
Like I said before, bring it on. Let's see a beltway elite Congress go to war with the states over this. Isn't that the reason why this part of Article V was included in the first place?
Let's let it play out and see who falls on which side. The next election after such a fight would be very interesting, assuming we will be allowed to hold one.
-PJ
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