“I am asking this as a serious question, although it sound smarmy
They aren’t following the Constitution now, why will they all of a sudden follow the Constitution if we pass these amendments?”
As an honest answer, I think structural changes they won’t be able to ignore. For example, congressmen can’t just serve for three year terms if they want to. They have to serve for two. They can’t get around that provision of the constitution. The president still appoints supreme court justices and the senate must confirm. And the senate serves for six years. These are structural parts of the constitution that cannot be gotten around. If an amendment is written in such a way as to be ironclad, those elected will have no choice but to obey it. How that’s done, and how proposed amendments are to be worded, that is up to the convention.
Really not following your train of thought here, but ok
but we have those in the Constitution already.
I know it is cynical, and I think we do need to do something, however, without a moral people who obey laws, the text of the law is meaningless.
There is , to use algore’s verbage, no controlling legal authority to make Congress obey the Constitution.
All there is, is the electorate. And it takes a minimum of 2 years to make any correction to bad law or bad obedience to the law.
It would be toothless to make these changes unless we install checks and balances not presently in the Constitution. Term limits is about as far as I would go in amending the Constitution, even though I agree with the principles of the Liberty Amendments.
We have no way to ensure Congress follows the Constitution but voting them out. And in today’s world, too many things happen too quickly, and too many things dont get changed back to what is good. And an article 5 convention wont change that, for the language of the Constitution is not what is at fault, but the morality of the elected and the electorate.