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Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I know of no opposition to alternative approaches to reforming our runaway federal government held by advocates of The Article V process except opposition to nullification which seems to be the obsession of the rump of the John Birch Society.

Hell, I'm not even opposed to nullification if it works.

I concede I am ignorant of the Internal Relocation Strategy to which you allude and I cannot therefore comment.

Because it only takes 13 legislative bodies from 13 different states out of 99 legislative bodies to defeat an amendment, I am not optimistic about the chances of passage of real reform in the absence of some event that galvanizes the public and pressures state politicians to actually do something.

I am however optimistic, or should I say, pessimistic, that such a national event will occur in view of precarious nature of our finances and the increasing overreach of the federal government. Some time in the not too distant future the rubber band will break. This is not the politics of crisis but the fact of how the American democracy usually works. Democracies do not usually anticipate and avoid problems they correct problems after they occur when it is more expensive but when the political will is clear because the problem is clear.

So I don't think I am saying anything radical or terribly pessimistic, this is the way we function. We did not have a convention until it was clear that the Articles of Confederation had failed. We did not have a 13th amendment until we fought a civil war. We did not get Ronald Reagan until we had Jimmy Carter. We will not get reform of a system living on a credit card until we max the card out.

Again, thank you for a very enlightened post.

I agree that the chances of financial crisis are pretty high. Unfortunately, whether such a crisis becomes something that unifies people behind a pro freedom strategy is unknown. The financial crises in Greece and Cyprus certainly haven’t brought about pro freedom reforms. Whereas in Chile, it brought about pro free enterprise reforms, but at the same time ushering in a military junta.

As for the internal relocation strategy, there is only one group that I’m aware of that is promoting that. See my tag line. I actually was aware of this oh about 5 years ago. I pretty much dismissed it as another idea that would fizzle. For reasons that I don’t recall, I ran across the Free Staters again about six months ago and much to my surprise, they hadn’t fizzled. In fact, it looks like they’re actually going to pull it off. More importantly to me, the folks who have moved early have had a significant impact in NH. So much so that Free Staters are considered a threat. Some ‘rat legislator actually publicly characterized FSP as the biggest threat facing NH. You can’t buy endorsements like that. I also find it appealing that it stresses individual action rather than waiting for the rest of the crowd. I firmly believe that the freedom that matters is the freedom in your own backyard.

All that said, I have had my own personal reservations about FSP. Primarily with regard to the fact that it’s a libertarian movement, not a conservative one. I’m not a libertarian. However, with age I’m finding that I really don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good enough. So I’ll take a 70% win over a 10% win and be happy with it.