By Guest Author Jim DeGraffenreid III, November 17, 2014
If you can find someone willing to look at the facts, a plain reading of the Constitution is most helpful. Article V states that there are two ways to amend the Constitution: First method is for Congress to propose amendments agreed to by 2/3 of both houses. Second method is for the states to petition Congress to call a convention for proposing amendments.
By the plain language of the Constitution, Congress is who calls the convention under the second method – the involvement of the states and their legislatures ends when they make their petition to Congress to act. Because Article V specifically and clearly gives Congress the power to call the convention, Article I Section 8 authorizes Congress to control everything about the convention: ” To make all Laws which shall be necessary for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States….”
Professor Natelson attempts to twist and distort the plain language of the Constitution by making the bizarre assertion that the Supreme Court found in “Leser v. Garnett” that if Congress is acting under Article V that they are no longer acting as the federal government, and the Necessary and Proper clause doesn’t apply. That makes no sense on its face, but it’s easily explained when we check the facts and realize that Natelson was simply lying about “Leser v. Garnett” – what the decision actually says is that states are acting as agents of the federal government, just like Congress, when acting under Article V. Don’t take my word for it – look it up.
It’s true enough that the states are given the power to finally ratify Constitutional amendments whether they come from Congress or a Congressional-controlled convention, or are they? This check definitely exists if a single amendment is proposed, but if a convention is held where delegates can decide to toss the old Constitution and write another, they can simply dispense with the 3/4 ratification process, and set any arbitrary level they wish. That is in fact what happened the last time the United States’ governing document was wheeled into the operating room for surgery.
We got lucky in 1787, and the Constitutional Convention, acting outside of their authority, produced a masterpiece of a document to replace the Articles of Confederation. It’s true that it was eventually ratified as required by the Articles of Confederation, but not until years after it was put into service as the law of the land with the approval of only some of the states.
Would we be as lucky today with a document that the professional political class produces to replace our Constitution? Much is made of the number of red states vs. blue states as a protection against decimation of the constitution, but that counts only GOP vs. Democrat majorities, and that information is meaningless. Here in Nevada, for example, we have a GOP majority in both houses of our legislature, and the US Congress has a majority in both houses. Yet GOP doesn’t equal conservative – only one house of the NV legislature has a conservative majority, and it’s razor thin. Neither house of Congress has a conservative majority, although they both have GOP majorities. Raise your hand if you’d like to give your Constitution to John Boehner, John McCain or Mitch McConnell to rewrite…..
Suppose we buy into the nonsensical COS argument that the only way to save the Constitution from being perverted by the professional political class is to turn it over to them in a convention populated with delegates chosen by the professional political class to make whatever changes they want, presumably changes that will allow them to further solidify their chokehold on America. I have no faith that our Nevada Senate, or either house of the US Congress, all with liberal/moderate GOP majorities, or delegates chosen by them, would not decide to overturn my 2nd Amendment rights, for example. This is a major goal of the professional political class, as you know.
I understand the frustration of the rank and file COS supporters. I think most are good patriots, anxious for a solution to what ails our state and federal governments. Like all of us, COS supporters recognize that something needs to be done, and the simplicity of the COS solution sounds awfully appealing as it’s sold by the COS leadership. Almost without effort we can neutralize Congressional overreach and return to the land of milk and honey.
Unfortunately, like any other free lunch, the reality is much different. Meckler, Farris and Natelson are evil men, traitors to the nation, willing to destroy our Constitution for 30 pieces of silver – or in their case, six figure+ incomes, millions of dollars in total, stolen from well meaning patriots using the worst snake oil available.
We need to do something to restrain the professional political class, both at the state and federal level. The idea that the federal government is evil, which it is, while state governments are pure as the driven snow, which they assuredly are not, is one of the pillars of sand that the entire COS movement is built on. Doing the wrong thing just because we have to do something is insanity.
The corruption that permeates both Washington DC and our statehouses is a key reason that the Con Con proposed by COS can’t solve the problem – it amounts to asking those that have created the mess to clean it up, and it will in fact make us worse off. There’s no free lunch, and we’ll have to work extraordinarily hard to reverse the course of the nation. We can best start by looking at the plain language of the Constitution, seeing through the deliberate lies and manipulations of the traitors in COS leadership, and realize that there’s nothing in Article V that will help our cause, no matter how much we wish there was.