Just yesterday The Daily Herald, out of Utah, was talking about how to repeal an amendment currently part of the Constitution.
http://www.heraldextra.com/...
They discuss that a bit, and then mention how it might be done:
Mounting a repeal amendment would require an Article V Convention.... Many conservatives inexplicably oppose such...even though the Founders set it up as a final safety valve for a runaway government.
What this article shows is that whether we are liberal or conservative, really what's happening is the growing awareness that something has to be done about a runaway government currently controlled by corporate interests. Is it possible we as a nation will free ourselves by convoking a convention?
Putting special/corporate interests in check and then removing them from the equation of governance is not going to be accomplished by Progressives alone. Please acknowledge that? It's not going to happen through us alone. We need to join hands with fellow citizens we don't agree with on every single issue. Though through a convention, a deliberative assembley, we'll find out what the vast majority of us agree on--and there are things the vast majority of us do.
Objectively, there's no other way than the Article V Convention. It would elevate political discourse by raising it above soundbites and partisan politics. We'd be looking at possible amendments to the Constitution, a profound task, so vague rhetoric and insincerity would be exposed. The process of the convention itself is a dynamic that corporate interests will not be able to control. It's their greatest fear--a runaway convention of the people, by the people, for the people.
It will awaken a sense of confidence and participation in We The People, this will flow back into and reinvigorate the regular political process. It would expose and reign in the effects of money on the political process. Can you imagine even questioning corporate personhood in the national discourse? Where else would this question be raised? The constitutional process of a federal convention would call the bluff on those who only talk about the Constitution.
There is no danger of a runaway convention. That phrase, "runaway convention", and all the accompanying horror stories about repealing the Bill of Rights are utterly without substance. They are myths, harmful to democracy, invented by those who are afraid to let the people exercise their historic and God-given right to self government. I must admit, of course, that the phrase "runaway convention" is a deliciously effective political slogan. It conjures up all kinds of mental images, mostly of wild, madcap sessions of the political conventions at which the national Democratic and Republican Parties nominate candidates for President and Vice-President. Who wants to let the Constitution of the United States be amended by a bunch of screaming, chanting, flag waving, sign carrying, people wearing funny hats and tooting toy horns? That picture, of course, is totally inapplicable to a solemn, deliberative, national constitutional convention. We are not talking about an exhibition of political enthusiasm which is repeated every four years as the kickoff for a presidential campaign. We are talking about significant exercise of statesmanship which has not occurred for two hundred years and which will affect the lives and fortunes of millions of human beings long after every person alive today has passed from the earth.
--Former Michigan State Chief Justice Thomas Brennan
The Framers did not place a self-destruct button in their masterwork. The Article V Convention does not become its own authority, in fact it’s strictly limited to proposing amendments "...to this Constitution...." If a delegate or group of delegates wanted to re-write the Constitution (the Seven Articles), they’d first have to propose an amendment allowing for that, go out and get it ratified by 38 states, then come back to draft a new constitution (and then get that ratified).
Does anyone believe an amendment allowing for the re-writing of the Constitution would be ratified today? Unlike most political situations the minority controls the process: to stop any amendment is a nay in 13 state legislatures, or more specifically, a nay vote in one house of each of those legislatures, or even more specifically, a nay vote in a committee of one of the houses. As those committees are run by chairs, a nay vote can be obtained with no more than 13 people, and the constitutional proposal will await ratification in vain.
In addition to that safety--consider this: a federal convention convened would contrast sharply with the modus operandi within Congress. It would be a unicameral assembly, with no conference committees required to reconcile divergent House/Senate bills. Nor would a supermajority of two-thirds be required: rather a simple majority to propose an Amendment to the States for ratification. There would be no labyrinth of autonomous standing committees, with autocratic chairmen, to pass through; and no Filibuster to overcome. Salutary checks and balances would be deferred until proposals reach the States, and again, where three-fourths 38 States would have to ratify anything emerging from "...a convention for proposing Amendments...."
Convoking a federal convention and carrying out that constitutional process is what will re-educate us all about what the Constitution means, and what our origins are. Delegates don't need to be Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, they don't need to reinvent the wheel, they simply need to have common sense.
Then consider the process of electing delegates. This aspect alone is what will stop dead in its tracks politics as usual. How will delegates be chosen?
Delegates will be elected to their positions of office. In Hawke v Smith (253 U.S. 221 (1920)) the Supreme Court addressed the issue when it discussed ratification conventions saying: "Both method of ratification, by Legislatures or conventions, call for action by deliberative assemblages representative of the people...." The court thus defined what the word "conventions" meant in the text of the Constitution: deliberative assemblages representative of the people, and equates that with legislatures, all of whom are representatives elected by the people of the state.
Beyond this, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause as well as Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution make it clear that all citizens are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. The Constitution requires that all members of Congress must be citizens of the United States and that they must be elected to that office. The Fourteenth Amendment creates two citizenships for all citizens of the United States: citizens of the United States and citizens of the state in which they reside or, state citizenship. Citizens, whether elected to Congress or to an Article V Convention receive, as a result of that election, the privilege to offer amendments to the Constitution and therefore the 14th Amendment requires that both sets of citizens, members of Congress and delegates to a convention must receive equal protection under the law. This means as members of Congress are elected and receive the privilege to offer amendment proposals, delegates who are given the same privilege to offer amendment proposals, must also be elected.
The Article V Convention is how we build consensus as a nation and address the problem, instead of symptoms.
Read these articles, prepare yourself for this New Year, know how to talk about it.
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
