A short political piece I recently wrote.
Standard parliamentary procedure is not some sort of chaos--it's the antithesis of it: someone proposes an idea, it suffers debate, the question is called, it's voted up or down. The constitutional process of convoking/convening a federal convention will elevate political discourse above corporate sound-bites as discussion will be about first principles--amending the Constitution--a profound task. Duplicity and insincerity will be exposed, and because it will, nobody is going to attempt it or they won't be able to buy a Starbucks the next day without getting publicly jeered. The constitutional process of a convention creates a dynamic that corporate interests can't control, its procedures contrast sharply with the Congress: a convention is a unicameral assembly with no conference committees required to reconcile divergent House/Senate bills, no labyrinths of autonomous standing committees with autocratic chairs to pass through, and no filibuster to overcome. A convention will initiate reforms Congress never will--indeed it's the great fear of corporate interests: a runaway convention of the people, by the people, for the people.
Delegates to the convention are not there to reinvent the wheel, but simply to propose amendments to the one we have, and that can and will reverse the trends fatal to representative government and a free individual's pursuit of happines. Delegates will have a fresh point of view as the election they arrived from will have been specifically targeted to deal with what might be done (if you believe the American political Right and Left can find no agreement on anything whatsoever, then you're currently on your knees as a citizen). U.S. Article V Delegates are there to propose amendments and then return to civilian life, they won't be studying polls nor looking for future campaign contributions. More importantly, whether or not delegates reach consensus on amendments today, again it's the constitutional process of the Article V Convention which will deliver us back to the Constitution. It will create a dynamic the same as telling a corrupt accountant an outside audit is to begin, which is really all a convention is--a second opinion--that of We The People. At the same time it will re-educate the entire nation in one fell swoop about the Constitution itself, and what it actually says. It will awaken a sense of confidence and participation in the people, which will flow back into and reinvigorate the regular political process, while at the same time calling the bluff on those who only talk about the Constitution. It will return us to our founding principles.
For those who don't understand it, it's clear now to many that America is in the hands of a corporate syndicate which CONTROLS EVERYTHING, even writes laws and/or deregulates law through the legislators they put in place. This makes what it does "legal" and makes it impossible for the people to hold it accountable. Most importantly the corporate syndicate contols media--our collective source of information, so it's easy for it to misinform and disinform. Media tells We The People that any attempt by the government to assist its citizens or provide for freedom and choice, in any form, is socialism but it gives tax breaks towards it atop billions it siphons, and when its businesses run aground, it gets billions of citizen dollars to bail it out. The coporate syndicate is so brazen, it's clear its realized the citizenry can't do anything about it. The question is, is the corporate syndicate right?
We're all taught that the Declaration Independence and Constitution are our two most important founding documents, what we're not taught is that the Declaration was written into our highest law. The genius of the Constitution is that it provides for a peaceable break from the inevitable consequence of institutionalized corruption.
And what is this process of the Article V Convention? It's a national discussion in three parts:
1) electing delegates (what ideas will they run on?),
2) the actual deliberative assembly (what will 2/3 of the delegates vote up or down)
3) the ratification process (what proposals if any will garner the approval of 3/4 of the states?).
If you believe that this process will destroy the Constitution (that which is currently being ignored by the corporate syndicate), then you really don't deserve to be living within the borders of the United States of America.