The Constitution provides an institution for deliberation, a place for reasoned and thoughtful debate to occur, for rationality to triumph. With the arrival of the mass media and the Internet, however, something unexpected has occurred: instead of reasoned exchanges, our population has segregated itself into like minded and self-confirming cliques of opinion that have bred extremism and irrationality rather than rationality.
Don't you think it's time We The People had a national discussion? Not afraid of all fifty states holding elections for delegates are you? The Article V Convention is a three-part national discussion.
1) Electing delegates.
2) The actual deliberative assembly.
3) We The People lobbying our states to ratifiy cherished amendments.
Don't you think this would serve the nation well? We've been led to believe the convention clause of Article V entails a re-write of the Constitution. This is untrue, it's a deliberative assembly which, via Robert's Rules of Order, finds common ground, it breaks through compartmentalized media cliques. Ideas are then put on the table and the nation discusses what ought to be ratified. This constitutional process will re-educate the entire nation about governmental processes while reactivating the Constitution itself, restoring the founding principles.
It's Politics as Usual which is killing us, allowing the corporate media narrative to provide cover for corruption. The Article V Convention stops that dead in its tracks. Consensus fails to happen today because members of Congress are actors worrying about the latest polls and shaking hands for funds. Delegates to the Article V Convention won't have that baggage. They're there to propose and hammer out constitutional language, and return to civilian life.People invision a "constitutional convention" as people screaming and yelling and throwing chairs--the Article V Convention will be exactly what it's meant to be, and truth be told, it is the supreme principle of all the principles--that of providing a way for the people to deliberate over late events.
Let's trust the Constitution and the People. The alternative is to continue to watch Congress and corporate interests destroy America. Institutionalized corruption cannot continue on forever without an inevitable conclusion.
Think about how the convention process throws governance out into the sunlight; there are distinct differences between a candidate for a seat as delegate, and your favorite flunky in the U.S. Congress. For those of you who fear and/or indignantly revile corporate power: Corporate Power Can't Control A Convention, in fact, corporate power has done all that’s possible within its power to prevent one (going on four decades now).
For those who want a new amendment, such as stripping corporations of civil rights, the only place you'll be able to voice the idea, and where you should properly be proposing such, is at convention. The Framers considered this common sense. The reason we are so badly in need of amendment(s) is because the current Congress will never dispose of certain matters--thus, the convention clause. Once proposed, we then lobby our state for most cherished amendment(s) to be ratified (mine is one that creates a federal standard for voting and voter registration).
Look at the differences in what a delegate discusses, and what a member of Congress discusses. The delegate discusses the Constitution, the flunky discusses their new bill set afloat in a cesspool of institutionalized corruption. Congressional debate these days is orchestrated nonsense. The Article V Convention will be the exact opposite. It will be a grand assessment of where we came from, where we are today as a nation, and what non-partisan ideas might prevail. It will be community leaders discussing amendment language--term limits for members of Congress, for instance--and then voting it up or down in a unicameral assembly. There are thousands and thousands of Americans alive and well across the land, interested in making a real difference, who will leap at the chance to be delegate to America's first Article V Convention.
What's our alternative? Watch what we've been watching since the Reagan Revolution of deregulation? Media without a Fairness Doctrine? It took all the Clinton years, and all the Bush years, and now the Obama years to take the sharp edge off the nation's sword. Exactly how long do you think institutionalized corruption can go on before there's no fixing what's wrong? Do right-wing fascists and corporatists and WTO wonks want 200+ million people re-educated about civics and government over a two or three year period?
The only reason an American today would advocate against a convention is that they somehow believe the way things are is the way they'll always be, even though all existence and our experience of governance shows it to be dynamic. A handful of documentaries from the last five years shows what institutionalized corruption has wrought, they all point to the convention clause of Article V.
