“You guys are shoveling the stables, right? You’re just dealing with the crap we throw down to you and you do what you’re told, right? And if you don’t do what you’re told we’ll take your money.”
That was the bizarre “admission” made by former Senator Rick Santorum to a meeting of the Convention of States Foundation.
The situation Santorum describes, while undoubtedly true, should be the very reason the gathered state officials would oppose an Article V convention.
Just a few simple questions reveal the ridiculous idea that a constitutional convention would change the toxic relationship between the federal and state governments.
First question: Does the U.S. Constitution create the relationship described by Santorum?
Answer: No, it does not.
Second question: Does the U.S. Constitution contain a provision aimed at preventing the relationship described by Santorum?
Answer: Yes. Every president, federal judge, and member of Congress — as well as every state representative, senator, judge, and governor — is required by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution to be “bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution.”
If we, the people, bothered to elect federal and state representatives who actually believed themselves morally obligated to be faithful to oaths they swear to God, then we would not have them so readily and repeatedly disregarding the boundaries of their power as set forth in the Constitution, a document that with their hand on a Bible they swore to God they would support.
Participating in any way in the spread of federal absolutism is in no way supporting the Constitution, but is in fact an act of violating it — therefore it is an undeniable violation of a sacred oath sworn to God. As citizens, we punish these violations by refusing to re-elect people who would knowingly violate sacred oaths. As for how God will punish those deceitful politicians, that’s up to Him.
Third question: If federal and state government officials unashamedly (I refer you back to Santorum’s summary of the relationship between the two) violate sacred oaths, if they repeatedly disregard limits on their authority as defined by the existing U.S. Constitution, how is adding an additional piece of paper or an additional few paragraphs to the Constitution going to suddenly and surely convert those tyrannical politicians into faithful statesmen?
Answer: It won’t. It is irrational and certainly contrary to the record of history to believe that a person would suddenly start adhering to the limits laid out in parchment barriers if we can just add one more piece of parchment.
Think about it: Conservatives rightly argue against additional regulations on guns designed to prevent armed violence by pointing to the fact that the acts committed are already illegal, that most often the assailant was already prohibited (albeit unconstitutionally) from owning or using a weapon, and that adding one more regulation is not going to dissuade such a person from committing the atrocity of which he is accused!
Now, apply that rational and accurate argument to the situation of federal tyranny and state submission to it. How would one more “law,” one more “amendment” prevent politicians from committing atrocities against the Constitution?
Just as in the case of gun control regulations being completely useless at reducing armed violence against innocent people, amendments to the Constitution likewise will be completely useless at reducing violence against the life, liberty, and people of the United States committed by those who have shown they will not be bound by parchment barriers, they will not be bound by virtue, and they will not be bound by sacred oaths sworn to the Almighty God.
It is telling that the Convention of States (COS) organization refuses to address the philosophical, constitutional, and practical errors in their plan. They have never tried to deconstruct or dismiss the panoply of problems in their plan that I have chronicled over the past two decades. They’ve published personal attacks against people who oppose them (though not against me, I must add), but rather than weakening the opposition, such ad hominem and adolescent attacks reveal the lack of trust in the truth of their message possessed by those writing the checks.
Finally, Santorum told the gathered state commissioners that an Article V convention is “a powerful means to shift the nation’s trajectory.” He’s right, but not for the reason he thinks he is.
The COS claque constantly insists that there has never been a convention such as the one they are calling for, one to propose amendments the Constitution in an effort to fix the federal system. They know that’s not true. They lay down semantical cover by pointing out that there couldn’t have been an Article V convention before the Constitution because there was no Article V before the Constitution. They also know how disingenuous that claim is.
An Article V convention is simply an amendments convention by another name, and there most certainly has been in our history an amendments convention called for the identical purposes put forward by COS. And the trajectory coming out of that convention was new and resulted in an entirely new Constitution, with a federal government possessed of powers denied them under the previous Constitution (the Articles of Confederation).
That is the undeniable historical truth and COS leadership knows it. They don’t talk about it. In fact, they use semantical hermeneutics to hide this fact. Here’s a very brief summary of the amendments convention of 1787, how it is substantially similar to the convention being advocated by COS, and how an amendments convention held in the 21st century more likely than not would see the same result: the current Constitution replaced by one nearly completely dissimilar to it.
On February 21, 1787 Congress passed a resolution calling on the states to send representatives to a convention to be held in Philadelphia beginning in May 1787 for:
The sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government & the preservation of the Union.
Notice the language: “sole and express” and “reporting … alterations and provisions” to the “federal constitution.” Again, it cannot be stressed strenuously enough that the Articles of Confederation was the Constitution in 1787! Despite what you were taught in social studies class, that “weak” document saw us through a victorious war with one of the world’s most powerful empires.
As soon as a quorum of states was present at the Convention of 1787, Edmund Randolph of Virginia introduced what we call the “Virginia Plan,” a proposal that created an entirely new constitution, wherein was created a entirely new form of government, one that would be ratified by an entirely new process than the one required by the Constitution that was then the law of the land.
Not only did the delegates at the Convention of 1787 violate the limits placed on their authority by Congress and the states, and not only did they break the rules established by Congress and the states before the convention began, but they produced a new constitution and a new form of government, completely tossing the then-Constitution and form of government onto the scrapheap of history.
I dare anyone from COS to challenge that recitation of the historical record of the Convention of 1787, and I dare them to show how that record does not prove the convention of 1787 was a runaway convention. Debunk it. I dare you.
