I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that our country is in crisis. America is over $31T in debt now. The average family of 4 pays more interest on the national debt (via their taxes) than they do for their home mortgage.
Our government has become a collection of parasites rather than public servants. It seems every day we hear another revelation about bureaucrats attacking our liberties.
“Equal justice under the law” is little more than a cruel taunt – having no connection with reality. Instead, the application of the law depends on what political party or what “oppressed” group one belongs to.
Politicians don’t stay in office by doing the will of the voters. Now the game is gerrymandering and playing with the election rules.
In short, electoral politics isn’t working for the vast majority of Americans anymore. The Democrats have become the party of radicalism and graft. The Republicans are more interested in posing for cameras and being part of the club than representing their constituents.
In the midterm election, voters gave Republicans a chance to lead the House of Representatives. Yet before they had even assumed leadership, Republicans helped the Democrats rush through a couple of parting shots to the voters in the lame duck session.
Thirty-nine House Republicans and 12 from the Senate voted for the Respect for Marriage Act (which forces religious liberty to the back of the LGBTQ bus).
Nine House Republicans and 18 from the Senate voted for the $1.7T omnibus bill – which nobody read before approving, because it hadn’t been written yet. Now that it has been written, we see that our priorities have been ignored again. There’s money for healthcare – as long as healthcare is abortion and not children’s hospitals. There’s also money for expansion of the administrative state – everywhere except where it would enhance border security. There’s even a pile of cash for LGBT centers and museums – because alternative lifestyles are now a thing of admiration.
We’ve given the Republicans a chance to show us what they could do with power – and oh boy, have they shown us.
That’s not to say that our movement (call it MAGA if you wish) isn’t strong. Its stronger than ever. The establishment politicians refused to hear us, so we got mad and gave them Donald Trump. The body politic attacked him as if he were a pathogen. We got angrier and gave them Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis.
But he establishment politicians still aren’t listening. They clearly think they don’t need our approval. They seem determined to spend mountains of our money and bloviate about their principles – when their only principle seems to be living the Washington lifestyle.
What’s a conservative to do? We know what we want.
- We want the government to stop wasting our money.
- We want our politicians to prioritize our agenda over their careers.
- We want a runaway bureaucracy brought to heal.
It’s finding a path to get there that’s the problem. We could vote Democrat – but that’s a bullet train to socialism. We could vote Republican – and facilitate a slow lingering death of the country. We could vote for a third party – feel good about the protest, but take ourselves out of the debate entirely.
Maybe we should take a non-electoral approach. Amazingly, our founders anticipated the crisis we’re in – where our government doesn’t govern the way the self-governed want it to. They actually gave us a constitutional means to fix it. Article V of the Constitution gives us (through our states) the means to amend the Constitution, without any help from the federal government or our federally elected “public servants.”
If 34 states agree, they can call a convention in which amendments to the Constitution are proposed. If those proposals are ratified by 38 states, the Constitution is amended – which means that how the government operates is amended. Just think how differently government would operate with amendments to:
- Impose fiscal responsibility
- Place term limits on our “public servants”
- Restrict government overreach
Unfortunately, there’s resistance to an Article V convention. There are those who claim that a convention will lose control and result in a complete rewrite of our constitution. They claim we could lose all of our civil liberties. They fret that we could even lose Social Security and Medicare. An attempt to amend our sacred Constitution would end our republic. The horror!
And who’s making those claims? Over 230 left-wing groups organized by George Soros’ Common Cause – and a few conservative useful idiots who’ve been duped by them. Here’s a thought: If the groups committed to the destruction of America are against it, maybe we should give it another look.
An Article V convention is not the scary “end of America” that the naysayers claim it would be. There are numerous safeguards to prevent it from turning into a constitutional rewrite. Those safeguards are based on the fact that the states, not the federal government, remain in control of the process. The ultimate safeguard is the fact that a convention only proposes amendments that must be ratified by the states. Unless there are 38 states that would like to dump our Bill of Rights and shove grandma off the cliff, it isn’t going to happen.
The Soros “defenders of the republic” love to quote the late Justice Scalia. They point out that he said this would be a bad time to rewrite the constitution – and he did say that. But he also said this:
I do not have a lack of trust in the American people. I am the one here who is least terrified of a convention. The one remedy specifically provided for in the Constitution is the amendment process that bypasses Congress. I would like to see that amendment process used just once. I do not much care what it is used for the first time, but using it once will exert an enormous influence on both the Congress and the Supreme Court.
Unlike opponents, Scalia understood the difference between a convention to propose amendments, and a convention to rewrite the Constitution. He was in favor of the former, and against the latter. He too felt that it was time to remind the federal government that it works for us.
What are we as self-governed citizens to do?
Educate our children. Our schools won’t teach them the importance of freedom or why our republic is organized the way it is. It’s up to us to prepare our next generation of citizens.
Don’t walk away from elections. They are a vital part of our representative government. We need to vote smartly, especially in the primary elections. But recognize that our duty to hold government accountable doesn’t end at the ballot box.
We need to lobby our state governments to get involved in federal government. That includes encouraging our state legislators to use the tools given them by the Constitution to remind the federal government that it still answers to us.
Article V gives us the means to bring our federal government to heal. We just need to choose to do so – and it really is as simple as making that choice.
Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He has written for American Thinker, and American Free News Network. His work has been featured on The Dan Bongino Show, World View Weekend Broadcast with Brannon House, and Steel on Steel with John Loeffler. He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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The Article V is an excellent way to deal with our mess. If we could just shut up the hyenas in the press and the Soros influence pedaling thieves, we could probably one day use it. If we don’t ever get around to doing all that, our country is too far gone to resurrect it to its once great status. The other solution, a painful one, is outright rebellion.
One thing is certain. Politics is no solution to the problem. It is what got us here. Just listen to the ones calling the 20 as terrorists against the 200, in the House, over the Speaker election.
Roger that. I consider the 20 to be the few that are actually trying to achieve some much needed change. They may be the only ones who are actually representing their constituents.
If they haven’t annointed McCarthy, by now, I hope those 20 hold out for a week or two longer, just to drive home the point that the way things are have to change. When I heard Mark Levin and Sean Hannity lambasting the 20, I gave up on them. I should have thought about how long it took Levin to come around to Trump, in 2016. He’s no more conservative than Donald Duck, in that respect. And Hannity is another “wet thumb in the air” type, too. They are both worries about appearances. Appearances don’t mean a thing to me. Results or nothing.
You are correct regarding the founders’ potential remedy. The states are constitutionally authorized to do exactly as you say with zero input from Congress. Unfortunately today, the possibility of achieving any fiscally sound, new amendments is nil. That’s because Republicans control both houses in only 28 states; Democrats control both houses in 19 states; two states have split legislative control; and Nebraska’s legislature is considered nonpartisan. https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-partisan-composition
The problem would be in getting the 34 state legislatures to agree on amendment inclusions or changes. Such a convention would no doubt be raucous and unlikely to achieve the necessary consensus, much less the 38 votes necessary for ratification. The only way to achieve a modicum of success in such an event would be to compromise by allowing some Dem states to enter an amendment recommendation. I’m not sure we would want to see what they might recommend. And even though those Congresscritters wouldn’t have a vote, they would still retain their power to persuade.