Sundering the Union + Constitution in "Crisis" + Convention of States(Article V)

TempestOfTempo

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2019

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Constitution in Crisis
Has America’s founding document become the nation’s undoing?
by
Donna Edwards, Mary Anne Franks, David Law, Lawrence Lessig, Louis Michael Seidman

"America’s Constitution was once celebrated as a radical and successful blueprint for democratic governance, a model for fledgling republics across the world. But decades of political gridlock, electoral corruption, and dysfunction in our system of government have forced scholars, activists, and citizens to question the document’s ability to address the thorniest issues of modern political life.

Does the path out of our current era of stalemate, minority rule, and executive abuse require amending the Constitution? Do we need a new constitutional convention to rewrite the document and update it for the twenty-first century? Should we abolish it entirely?

This spring, Harper’s Magazine invited five lawmakers and scholars to New York University’s law school to consider the constitutional crisis of the twenty-first century. The event was moderated by Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon.
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Rosa Brooks: Let me tell a story about what I do in my constitutional law classes at Georgetown. In the very first session, I say to my students, “The United States has the oldest continually operative written constitution in the world. How do you feel about that?”

And everybody goes into a “rah-rah, Constitution” mode. The U.S.-born students look smug, and the non-U.S.-born students look puzzled. After everybody has a chance to talk about how great it is that the United States has this very, very old written constitution, I ask them how they would feel if their neurosurgeon used the world’s oldest neurosurgery guide, or if NASA used the world’s oldest astronomical chart to plan space-shuttle flights, and they all get quiet.


So I thought I would ask you all to talk about one of the many oddities of American constitutional history. The United States was born of violent revolution, and it was born of a group of people coming to believe that the form of government they were living under was illegitimate, and that they had the right to say, “We don’t like that government anymore.” They came up with an alternative form of government, which was revised still further at the Constitutional Convention, giving us the document we have today.

How did it happen that the United States, which was born in a moment of bloody revolution out of a conviction that every generation had the right to change its form of government, developed a culture that so many years later is weirdly hidebound when it comes to its form of government, reveres this piece of paper as if it had been handed by God out of a burning bush, and treats the Constitution as more or less sacred? Is it really such a good thing to have a document written almost 250 years ago still be viewed as binding us in some way?

..................
LESSIG: I think what we have to focus on in a very precise way is: What are the steps that could get us to a place that could make the democracy a responsive democracy? How do we break this deeply unrepresentative system that we have right now?

The U.S. Constitution has the provision in Article V to allow us to call a convention to propose amendments. If two-thirds of the state legislatures vote to convene it, the Constitution requires it. That’s what we need to do.

EDWARDS: I’m a little leery about opening up the whole show in a constitutional convention, but I think it’s worth thinking through how something like that might be done in a way that doesn’t allow for monkey business, especially from conservatives.

I don’t think the current political process really positions us to work through these constitutional challenges.

SEIDMAN: I don’t think we need another constitutional convention. You know what would happen? The country would come apart at the seams. And the reason it would come apart at the seams is because if we really confronted the things that divide us, and really were honest about them, there would be no reconciliation.

To start with, there would be a huge fight about whether the United States is a Christian country. And if we confronted that, God knows what would happen. It’s a little like a marriage—there are perfectly successful marriages that go on for years and years in which the spouses are happy, and the reason they’re happy is precisely because they never actually sit down and have a deep conversation about what the purpose of the marriage is.


LESSIG: I don’t think people are happy. We’re not talking about happy people. We’re talking about people who are not happy. That’s the point. We’re starting at a place where it’s not working.

SEIDMAN: But they’d be less happy. What keeps the United States together in the end is not some deep agreement about the philosophical issues that would surface if we really tried to rewrite the Constitution.

What keeps the country together—to the extent it is still together—is a much looser sense that we’re all in this together, that we sink or swim together, and some very loose ideas about tolerance and equality. If you try to put that into a legal text, things are going to come apart at the seams.

LESSIG: But, Mike, this is a false dichotomy. You’re saying we couldn’t possibly have a convention that would rewrite the whole of the Constitution and our foundations as a country. I agree with that. Of course we can’t.

What I’m talking about is the fact that we have a constitution right now that creates a deeply corrupted process for selecting our representatives and our president, and we have no way to fix that, given the current way that the Constitution itself gets amended.

So this is not about agreeing on fundamental values; it’s about the smaller point of, “How do we get to a democracy that people actually feel represents them?” And that will only happen if we have some fundamental changes to the constitutional order, which we won’t get unless we figure out a way to amend the Constitution."
Im keeping my access to firearms lol
 

Karlysymon

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Im keeping my access to firearms lol
Haha....

"This spring, Harper’s Magazine invited five lawmakers and scholars to New York University’s law school to consider the constitutional crisis of the twenty-first century. The event was moderated by Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon."

I bolded this part in the article because people may have forgotten all about the Transition Integrity Project (T.I.P) or that they probably didn’t even appear on some peoples’ radar back in 2020 but considering Rosa Brooks (co-founder) is a [constitutional] law professor coupled with her views on the constitution, i seriously considered that the TIP wasn’t just created and somehow brought in to play an instrumental role for the 2020 election. Who’s to say they aren’t meant to play an even bigger role in regard to the Convention of States (if & when that does happen)?
 

TempestOfTempo

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Haha....

"This spring, Harper’s Magazine invited five lawmakers and scholars to New York University’s law school to consider the constitutional crisis of the twenty-first century. The event was moderated by Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon."

I bolded this part in the article because people may have forgotten all about the Transition Integrity Project (T.I.P) or that they probably didn’t even appear on some peoples’ radar back in 2020 but considering Rosa Brooks (co-founder) is a [constitutional] law professor coupled with her views on the constitution, i seriously considered that the TIP wasn’t just created and somehow brought in to play an instrumental role for the 2020 election. Who’s to say they aren’t meant to play an even bigger role in regard to the Convention of States (if & when that does happen)?
DANG! You broke it down KS... would you care to elaborate further? Im down to learn more about your perspective on this... you really did the homework on the issue!
 

Karlysymon

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DANG! You broke it down KS... would you care to elaborate further? Im down to learn more about your perspective on this... you really did the homework on the issue!
My perspective on this is that a Constitutional Convention is not a bad thing IF the year was 1787 or 1868 or 1922 but this is 2022. The dangers assailing national sovereignty (worldwide) are greater now than they probably were in those eras. Many people are aware now of the moves being made to erode national sovereignty through the WHO pandemic treaty but TPTB are trying their luck through other avenues (climate change/ “planetary politics”). They know Americans are beholden to their constitution and it isn’t easy to get rid of it.

Opening the door of a ConCon is dangerous in these times because the “other side” has made known what their intentions are. The long road to a World Federal Government certainly bears signage with the words “Balkanized America”. It’s actually inconceivable to imagine a WFG with all 50 states still unified. In stumbling down this path, it actually led me to that destination. Depending on the publication, articles about ConCon are classed together with those revolving around reorganizing America into City-States. The WEF has made it clear, in it’s publications, what the “future of government” is meant to be. If you know what the “other side” wants, you can try to accurately gauge how you will be played.

I believe part of the momentum involves playing on/manipulating peoples’ emotions to generate proponents for the cause…that somehow, once the convention happens, it will be a golden opportunity to set things right and restore America’s greatness. If we are being realistically pessimistic instead of entertaining boundless unrealistic optimism, empires have a lifespan of 250yrs. At the age of 246, America can NEVER be 17 or 25 again…. that’s just the natural course of things….a rise, peak/prime and a decline, so someone who thinks that rewriting the constitution or adding amendments to revive America’s greatness is just setting themselves up for disappointment. The FATE is: either the coming decades herald a still-unified but severely weakened country or it completely breaks up. So, yes, the convention can happen and liberty-protecting amendments are added but the “other side” is also not sitting on it’s hands.

The moneyed elite behind Biden could just as easily play the violence card by stoking and bankrolling the secessionist movement option war-gamed by T.I.P but it seems they are gambling on the Constitutional convention. There’s got to be a reason why they prefer that option. Which means THEY have mega, unanticipated shocks to unleash should the door open. The promises that, once a Convention is called it’s all going to be safe, cannot be guaranteed. Iam now near-convinced the US Constitution wouldn’t survive to see another day should a convention be called. So is the risk worth it in the 2020s?

"That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures."

If they could do this for the 2020 election, imagine what they'd pull off for a Convention.
 

Karlysymon

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MARCH 2022

"Every day, major pundits and others – mostly on the liberal Democratic side of the ledger – bewail the threat to democracy in new laws adopted by several Republican-controlled states that appear to restrict minority voting rights.

They’re mostly correct. With no proof, backers of those new laws assume every person living in this country legally has the government documents the new laws require before many voters can vote by mail, vote early or even go to an ordinary polling place.
But there’s a far bigger threat waiting in the weeds, one that could threaten not only voting rights, but many others assured by the federal and state constitutions, from abortion on demand to emergency room health care and much more.

This threat goes by the name of “Convention of the States Action.” It is the work of far-right activists who claim they mean no harm to anyone, but want a new constitutional convention similar to the one conducted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, several years after the Revolutionary War.
This putative new convention is authorized by Article V of the existing Constitution and would have the authority to change almost everything in that most hallowed blueprint of American democracy, so long as 38 state legislatures agree.

Right now, that seems like an impossible number. But only 34 legislatures need to vote for a convention for it to happen, and 18 have already approved, most recently West Virginia, whose state House and Senate okayed the convention on just one day in February. One legislative chamber in each of eight other states has also approved.

So a new constitutional convention is now more than halfway to reality, with no time limit on when other states can join the effort and no time limit on when the other halves of partially-approving states can vote.
So far, the effort looks like a purely GOP thing, with approving states including Florida, Texas, Alabama and more than a dozen other GOP-controlled states. No Democratically-run state is on the list.

Individual backers include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Donald Trump cabinet member Ben Carson, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. That’s essentially a list of conservative Republican luminaries.


Sponsors of the potential convention say it would be strictly limited to discussing Constitutional amendments that “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints and place term limits on federal officials.”

But there is nothing in Article V limiting what a new convention could pass.

How many Americans today believe the current Bill of Rights, with its freedoms of speech, press and assembly, plus its ban on formal connections between church and state would survive in a convention dominated by Republicans loyal to ex-President Trump?

Even if the convention were to observe the limits its sponsors suggest, it’s plain that health care, freedom of movement between states, allowing states to make almost all land use decisions within their borders and the basic rights guaranteed today have fiscal implications. A convention could pass an amendment banning abortions that would supersede state laws like those assuring the procedures would continue in California even if the Supreme Court negates the landmark Roe v. Wade decision."
 

Karlysymon

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FEB 2022

If leftists can rig elections, they certainly can rig a constitutional convention. That would be a major disaster.

I have a question for conservative friends excited about the prospect of an Article V Constitutional Convention (Con-Con) to amend the U.S. Constitution: What makes you think that only conservatives would show up?

The Convention of the States (CoS) campaign, largely led by Republicans, recently persuaded Wisconsin and Nebraska to apply to Congress for an Article V Constitutional Convention. Seventeen states have applied, half of the two-thirds (34) needed to trigger this unprecedented event.

Conservative Con-Con promoters will not control who attends, what issues are discussed, or what constitutional amendments ultimately are approved. The convention will make all decisions and conservatives will not be able to guarantee the outcome.

Imagine both political parties attending the same national convention, at the same time, with progressive insiders controlling credentials, rules, issues committees, and voting procedures.

Participants would include not just conservative Republicans, but Democrats, RINOs, socialists, Green New Dealers, Supreme Court packers, gun controllers, police de-funders, big spenders, Roe v. Wade codifiers, teacher unions, Anthony Fauci fans, Electoral College critics, race-obsessed wokesters, social justice warriors, and peaceniks who would balance the federal budget by disbanding the Department of Defense.

Conservatives who blithely assume that only conservatives would be empowered to participate in a Con-Con, and that ratification procedures would block unwanted results, should read Mollie Hemingway’s book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” As Mollie wrote, well before Election Day arrived, leftist factions used insider manipulations and bare-knuckled tactics to wire the election for Joe Biden.


Regardless of how an Article V convention is called or who promises what, it is naïve to assume that a pre-written set of “rules” for a Con-Con would play out as conservatives expect. Once a convention begins, it makes its own rules. Promises about procedures and outcomes are meaningless because they are unenforceable.

When things go wrong—like marching brooms and buckets swamping the Sorcerer’s apprentice in Disney’s “Fantasia”—courts would be no help. In disputes about convention procedures or results, advocates making promises today will lose later in court where, if they win, it will be too late. Either way, this is a fiasco in the making.

I saw how this works years ago, when I was active in grassroots issues and elective politics in the Michigan Republican Party. In 1988 the Michigan Party was the first to choose national delegates. The contentious state convention split in two, and the conservative coalition filed a lawsuit charging violations of state law.

The lawsuit lost in a lower court but prevailed on appeal—many months after the National Convention ended. Recently, the Trump campaign finally won an election lawsuit in Wisconsin, but the ruling is on appeal. Meanwhile, Biden has been president for 13 months."
 

Karlysymon

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Article V Proponent

“Convention of States Action President Mark Meckler joined The Federalist Radio Hour recently to discuss all things Article V.

The conversation touched on a wide range of topics, but host and Federalist senior editor Chris Bedford was especially interested in one question: which amendments could 38 states agree to ratify?

Mark answered honestly, admitting that some "conservative wishlist items" were unlikely to pass that extremely high bar. But he also pointed out that some amendments -- term limits, a balanced budget, reducing the size and scope of federal power -- all poll well across the spectrum of the American populace.

"What we know about Americans is, we have different partisan approaches to the problems that we face, but generally speaking, we trust local government more than we trust the national government," he said. "The key is, get the power out of D.C., return it to the states and localities, and let them decide for themselves."


(35mins)
 

Karlysymon

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Article V Opponents
Edit
The Newamerican had their Youtube channel deleted recently, so here are links to those deleted videos


(25mins)

(19mins)
 
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Karlysymon

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So this wasn't just about abortion, now was it?

"The other huge story...worry...is that this could be the beginning of a revolution in the way that the Constitution is interpreted....the future of the Court and Americans' confidence in it."

(4mins)
 

Karlysymon

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March 2022

"In response, the small states walked out of the convention. That sufficed to force the large states, including Madison’s Virginia, to agree to the so-called Great Compromise. The small states were so worried that majoritarianism would eventually be used against them that they wrote in a guarantee that they could never lose their equal Senate representation without their consent. That effectively made the provision unamendable, and it’s why we are stuck with the Senate as long as we keep the U.S. Constitution.

It is therefore time to acknowledge that the U.S. Constitution, as written and as interpreted by the courts, does not mandate pure representative majority rule, or anything like it. The U.S. system is not parliamentary — not even close. It does not express the will of the people by giving each person an equal say in who is elected. And if the Senate is taken into account, it never will.

Probably no one would want to design a democratic system from scratch this way today. Our constitutional arrangements are the result of events that go back to the way Britain chartered colonies in the Americas. They incorporate theories of politics that resonate with the late 18th century more than the early 21st. Not only are they not perfect. They aren’t even just, seen through the lens of contemporary conceptions of equality and equal voice.

They are also what we have. So while it is valuable to insist that some political arrangements are bad and need to be improved as much as possible, we should be able to do this without simultaneously and apocalyptically claiming that, if they don’t change, the entire constitutional system will collapse.

Someday it will crumble and die — all political systems do. But the odds are that it won’t fail for the foreseeable future. And that’s the only future that needs to worry Americans alive today.
"
 

Karlysymon

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Open the constitutional convention door and the second amendment isn't the only thing that will get trashed.

"Of course, it won't be easy to repeal the Second Amendment. It would require a constitutional amendment, passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate and three-quarter of the states. Or a constitutional convention, called by two-thirds of the states, with any proposed changes approved by three-quarters of the states. But, difficult or not, it's still the right thing to do.

We are condemned to more and more mass killings until we do the right thing: Stop arguing about the Second Amendment — and just get rid of it."
 

Karlysymon

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If we are to be realistic, even though the tv pundits won't say it, destroying the dollar as the world's reserve currency effectively signals the end of the American empire and by extension threatens the Union itself. Is the American public emotionally prepared for the fallout of a monetary Reset? That's the big question. Factions will emerge; those trying to save the Republic and those saying hell yes, sign the divorce papers! TPTB are aware of all this and the press has done a mental exercise in this regard. Going by what Mark Carney said, we will have a new, digital, reserve currency.
Therefore, MAGA was, is & remains a pipe dream. It's purveyors (post-2020) are either clueless or just being disingenous.

The world situation today is held together only by the strength of the dollar, which is itself legitimised by the economic, military and political power of the United States, which remains the world’s leading refuge for capital. However, they are now threatened by a very serious budgetary, financial, climatic and political crisis:
In addition, there is a revolutionary climate, where no one can rule out a constitutional crisis, which could even lead, according to some, to the secession of certain states.
Source

So, the dollar dies and we wake up with a new, universal currency. How exactly is this constitutional crisis going to unfold after the Reset....culminating in secession? I have so many questions swirling in my mind over this but i guess one option would be to induce the Wagner situation (it did cross my mind when the Wagner story broke...i wondered whether we were being mentally prepped to expect a similar situation playing out in a different jurisdiction). Either they'll get Erik Prince and his band of mercenaries to pretend to switch sides and storm DC or the whole thing will be done "amicably" (through the courts)....which means we would see a Constitutional Convention fast-tracked within 3-6months. This is crazy!

When i first went down this convention rabbit hole, i thought that a constitutional convention was "plan B" in the grand plot but right now, i no longer think so. If a convention happens, the Union is assuredly not going to survive. You can be sure this has already been gamed out just like they did with the 2020 election....the outcome is already in place long before the delegates are chosen, long before their arrival. As someone remarked on this subject "if you think the 2020 election was bad, imagine what would happen when a Convention is called". Furthermore, this would be happening post-Reset, so delegates who don't vote "appropriately" would simply have their accounts turned off until they vote as "required". The military mandates should have been the biggest clue, to most people, that the dismantling of the nation is in earnest....then again, at the height of Covid, who was paying attention that the break up of the United States was in the cards? It is logical to conclude that the dismantling is going to encompass other institutions or national landmarks. What's going to happen to, say; the Jefferson Memorial? Or the Lincoln Memorial? TPTB will probably just blow those things up.

It is rather interesting how the American mind is played. If the psywar didn't entrap someone (conservatives) through QAnon then others have been ensnared through this. The number of states that have called for a convention is past the half-way mark so i also find it interesting that Rick Santorum said that he expected to have the required number of states (34) by 2024....curious timing isn't it?

Re-reading that 2019 Forbes article (on page #1) right now sends a chill up the spine. It is to any American to prepare the heart & mind. Momentous changes are up ahead post-Reset.
 

Karlysymon

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If the adage “practice makes perfect” has merit, be afraid—be very afraid. This August, a far-right group is convening its third-known practice session on how to rewrite the Constitution to advance partisan goals. The organization, Convention of States, is not only rehearsing how to amend the Constitution; it is also promoting a highly undemocratic method of doing so. If Convention of States gets its way, our country will be thrown into a constitutional crisis with no guarantee that our democracy survives.

And yet, the Constitution does not require that an Article V convention be representative. It does not require that democratic procedures be used to ensure inclusive consultation and genuine majority decisions. This ambiguity would certainly allow for a representative, democratic process, but it also would allow for an undemocratic “one state, one vote” procedure. It is in this ambiguity that Convention of States sees opportunity, and why more people need to be paying attention to this run at our Constitution.

On its website, Convention of States asks, “Why call an Article V Convention?” and answers by stating, “Simple: to bring power back to the states and the people, where it belongs.” A “one state, one vote” procedure would not bring power back to the people, however, at least not all the people. It would perpetuate the political dominance of white people, who make up a declining percentage of this country’s population.

Convention of States further misinforms the public by claiming that delegates to a convention would be selected by state legislatures. There is nothing in Article V that specifies how delegates would be chosen or how amendments would get proposed. But again, in the absence of a nationwide conversation about constitutional amendment, Convention of States sees opportunity to advance its desired undemocratic plan without organized opposition or pushback.
 

Karlysymon

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California Democrats back Gavin Newsom’s push to write gun control into U.S. Constitution

A curious provision in the California call for a constitutional convention claims that the application is to be considered a “continuing application … until such time as two-thirds of the several states have applied for a convention and said convention is convened by Congress.”

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