“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Given the current political climate and culture we are in, I cannot imagine changing the United States Constitution with the circus that runs amuck in Washington, D.C., as well as within our state legislatures. The Founding Fathers replaced the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, with something much less defective and so much stronger—the United States Constitution. They knew that the weaknesses in the Articles must be remedied. They realized early on that the weaknesses in them were two-fold. First, the states were independent at founding, and they did not want to cede out power to other states. Secondly, they were leery of coercive powers sitting in the laps of civil authorities. Could you blame them? They had already “been there and done that” with the King, and simply put, they wanted their own state power.
They realized that the deficiencies essentially meant that the Articles of Confederation gave them exclusive powers and responsibilities but zero power to be able to execute even one of them. The ineffectiveness of this setup was glaringly obvious. They had many responsibilities but zero power to carry them out. Declare everything; do nothing. The Founders could not actually enforce any laws.
Some wanted to simply fix the deficiencies but several, including James Madison and George Washington, wanted to scrap that altogether and create an entirely new system. That they did! In the late spring of 1787, delegates from across the country gathered at Independence Hall to work out the flaws in the government system, but Washington encouraged them to “raise a standard” and form the best government system known to man and trust that “the event is in the hands of God.” Challenge accepted. Challenge met.
Eerily similar to today, the Founding government structure was also on the verge of collapse. For over a month, nothing could be decided on. Patience and hopes were dashed, but Divine Providence showed up, and no nation has been under the same Constitution longer than the United States.
As I reflect on this history and peruse current events in my mind’s eye and the irony of where we are in relation to the Founding era, I become increasingly agitated. My Restore Liberty Mississippi team spent months on researching illegal foreign land sales in Mississippi and other states. Some states, including Mississippi, do have good laws on the books. The problem is we do not enforce many of the laws we have and are grossly negligent in this arena. In light of history, what an absurdity it is to have the power to acknowledge defects in our system and the responsibilities to do something about it yet have no power or authority to carry out those responsibilities. It is equally absurd to currently have the power afforded to us by the United States Constitution yet squander the enforcement of good law and not use that good authority delegated appropriately to follow the law in the first place. What transpires is ineffective and incompetent foolishness.
I cannot fathom calling a current Constitutional Convention of sorts in this present and systemically dark government regime. What are we to remedy? The Constitution? IT IS NOT BROKEN! Reason with me. Can you imagine turning loose a modern-day convention with some of the yahoos we have elected? Where in Article V does it guarantee that delegates elected must be current or former state legislators? Where in the context of Article V does it even say votes will be “one state, one vote”? Where in Article V will it limit the number of singular-subject amendments? The list goes on.
Who do you know that is currently elected that emulates the Founding Fathers? If you could find even a few good Constitutional Republicans, would there even be enough to hold the line and not devalue and undermine the Constitution by rewriting it or amending it? What in the Constitution itself needs to be corrected? Can you name anything? If the federal government has no sense to follow the current Constitution, then how would we expect them to follow a newly revised Constitution?
I don’t know about your state, but in Mississippi, we like to break the law, indemnify ourselves, and then write new laws to say similar things to the laws we broke. So, no surprise, Mississippi was the 15th state to join the cry for a Constitutional Convention. By their reasoning, it makes sense. Why? We cannot follow the Constitution we currently have, so we want to write a new one so we can follow that one. Face palm!
We should be enforcing Constitutional laws and nullifying ALL unconstitutional federal laws, rules, orders, executive orders, statutes, codes, edicts, and court rulings. If you sold land illegally to China or combatant nations, pull the plug! Take it back! Arkansas has a game plan, so I highly suggest looking at what they are doing. Null. Void. We should not sell our land, commodities, and intellectual properties to countries who wish to see us annihilated. Truly outrageous! We must stop trampling on Founding intent. While some of those who argue for a Convention rest their case on the three-fourths “hard- to- get- the- vote” argument, we shall do well to remember the Sixteenth Amendment was passed using three-fourths vote. (That would be income tax.)
Safeguards are there to include the checks and balances of an active electorate that counters government overreaches and works to nullify the overreaches. We the People are to maintain our power and authority and realize we have delegated some power through the states to the federal government. We must be informed citizens and learn the framework of how our Constitutional Republic functions.
At the end of the day, there will never be any proposed constitutional amendment that can ever take the place of an educated ecclesia, an educated electorate, and an educated, elected leadership who are knowledgeable and appreciative of the United States Constitution. It must be defended and asserted. Holding the line to Biblical precept and governance is the shovel needed to dig ourselves out of this sinking Marxist hell hole. We better start digging.
Rebecca Chaney is the Director for Restore Liberty Mississippi and is a former board member for the Mississippi Freedom Caucus. She is a lifetime Patriot Academy Constitution Coach and has hosted Biblical Citizenship and Constitutional classes since 2020. She has helped to start these classes across the state of Mississippi. She is a homeschool Mom of seven years to her son and daughter. You can read more of her work at https://substack.com/@rebeccachaney and www.restore-liberty.org
The Congress is not closest to the people, but rather the state legislatures are, which is why Article V is a delegated authority to them as a backstop to federal misbehavior and abuse. Alexander Hamilton said, "We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority.” Erecting barriers is how you enforce what the Constitution says. James Wilson, the first man sworn to the Suprem Court said, "The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." So, without the context of American founding era history, you cannot understand that nullification was a theory rejected for the Constitution and Article V was instead put there for the states to enforce it. Just as we have legal and historical precedent on how Congress makes law, we have almost 350 years of both historical and legal precedent for the process of an Article V convention.
Constitutional conventions require ratification by all 50 states, but amendments require only 38 states. They are clearly not the same thing, and a convention has no authority to enact-only to propose amendments. Nor can it rewrite or write a new constitution. Read the text. It says “a convention for proposing amendments…as part of THIS constitution. Your argument over the 16th amendment is a ‘red herring” as it was duly ratified at the time by ¾ of the states into the Constitution. It was at the time never expected that the federal government would “interpret” so many ungranted powers to themselves and then raise the income tax as they have. It was expected to never rise above 4%.
Amendments do three things. 1) Clarify something already in the Constitution. 2) reverse a Supreme Court ruling, or 3) add a new rule to the Constitution. All amendments have changed the Constitution-and without amendments slavery was legal, there was no Bill of Rights, women could not vote and a president could be re-elected many times not just once. So, amendments are necessary to change the powers of our government from time to time and protect the will and liberty of the people or when we need to remove a power because the federal government has abused it. Article V is the single most important of all the checks and balances in the Constitution because it is the only one that can come from outside the beltway-from the people through the state legislature to erect barriers by proposing amendments Congress simply will not. Can you imagine a time when those in power would willingly propose an amendment to remove their own assumed powers? If an active electorate is the only check and balance for federal overreach, how did we get to the point we are today? By ignoring what that meant and using the Article V process to amend when overreach became law we did not agree to. And everyone should know that the courts have always upheld this process and protected it exactly as the founders practiced it.
I agree with you! I try to get others to understand who broke the Constitution. I live in the country below Brandon.