Several states are now passing calls for a Constitutional Convention again. The Compact for America (a nasty bunch) is pushing for a new Constitutional Convention in Dallas this July 4, 2013.
We are in extreme danger of losing our entire Constitution.
To warn us, Kelleigh Nelson has written a sobering 3-part series about the dangers inherent in a Constitutional Convention, and about the specific dangers of the nice-sounding but oh-so-deceptive Balanced Budget Amendment.
Below is Part 1 of Kelleigh’s “Constitutional Convention Call Redux.” Parts 2 and 3 will follow in the days to come. Please spread the word: Tweet, email, and link this on your Facebook page!
See also Kelleigh’s outstanding 7-part series on Agenda 21 and euthanasia, “Killing Me Softly.”
~Eowyn
Then: 1787 Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention
Now: 2012 Democratic National Convention
You really want this bunch to rewrite our Constitution?
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION CALL REDUX
Part 1
By Kelleigh Nelson
“I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitution Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congressmen might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey it.” -Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Warren E. Burger
“Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention, I would tremble for the result of the second.” -James Madison, Father of the Constitution and fourth President of the United States
“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787
We could lose our God given rights, secured by the 1787 Constitution if a new call for a Constitutional Convention (Con-Con) is successful. The Constitution is about the specific powers we delegated to the federal government. Our rights pre-date and pre-exist the Constitution. The sole purpose of civil government is to secure those rights. Knowing what is waiting in the wings, if we lose this Constitution, all will finally be lost, and the war for our freedoms would be over. If you never read another one of my articles, I beg you to read and disseminate this one. Then contact your state legislators and find out where your state stands regarding a call for a Constitutional Convention.
Thirty Years Ago
In the early 1980′s, we did not have home computers, lap tops, or IPADs; neither did we have unlimited long-distance telephone rates. We only had our Fax machines and our telephones. Yet, the nation’s patriotic groups, and the Kitchen Militia gals, worked tirelessly to stave off a call for another Constitutional Convention. We knew the dangers, we knew the precedents, and we knew what was waiting in the wings to replace the Constitution given to us by honorable men. We knew that if we lost our Constitution and Bill of Rights, that the great experiment in freedom and liberty would be lost forever.
We worked to inform people of what a new Constitutional Convention would bode for America. Thirty-two of the necessary 34 states needed to call a new Con-Con had petitioned the Congress for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA).
(An amendment to the Constitution is first proposed by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by Constitutional Convention. This is the way we’ve ratified amendments since the Bill of Rights. It is then sent to the states for their votes. If 38 of the states ratify the amendment, it will be added to the Constitution. The danger in the ratifying process is that Congress decides whether it will be ratified by the legislators of 38 states, or by special Ratifying Conventions. As well, the legislators who called for the Convention can be totally circumvented – having no voice in the outcome, thus opening a Pandora’s Box and powerless to close it.)
Thirteen states finally recalled their calls: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Arizona, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and in 2010, Tennessee. Link Now some are again calling for a Con-Con.
Our Constitution is still a barrier to the globalists, and they hate this document. The elite have always wanted to destroy it because, as Patrick Henry said, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” The One Worlders have a new constitution waiting in the wings which will grant us privileges by the state. The distinctive characteristic of our Constitution is that it created a federal government of only limited, defined, and enumerated powers! We must focus on the limited powers we delegated instead of our “rights.” Rights pre-date and pre-exist the Constitution. Only with this conception of rights can we avoid having black-robed federal judges determine the scope and extent of our rights.
We have elected officials in local, state, and federal governments who have no problem trampling our Constitution. We have heard the cries from the right and left for a BBA via an Article V Constitutional Convention. The Constitution LIMITS what the federal government is allowed to spend with taxpayer dollars. It is so limited that the funding of outrageous items today would fill an encyclopedia. Our Constitution does not authorize foreign aid, or museums about rock stars, or studying of the blue lizard, or Chinese prostitutes, or unconstitutional wars, etc., etc., ad nauseam. We have a majority of Republicans in congress today…so why in heaven’s name aren’t they balancing the budget now without an amendment?
Of course, unknown to most of the electorate, the BBA would actually legalize the unconstitutional spending the Congress has been doing for decades. See Publius Huldah’s most important article “Why the Balanced Budget Amendment is a Hoax and a Deadly Trap.”
Forty-five Republican Senators and the majority of Republican Representatives absolutely love the BBA and desire its passage, including Rand Paul. They talk openly about it to the dumbed down electorate, never telling us that it would LEGALIZE UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPENDING. This would give Congress a free hand to spend whatever they want to on any frivolous item that floats past their desks. The Constitution limits CONGRESS alone to the spending of money!
The BBA will usher in a totalitarian dictatorship. Pursuant to the unconstitutional Budget Act of 1921, the President has been preparing the budget. Since the Budget Act is unconstitutional, the President’s preparation of the budget has been likewise unconstitutional. Section 3 of the BBA would legalize what is now unconstitutional and unlawful, but Section 3 of the BBA does more than merely legalize the unlawful. It actually transfers the Constitutional power to make the appropriations and to determine taxes to the President. Congress will simply become a rubber stamp. Senate bill from 112th Congress. House bill from 113th Congress.
Former Senator Jim DeMint, and Senator Mike Lee, (neo-cons) are determined to jam this down our throats along with Congressional representatives like Michelle Bachmann. Don’t tell me they don’t understand what they’re doing, because all of them love the out-of-control spending and the BBA would legalize it. In the July 7, 2011, WSJ, Jim DeMint joined with that bastion of conservative politics, Maine’s Senator Olympia Snowe, to push the BBA, stating it is The Only Reform That Will Restrain Spending. Liars and thieves!
The 1787 Convention
In 1787, delegates gathered in a Conference of States (not a Constitutional Convention) to discuss problems with interstate commerce. They were given strict instructions by the Congress that they were to meet only for “the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” Eleven of the twelve states present, specifically instructed their delegates to discuss nothing more than the commerce issue.
Once convened, the delegates of the twelve states, formed a “committee of the whole” (chaired by the elected George Washington, President of the Conference), took a vote, and declared the Articles of Confederation null and void! For five months they debated behind closed doors and emerged with an entirely new form of government. Our 1787 Constitution was the result.
The Conference of the States had become a runaway Constitutional Convention! It happened then, and we are certain it will happen again if we don’t stop the process. The precedent was set.
An Article V Constitutional Convention today would undoubtedly mutate the same way the 1787 “Conference of States” mutated into a Constitutional Convention. A Constitutional Convention makes its own rules, cannot be limited, and could indeed throw out the entire structure, including the narrowly defined, limited and enumerated powers granted the federal government, just like the framers threw out the Articles of Confederation in 1787! Remember, the Bill of Rights tells the federal government what it CANNOT do!
About 50 of the 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention were practicing Christians, so the Constitution they wrote was rooted squarely in the Word of God and the Ten Commandments. It maximized individual liberty while at the same time limiting government power. There are absolutely no Constitutional guarantees that the legal precedent of the first Convention will not be repeated by the second one, the result being a new Constitution. However, you can rest assured that this one will not be from Godly Christian men. Back in the early 80s, many of the states that called for a one-item Convention like the BBA, wrote limiting language into their calls, (thinking they could indeed control the agenda, and stating they would secede from the Convention if it overstepped the bounds). Nevertheless, the precedent of the first Convention is the basis for American jurisprudence. A Con-Con is not just the amendment that is at issue. The entire document is taken down from its pedestal and is put on the table and people go to work on it, tearing it apart. There are NO RULES!
As well, the Unbridled Power of the delegates to a Con-Con has been acknowledged several times by various State Supreme Courts, and a letter from former U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger confirms the danger. In his letter Justice Burger said:
” . . . there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. . . After a convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the convention if we don’t like its agenda.”
James Madison is the “Father” of our Constitution. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison proposed the plan to divide the central government into three branches. He discovered this model of government from the Perfect Governor, as he read Isaiah 33:22; “For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us.” (Judicial, Legislative, Executive)
There were delegates from twelve of the thirteen states in attendance at the original 1787 Convention. Rhode Island did not send delegates. The most notable statesmen present were Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton, all of whom signed the final Constitution. Ultimately, 39 of the original 55 delegates ended up signing, but it is likely that none were completely satisfied. Their views were summed up by Benjamin Franklin, who said,
“There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. … I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. … It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies…”
The names of several prominent Founders are notable for their not having participated in the Constitutional Convention. Thomas Jefferson was abroad, serving as the minister to France (nonetheless, Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, would describe the delegates approvingly as a gathering of “demi-gods”). Jefferson later stated that had he been present at the Convention, he would have urged term limits for politicians. John Adams was in Britain, serving as minister to that country, but he wrote home to encourage the delegates. Patrick Henry refused to participate because he “smelt a rat in Philadelphia, tending toward the monarchy.” Also absent were John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Many of the states’ older and more experienced leaders may have simply been too busy with the local affairs of their states to attend the Convention, which had originally been planned to strengthen the existing Articles of Confederation, not to write a Constitution for a completely new national government.
Now, think about the delegates and leaders of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. They were men of letters, with integrity, honor, and love of liberty and freedom. The Founders of America were patriots, visionaries, revolutionaries, world shakers, and nation builders. They joined together to protect America’s citizens from an over reaching, all powerful, centralized federal government. Although imperfect men, they were statesmen who understood government needed to be chained to protect the people.
Can you imagine the delegates we would get from the Congress today? It would be the same Congress which gave us a $16 trillion plus debt, which won’t stand up to Obama, that passed the Patriot Act, the NDAA, and all the other egregious bills they’ve signed on to. Can you see the delight of the globalists in destroying the Constitution that binds them? Can you imagine today’s Washington D.C. leaders deciding how to change our Constitution? I tremble at the very thought.
Who is behind the push for a Con-Con call today? What is the Compact for America? Who is ALEC? Who was Henry Hazlitt and Rexford Tugwell? What new Constitution is waiting in the wings, written by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations? We will answer these questions in subsequent articles.
Finally, a special thank you to my friend, retired attorney, Publius Huldah, for her help with this article.