The Vault KD Vault Date 0904•10 – Time For Article V

LIVE! Exclusive broadcast for Founders Pass Members only! This is a very special Episode of The Vault as this audio recording was so recently discovered yet has incredible, historic implications. The panelists convened at 9:00am that 09 April, 2010 morning to make the case to an anxious nation that an Article V Amendment Convention was THE solution to the Federal Crisis the last 50 years of Constitutional abuse by all 3 branches of government had placed the United States in. The following recording is part 1 of a 2 part series. The panel included:

What follows is a discussion of the idea of an Amendment Convention held  in Washington D.C. on 9 April 2010.  The constitutional mechanism is discussed, as are its political ramifications and the most popular objections.  None of the four participants or the moderator came to the question lightly, and yet all conclude that the time is now, that ordinary electoral politics will not remedy the problem, and that the opportunity provided by Americans’ current revulsion with out-of-control government must not be wasted.

The problem has been the same since 1937.  Now, finally, the people have noticed.  Please consider these proceedings with an open mind.

Randy Barnett is Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center

Tony Blankley was White House aide to President Ronald Reagan and Press Secretary to Speaker Newt Gingrich

Bruce Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan

Kevin Gutzman is Associate Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University

Mike Church is a radio personality and documentary film maker of the founding era.

With the Revolution of 1937, the Supreme Court effectively abandoned the enterprise of drawing a line between state and federal legislative authority.  Since then, with limited exceptions, it has allowed Congress to legislate in any way it likes.

The result, fitfully for decades but now in a rising crescendo of legislation, has been exactly as the Founders feared.  Democracy — unlimited legislative power — yields transfers of wealth from some members of society to others.  The majority, as in the years leading up to the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution, takes money from the minority.

But, if anything, things are worse than that.  As once American politicians could not lose by expropriating Indian land and giving it to white people — because Indians did not have the vote, while whites did —, today’s politicians seemingly cannot lose by taking money from posterity for the benefit of their constituents.  After all, posterity cannot vote, and voters can reward politicians who borrow money from future generations to pay for goodies they can hand to today’s electorate.

What is to be done?  Must Americans stand by and watch the Congress transfer money from the future to the present?  Is spending for spending’s sake (President Obama’s explanation of his “stimulus” legislation) to be the road to America’s ruin?

The Constitution was intended to provide parameters of the Federal Government’s power.  Congress could do only a few things, most of them listed in Article I, Section 8.  Spending for spending’s sake was not among them.

Nor was No Child Left Behind.  Nor NASA, four decades since it fulfilled its purpose.  Nor payments to farmers not to farm.

What to do?

Some seem to believe that throwing the bums out will solve the problem.  If only the spendthrift Democratic Feinsteins and Dodds and Reids who gave us TARP, takeovers of General Motors and European style health care could be replaced by a new crop of Republicans like Ted Stevens and Bob Packwood and Bob Dole who gave us things like SCHIP, No Child gets Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Entitlement, things might be righted.

But more people sense that that is not enough.  In many states, Republicans and Democrats are now outnumbered by unaligned voters.  These people do not expect 2010’s elections to correct the legacy of 1937, any more than election of dedicated limited-government advocates in 1980 and 1994 did.

The time has come, then, to heed George Mason.

That greatest of Revolutionary America’s constitution-makers insisted that Article V of the Constitution include a mechanism for amending the Constitution without involving Congress.  Congress, he noted, might be the problem, and so relying on Congress to propose an amendment would not do.

In response, he and his fellow Framers provided for an Amendment Convention.

What follows is a discussion of the idea of an Amendment Convention held  in Washington D.C. on 9 April 2010.  The constitutional mechanism is discussed, as are its political ramifications and the most popular objections.  None of the four participants or the moderator came to the question lightly, and yet all conclude that the time is now, that ordinary electoral politics will not remedy the problem, and that the opportunity provided by Americans’ current revulsion with out-of-control government must not be wasted.

The problem has been the same since 1937.  Now, finally, the people have noticed.  Please consider these proceedings with an open mind.

Randy Barnett is Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center

Tony Blankley was White House aide to President Ronald Reagan and Press Secretary to Speaker Newt Gingrich

Bruce Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan

Kevin Gutzman is Associate Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University

Mike Church is a radio personality and documentary film maker of the founding era.