The Movement Toward a New U.S. Constitution

WATCH OUT FOR WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING!

The Oregon Legislature in the 1995 session defeated an attempt to involve Oregon in the movement to hold a Conference of States. According to the agenda of those supporting the idea, that conference will be turned into a Constitutional Convention.

Why do we need such a convention? Because, these people say, our existing Constitution is old fashioned and doesn't work very well any more. It impedes progress rather than helping us to adapt to the world that is facing us in the Twenty First Century.

A student of Constitutional history knows that the U. S. Constitution was written with one fundamental object in mind: To protect the people against the tyranny of Government. The founders had had enough of George III, his ministers and royal governors, and of tax collectors backed by mercenary troops fully authorized to seize and occupy anyone's home or business without any sort of due process. Sounds like our modern IRS and BATF, doesn't it?.

Those in control of our Government today see that objective of the founders as not only anachronistic, but dead wrong. Worse, the people who pull the strings do their best to use the Constitution as a tool for protection of the government from the people. Ruby Ridge and the Waco incidents and their outcomes (in the events and at law) were examples of how that approach to the Constitution led to a pair of wrongful deaths in the one case, a massacre in the other, and wrongful prosecution in both. Relative to the amendments known as the Bill of Rights, we saw the raw abuse of the

first (the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech),
second (the right to keep and bear arms),
fourth (the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures),
eighth ( prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments),
ninth (the rights allowed the government "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"), and
tenth (powers not specifically given to the government are prohibited to it, for they are "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people).

In other instances the government for decades has ignored the constitution. Look at one example: The provision of the Constitution that specifies that only the Congress can coin money, and defines the nature and value of that money. Yet Constitutional money has been as extinct as the dodo ever since the demise of real money under theFranklin D. Roosevelt (gold) and Lyndon Johnson (silver) Administrations, and was threatened specie ever since authorization of the Federal Reserve and its invention of "I owe you nothing" bank notes.

So who is pushing for the Constitutional Convention aka the Conference of States? Five very influential groups are behind it. They are The Council of State Governments, The Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations, the National Council of State Legislators, the Conference of Governors and the U. S. Conference of Mayors. Their alleged motive: to pave the way to "better government."

Two basic goals guide the prospective changes such a convention would make to the Constitution. The first is to legitimize the on-going shift of power from the people to the federal government. The second is to change the Constitution with amendments that would enable further changes to be made without having to hop through the difficult hoops the founders put in the way of changing the Constitution. That would allow "political correctness" to be made the measure of the Constitution, rather than vice versa.

The first goal is fundamentally an attack on the Tenth Amendment. By it, the powers given the federal government were intentionally limited to those spelled out in the Constitution; and specifically awards all other powers and freedoms to be retained by the states and the people. This is why Goals 2000 has to be implemented by monetary carrots and sticks. Without the Tenth Amendment, Goals 2000 would be mandatory now in every school room, public and private, and in home schools too. Nor would parents have legal recourse to remove their children from the educational machine developed by the state for the behavioral modification of their children.

The second goal is to get rid of Article V, which makes Constitutional amendments a logistically and politically difficult proposition. However, that article does assert that if the legislatures of two thirds of the states do apply for a Convention of States, then Congress "SHALL CALL A CONVENTION FOR PROPOSING AMENDMENTS, WHICH....SHALL BE VALID TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, AS PART OF THIS CONSTITUTION, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States OR BY CONVENTIONS IN THREE FOURTHS THEREOF..."

In other words, the people who control our government can achieve destruction of our Constitution by means of well-orchestrated conventions attended by their appointed political pets both at the national and state levels, evading the will of the people at the ballot box, and giving our elected representatives (who let them get away with it) the excuse that. "Gee, I wasn't even invited, so you can't blame me."

You may expect that the federal government manipulators, recognizing the plight of the cash-strapped states and municipalities, will find financial carrots and sticks (just as with implementation of OBE) to lure state and local support for achieving those goals, with many of those state and local dignitaries rushing into the trap without the slightest notion that to take the bait they will have given away our personal liberties. The Bill of Rights will have been sold down the river for the equivalent of ten pieces of silver. The modern buzzwords, however, will be "federal grants," "funded federal mandates," and the like, words that make mouths water among professional politicians and bureaucrats.

You may also expect the media to hype the supposed advantages of the Convention and the "new" constitution. And they will brand discussions such as this as the ravings of a lunatic.

What is the time line? It failed in 1995. In the 1996 and 2000 presidential election years it was delayed again. No candidate would want to face hard questions on that issue. If not then, certainly it will be pushed hard in 2002 or later by both dominant political parties. Both are playing games with campaign finance reform. Both are equally apt to exchange campaign money for a sell-out of the Constitution.

What to do? Don't let your state and federal legislators pretend ignorance. Make them aware of what is at stake, and let them know you won't forget you told them. For the state legislatures have to choose to have their state participate, delegates must be appointed, and the Congress has to call the convention.

The convention was squelched in 1995, but these people are persistent. There is big money and power involved. They will be back next year, and the year afterwards, and the one after that.

The only workable solution is to elect people not beholden to the people who pull the strings of government.

That solution involves "third party" organizations throughout the United States, although the so-called "national" Reform Party is no longer recommended here..

Vote with your feet. Get out of the Republican and Democratic Parties who gave you OBE, GATT and NAFTA, and plan to give you the Conference of States where they will happily wave goodbye to the ship of Freedom as it leaves the shores of America forevermore.