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Convention of States

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Kodiak:
I'm with the majority on this one.  The government is jacked up, so we should use the government to fix it.

Sandhillian:
Levin addresses the fear of a runaway convention in the opening pages of "The Liberty Amendments."  Also, with a convention, we're not relying on the federal government to try to fix anything.  Delegates to the convention would be selected from the states.  Three-fourths of the states would then have to approve any changes.

Saying that the Constitution in its current form is fine the way it is, it only needs to be enforced, leads to the status quo.  I agree, the Constitution needs to be adhered to and enforced, but really, none of the branches are doing that now.  Why do we expect that to change without forcing the change?  Our republic is broken, not the Constitution, but something needs to be done to get us back on the right track.  Talking about a convention of the states at least gets the discussion going.

I know we're primarily focused on the 2nd Amendment on this forum, but there are other parts of the Constitution that could really stand to be changed.  The 17th Amendment stands out as one example.  The enactment of that amendment directly overrode the Founders' construction of the U.S. Senate, and now look at how that body operates.  The 16th Amendment would make that list, too.  That authorizes the federal income tax, without any sort of limitation.  The 18th Amendment was a flop, so the 21st Amendment repealed it.  Ideally, I guess restoring the Constitution to the form the Founders' intended it to have would be great, but how do we do it?  The reality is that wishing the Constitution was enough has proven to be ineffective against the statists that occupy the federal government.

The amendments Levin proposes touch on these significant issues:

Repeal of the 17th Amendment and restoration of state legislatures choosing U.S. Senators;
Term limits for Congress and the judiciary;
Balanced budget and spending cap;
Taxation cap;
Reigning in the bloated federal bureaucracy;
Congressional super-majority override of Supreme Court decisions;
State super-majority override of federal law.

You'll be hard-pressed not to find at least one amendment you agree with in that book.  Give some thought to this process instead of just disregarding it outright and hoping the federal government will miraculously return to the Constitutional principles we hold so dear.
 

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