Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

Is It Time For a Constitutional Convention? December 10, 2016

Once the province of so-called fringe political wonks this is an idea that has become mainstream.  Some fear that if we convene such a convention all our freedoms will be on the block.  They forget that as our founders stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Our freedoms and the right to those freedoms come from our Creator, not from government.

Such a convention is provided for in Article Five of the Constitution.

Besides, I believe we can trust the innate dedication of the American people to this the greatest experiment in human freedom in History.

So what makes me feel this idea has percolated up from the nether regions of political activists and philosophers to the realm of political reality?

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas in January of this year called for a constitutional convention of states to propose amendments which would change the balance of power in Washington, return some semblance of sovereignty to the States and empower the people.

Governor Abbott’s nine proposed amendments include:

Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs in one state

Require Congress to balance its budget.

Prohibit administrative agencies from creating law

Prohibit administrative agencies from pre-empting state law

Allow a two-thirds majority of the states of override a Supreme Court decision

Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law

Restore balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution

Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds

Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law regulation.

Personally I endorse all of these proposals with one exception.  I would substitute an amendment to limit spending to a percentage of GDP instead of a balanced budget amendment.  A balanced budget amendment would not do anything about spending it would merely require the Washington cartel to raise taxes and confiscate enough to cover their spendaholic nature.

One thing is for sure we need to return the federal nature to our federal republic.  This nature was upended when President Lincoln substituted the preservation of union over the preservation of constitutional order.  It was further by the Progressive Seventeenth Amendment which changed the composition of the Senate.  Originally the Senators were chosen by the legislatures of the States.  The House was designed to represent the people and the Senate was designed to represent the States.  After the Seventeenth Amendment the States have been forced to hire lobbyists from K-Street to represent them in Rome on the Potomac.

Then the final nail in the federal coffin was nailed during FDR’s presidency for life in 1942.  In a landmark court case, Wickard v. Filburn brought by an Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, who was growing wheat for use to feed animals on his own farm.  The government under the price supports and crop limitations of the Agricultural Adjustment Act ruled this was interstate commerce and therefore under federal regulations.  The Farmer who was growing on his on land for use on his own land disagreed and sued.

When the case made it to the Supreme Court, which had turned into a rubber-stamp for FDR and his disastrous New deal it ruled “The intended disposition of the crop here involved has not been expressly stated, ” and later “Whether the subject of the regulation in question was ‘production’, ‘consumption’, or ‘marketing’ is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us … [b]ut even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’”

This type of doublethink has eroded our Republic from a constitutionally limited representative republic which operates on democratic principles and that is dedicated to ensuring limited government, personal freedom, and economic opportunity into a centrally-planned dystopia heading for the trash bin of History.  The American people have just struck a blow for freedom.  We have defeated the establishment and elected a man who has said he will work for us and make America great again.  Now is the time to move forward and complete the revolution by re-imposing limits upon the leviathan.

So far 34 States have voted for the Article Five Convention, 38 are needed.  Check and see if your State has voted and if it hasn’t petition your State representative and senator to do so.  Let’s move forward to a restoration of freedom, liberty, and the American way.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens