An Open Letter to the States

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A Repost from the Convention of States Website

The Declaration of Independence – July 4th, 1776

Many Americans recognize phrases from the first two paragraphs of our Declaration of Independence; Phrases such as, “When in the course of human events,” or “all men are created equal.” However, it is in the third paragraph where the founders laid out the specific justifications for separating from English rule.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – The Why and How of Governance

Reading the Constitution of the United States through the lens of the Declaration of Independence and the events of 1775-1783 grants insight into the Constitution’s context and content. The founders, recognizing that government is a necessary evil imposed on the liberty of its citizens, strove to protect the populace from government overreach they so recently experienced. To do so, they built into the Constitution protections against the overreach they experienced, and balanced popular representation (House of Representatives) with state representation (Senate), to thwart domination by either a runaway representative majority (a tyranny of the majority), or overweening state legislatures (a tyranny of the elite).

To ensure population centers, alone, did not unduly effect the election of the chief executive, the electoral college was instituted to force candidates to win states.

To minimize the probability of complicity among governing elites, the founders instituted three branches of government; each designed to be independent from the others, but with checks to curb excesses of power by any one or two of the other branches, especially the executive (reasonably so, considering the dependency of England’s aristocratic judiciary upon the whims of the monarchy).

The Erosion of Independence

Since about 1900, the separation of power envisioned by the founders of the Constitution has been undergoing continual erosion. Perhaps among the most egregious politically is the 17th Amendment, which changed the Senate from representing the people of the several states through their respective legislatures, to their direct popular (i.e., majority) election. Thus, Senators no longer represented their state and its collective interest, but rather became independent agents with little accountability save the next popular election largely decided by areas with high population densities: Satisfy the population centers and you win your seat for the next six years, without recourse to recall.

Another was the abrogation by the legislature (House and Senate) of its regulatory authority to executive branch bureaucracies. A third has been the gradual and increasing efforts of the executive branch to legislate through regulation, and obfuscate through secrecy and stonewalling inquiries into its internal machinations.

Perhaps the fourth was the rise of a professional political class. The founders seem to have envisioned citizen-legislators rather than those who would choose politics, and their “employment” in political office, as their profession (See my “Government of the People“).

Citizens of the United States do not serve a regency, nor do we exist to serve a class of the financially or politically well-connected! We constitute the government. Government authority derives from the people. Our government is (supposed to be) by the consent of the governed.

Correcting Governmental Evils

With foresight rare among the politically motivated, our founders crafted two mechanisms into the Constitution which allow corrections for circumstances and developments they acknowledged they could not foresee: Amendments proposed through the agreement both Houses, or “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments . . .” (Article V).

In consonance with the precedent of the Declaration of Independence, a corrective to perceived Constitutional abuses is proposed, some specifics of which may be read in “The Liberty Amendments” and “Liberty Amendments II”.

A Call for a Convention of States

(A re-post of an article from the Convention of States movement)

WE THE PEOPLE of the Convention of States movement declare that the United States government has failed to secure the rights of the American people as called for in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, the federal government, dominated by career politicians, has usurped power from the people and the states over many decades, effectively dismantling the principles of federalism that the founding fathers forged into the U.S. Constitution.

We now issue this Open Letter to the States to communicate our grievances with the federal government:

• It has amassed a $30+ trillion national debt with $150 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
• It regularly fails to balance its budget, as most states are required to do.
• It is not held to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, as all businesses are.
• Congress is not required to limit all bills to a single subject, as most states are, leading to massive omnibus federal spending bills.
• Congress unconstitutionally delegates its sole authority to make laws to an unelected bureaucracy.
• The judicial branch unconstitutionally encroaches on the sole authority of Congress to make laws by legislating from the bench.
• The executive branch unconstitutionally encroaches on the sole authority of Congress to make laws through executive orders which change drastically from one administration to another.
• Federal elected officials are accountable to their political parties and special interest groups rather than to their constituents.
• Congress regularly oversteps its constitutionally limited powers in the areas of education, healthcare, energy, the environment and many more.
• It has failed to secure the U.S. border, thus increasing drug and human trafficking and allowing a flow of illegal immigrants who become reliant on services funded by taxpayer dollars.
• It has, at times, made efforts to undermine the Bill of Rights, weaken the justice system, disarm the populace, suppress free speech, regulate religious freedom, and control the mainstream media narrative.
• The unconstitutional Department of Education promotes Critical Race Theory (CRT) and radical sexual/gender ideology in schools.
• It promotes woke ideologies as a replacement for Judeo-Christian values and patriotic national identity.
• Federal officials make prominent government appointments on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation rather than strictly on legitimate professional qualifications.
• It employs destructive Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scoring, which run counter to a free market economy.
• Congress and unelected bureaucrats force health mandates upon the citizenry.
• Federal officials execute unconstitutional government surveillance of law-abiding citizens.
• It suppresses domestic energy independence, causing high fuel prices, food shortages, national blackouts, and dependence on imports from unfriendly countries.
• Federal officials attempt to embrace international treaties that threaten the sovereignty of the United States and override domestic laws.
• Federal officials weaponize federal agencies to suppress political opponents.
• Federal officials have threatened to dismantle the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court.
• In addition, the federal government has squandered the wealth of its citizenry through unfair and excessive taxation in the name of unconstitutional social programs, an excessive welfare state, expenditures for political gain, and massive deceitful spending disguised as a rescue strategy.

On September 15, 2022, we will recognize the 235th anniversary of the unanimous adoption of Article V into the Constitution, and we, the undersigned, believe Article V holds the key to correcting these and other abuses of power.

Article V defines the process for amending the Constitution. Amendments can be proposed by Congress with a 2/3 vote of each house or by a Convention of the States when requested by 2/3 (34) of the state legislatures. Any proposed amendment, whether proposed by Congress or a Convention of the States, must be ratified by 3/4 (38) states before it becomes effective as part of the constitution.

We hereby call on our elected state legislators to exercise their authority under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to propose amendments that Congress would never propose – placing fiscal restraints on the federal government, imposing term limits on federal officials, and limiting the power, scope, and jurisdiction of the federal government.

Nineteen of the 34 necessary states have already exercised their constitutional authority to call for an amendment-proposing convention to restrain our out-of-control federal government.

We, the undersigned, hereby urge the remaining states to rise to defend our Republic against the growing threat of a tyrannical federal government and reclaim their rightful constitutional powers by calling for a Convention of States.