A Constitutional Convention?

In recent years, a small but growing number of people have advocated a convention of states to propose amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The reaction to the proposal has been hostile, out of all proportion to either the originality or the danger of such a convention.

The political left has been especially vehement in its denunciations of what they call “messing with the Constitution.” A recent proposal by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to hold a Constitutional convention of states has been denounced by the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and nationally by an editorial in the liberal “USA Today.”

The irony in all this is that no one has messed with the Constitution more or longer than the political left, over the past hundred years.

Why, then, is the proposal to call a convention of states to propose — just propose — amendments to the Constitution considered such a radical and dangerous departure?

Legally, it is no departure at all. The Constitution itself lists a convention of states among the ways that amendments can be officially proposed. It has not yet been done, but these proposals will have to be put to a vote of the states, three-fourths of whom will have to agree before any amendment can become law.

Is it better to have the Constitution amended de facto by a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court? By the unilateral actions of a president? By administrative rulings by anonymous bureaucrats in federal agencies, to whom federal judges “defer”?

The idea that a convention of states could run amok and rewrite the Constitution overlooks the fact that it would take the votes of two-thirds of the states just to convene a convention, and then three-fourths of the states to actually pass an amendment.

Far from proposing radical departures from the Constitution, most of Governor Abbott’s proposed amendments would restore Constitutional protections that have been surreptitiously eroded by unelected federal judges and by unelected bureaucrats in administrative agencies, who create a major part of “the law of the land,” with the help of “deference” from federal judges.

Why are “We the People” to be kept out of all this, through our elected representatives, when these are the very words with which the Constitution of the United States begins?

Despite the left’s portrayal of themselves as champions of the people, they consistently try to move decisions out of the hands of the general public and into the hands of officials insulated from the voters, such as unelected federal judges and anonymous bureaucrats with iron-clad job protection.

No wonder they don’t want to have a convention that would restore a Constitution which begins with “We the People.”

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