Convention of States? Are you crazy? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Many people are excited about the idea of North Carolina's General Assembly's passing a Convention of States resolution.  I believe doing so would put us into graver danger than we are now.  We're suffering from inflation.  Our southern border is being invaded by drug smugglers and human traffickers.  We're suffering supply chain problems, and are being told there are more shortages to come.  Our 2020 election was stolen, and there are worries about this fall's mid-terms.  War mongers among us are trying to push us into a war on the other side of the world.  Again.  We're giving away huge sums of money we do not have which is adding inflationary fuel to that fire and probably bankrupting our great grandchildren's grandchildren.  Our schools have not educated our people about our founding history and have not taught our founding documents for years and years.  Many of our representatives in government don't know a fraction of what our founders did about human nature and what makes government work and what makes it fail, nor do most of our citizens.  In the midst of that mess, we should get excited about risking all of the Constitutional protections of our God given rights???

    The problem is not the U.S. Constitution.  The problem is that the U.S. Constitution has been increasingly ignored over the years.  We need to insist that the Constitution be honored in accordance with the meaning of the words in it at the time it was written.  That would solve all sorts of problems.  For instance, "regulate" meant "to make regular," so regulating interstate commerce did not mean to tie it in knots.  Nope.  It meant to facilitate it.

    The Constitution has been abused in so many ways.  For example, where in the Constitution is the federal government given a brief to do anything whatsoever about schools?  It's not there.  Why do we have a federal Department of Education?

    State legislatures and the people ourselves were intended to retain any authority not granted to the federal government or denied to the states by the Constitution.  That initially worked well when the state legislatures chose the state's representatives to the U.S. Senate.  Then we passed the 17th Amendment, and Senators were no longer accountable to their state's legislators, and things began to go amuck.  That was the door through which the federal government was able to "bribe" states by sending money (with strings attached to them) from unconstitutional departments such as the Department of Education.  Our state legislatures have allowed us to be suckered out of the "balance of power" set up by the Constitution.

   Take the notion of "separation of church and state."  Of course, that phrase is not in the Constitution, and the whole idea behind it has been turned on its ear.  The federal government was forbidden from interfering with religion.  The federal government was to keep its nose out of the business of the churches, but certain religious beliefs were so common to all Americans that they were the norm.  Everyone believed in "the laws of nature and nature's God."  Everyone accepted "The Golden Rule."  Acceptance of "The 10 Commandments" was universal.  Our founders worried whether we were "a moral enough people" to self-govern.  What is morality like in America today?  Are we moral enough, or well educated enough to mess around with the protections provided by the Constitution?  Look at the notions of "critical race theory" and "gender fluidity" being taught in our schools today.  Would you be happy with people influenced by those sick, wacky ideas to be delegates to a Convention of States?  What's to keep them out?

    What's the first thing any convention does?  Why, it sets its rules, of course.  Hummm.  What could go wrong there?  Well, the sky is the limit.  At our first such convention, the Articles of Confederation were to be amended, and what happened?  The Articles of Confederation were scrapped, and our U.S. Constitution was written.  Our founders did an amazing job, and I am grateful, but they were better educated, of higher moral character, and about a gazillion times more thoughtful than most people are today.  No.  Our problem is that our Constitution is being ignored.  The solution is not to change it, but to get busy insisting that it be followed!