Dear Friend:
In a way you are like Don Quixote, brave, ethical and steadfast, tilting with a formidable enemy, indistinctly seen, who every time you thrust at him, boots you in the backside.
The idea of getting leadership from the Congress from either of or both of the parties to help stop the madness is laudable, but involves going to the enemy for relief from his aggressiveness. Your tactic, if this is it, is doomed to failure, because the people in Congress ultimately will not act against their self-interest. You must attack them with something they fear.
Truthfully, the Congress fears the people, but they can control the people by mechanisms such as chumming their troughs as had been done so successfully for the last 100 years or by other equally effective means like Senator Pat Moynahan’s “benign neglect”, that is giving lip service and then not acting.
Congress and its Congressmen are totally unaware of the weapon that can bring them to heal. The Preamble of the United States Constitution should read “We the States …”, because from that point on the document makes it perfectly clear that the Federal Government is a creation of the States and derives powers limited to the will of the States that the States considered necessary to promote a harmonious Union and a national government capable of protecting their interests from outside intrusion. The only way for a national government to be possible was to institute a republic that respected not only the citizens, but also the diverse interests of the many areas represented. Special weight was given to checks and balances, but we moderns only dimly understand that the state legislatures with their democratically elected representatives are, or could be, the real power in the American Federal Government.
Consider the “Blue” verses the “Red” States. They are the Constitutional power to amend. Although it has never been done, the States can call a Constitutional Convention to redress the excesses of the Congress. We would suggest revisiting the 16th and 17th Amendments. Maybe clarifying what is meant by “promote the general welfare” and what is meant by “interstate commerce”. Did the States ratifying the 14th Amendment really mean that they wanted to abandon republican government in their respective realms?
We think that there are certainly enough “red” states to call the convention and probably enough to ratify their changes.
The point being that the Congress will not help you, the people can’t, but there are a lot of Legislators who are Patriots who could, probably want to and who are angry enough to do it.
We would like to stir the pot to motivate them and with your help we might just do it.
Lee, OE
Never let it be said that I don’t comment on your site! I think that the idea of a Constitutional Convention is a very sound one, but you do it a disservice by couching it as an ‘us vs. them’ struggle between states.