Observations by a Citizen: Shall We Dump our Constitution – Or Save It?

By Hal Rounds

A very aggressive program is being scripted and pushed to alter our Constitution by gathering a new convention to rewrite at least portions of it. It is being bulldozed through the Tennessee State Assembly right now (also in other states). The “Convention of States” group has persuaded many good people of the idea that today’s political problems exist because our Constitution has serious flaws. So, they say, Congress must be forced to “call” a convention to fix the Constitution’s shortcomings. Congress, upon “ . . . the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments . . .” (U.S. Constitution, Article V.) Over half of the states have already “applied.”

But none of the 27 amendments we have started with a convention. Why not?

Each was drafted by Congress, which is the primary and more cautious method provided in our Constitution. A convention, regardless of the supposed limitations intended by the states joining it, cannot be restrained from proposing and producing proposals beyond those promised.

Even in our 1787 Philadelphia convention – the one that gave us our current Constitution – the assigned duty of that convention was “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” But, in 26 of the 111 days of that convention, delegates objected to what was happening, not because the new ideas were bad, but because the proposals went beyond the limited purposes that had been authorized. 

For example, on June 16 1787, delegate Lansing of New York objected to the far-reaching proposals. He said: “It is in vain to adopt a mode of government which we have reason to believe the people gave us no power to recommend.” By July 10, he withdrew and went home. Another delegate, Paterson, of New Jersey agreed: “If the subsisting confederation is so radically defective as not to admit of amendment, let us say so and report its insufficiency, and wait for enlarged powers.”

The proponents of a new convention argue that the 1787 convention did not “run away” with its power to invent changes. But the convention delegates went ahead, abandoning all pretense of merely revising the old system. On March 3, 1789, after state conventions had ratified the Constitution, the old government was ceremoniously “fired out” by a cannon salute; and, the next day the new Congress moved in to the “Federal Building”, to another cannon salute. That is not merely “revising.”

The blessings of divine providence that guided our founders do not exist today – but the power of a convention to invent a completely new plan persists, a scary power when today there is no body of such wise and educated people today to entrust such power to.  

Wise men who really understand the Constitution oppose a new convention. Madison wrote, after the Constitutional convention was done: “Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a Second . . .”

Two centuries later, Justice Scalia, warned us: “I certainly would not want a Constitutional Convention. I mean whoa. Who knows what would come out of that?”

What we know as “the swamp” in Washington is mostly housed in agencies not authorized in the Constitution.  They are the ones “trembling” at the increasing awareness of the American people that those agencies need to be restrained or eliminated – like the Center for Disease Control, Department of Education, and all the other alphabet-identified agencies that have been eating away at how America performs.  They need “revisions” to give their agencies actual authority.  We don’t.

The Constitution is not the problem, and inventing new provisions is not the answer. We, the People who were entrusted to pass our Constitution to the next generation, have failed to compel our representatives to obey it. And obedience to the plan is the only way to fix it.

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