Why Hasn't There Been Another Constitutional Convention?

Bill Trower is a friend of mine so I knew he was working on this book but I was not quite prepared for it when it arrived. I read it, of course, and posted a review of it on Amazon and that would have been the extent of my interest in it but for what I learned from it.

Here is a copy of my review.
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This book was a surprise to me although I knew it was coming.

I know Bill Trower (Lt/Col William W. Trower,. U.S.A.F., Retired – but he prefers “Bill”) and knew he was working on this but was not prepared for what I learned from it.

I have never been especially interested in the process to amend our Constitution – I like it just the way it is; but I am interested in term limits for congress, a balanced federal budget, less interference from Washington with States and individuals and other things promised in the old “Contract with America” from back in ’94.

Some of these things are not legal without a constitutional amendment but are favored by a large percentage of voters across the nation.

The government belongs to the people (of the people, by the people, for the people – remember?) so it would seem that when a significant majority of us want things done a certain way – we could just “make it happen”” – but we can’t. The reason we can’t is congressional opposition.

Term limits, for example, are favored by a majority of us but not by a majority in Congress – and the reason is obvious – congress don’t want it to happen.

Our Constitution provides a way for us (we the people) to pass an amendment in spite of congress but we have never done it. When an amendment has been passed it was something proposed by congress and finally approved by a sufficient number of the states. The other way is almost the reverse of this and gives us a way to pass something that most of us want even if it is not popular in congress. Using this process the a sufficient number of the states request a convention to consider a particular question congress is required to call the convention. Why has it never happened even once in our entire history?

From page six of this surprising book:

“Since 1963 we’ve had over 150 applications from states for a federal constitutional convention. However, Congress has passed rules/procedures, which make those applications virtually ineffective. Congress has assured itself of being the only means of proposing constitutional change. I would like to see the states assert their powers in the amendment process and I have suggestions, which should circumvent those procedural “road blocks” being used by Congress.”

Bill does not pretend that this book is any sort of “Final answer” to how we can take control of our government again – but it does help us to understand the problem. It helps us to formulate the questions that will turn us down the road that may lead to solutions – and we may be surprised at how much help we find right between its covers!

I recommend it to one and all!

Veterans Petition for Restoral of Constitution as Supreme Law of the Land

Veterans (ONLY, please), here is our petition. It's somewhat more forceful than the previous one, because it is designed for folks like us, who can be forceful when we need to be. I would not encourage active duty or active reserve personnel to sign this unless you are prepared for consequences which might adversely affect your career in the Service. It would be good to have you aboard, but be aware that, like Major Cook in Florida, things can go sour when you tell the "establishment" to shove it! Here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/l4bq25

Petition... Use the Soap Box before we have to open the LAST box

Please, click and sign our petition. The Freedoms you save may be your own: Mash here

A Fourth of July (2009) Speech

Hello, Blog readers and Freedom enthusiasts. Today I am turning my time over to another. I believe the speech below is WELL worthy of your attention.

A Fourth of July Tea Party Speech 2009

By Ward Dorrity

I stand here today not as a Democrat, not as a Republican, but as an American and a patriot.

And as an American, the values I hold and the faith and principles that guide me are in direct opposition to that Star Wars bar scene running the show in Washington DC.

Murder of the unborn, treason and socialism are not family values!

They are not American values.

They are not MY values.

They are crimes against God, Man, nature, justice and reason.


And so it is time - long past time - to stand up and call things by their proper names. If you believe as I do, if you want America to remain a free society governed by the rule of law and not by the whims of men, then you must stand up and make your voices heard.

Ideas matter. Ideas have consequences. Our American Republic was founded on an idea – the idea of individual liberty and the personal responsibility that is part and parcel of it. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The sanctity of contracts and private property. The freedom to try. The freedom to fail. The freedom to learn from our mistakes. The freedom to prosper and to keep the fruits of our labors. The freedom to exercise our conscience when it comes to charity and our religious beliefs.

We Americans were the first in all the history of the world to claim that freedom as our inalienable right, granted to us by our Creator. But it didn’t take long - less than a generation after the first American Revolution, really - for the assault on the foundations of liberty to begin.

Where and from whom did that assault come from?

Paul Johnson, a contemporary British historian, identified three main sources of the anti-American, anti-freedom ideas that are now written into our institutional DNA:

Karl Marx, father of modern communism, writing in the mid 1800s, described a world in which the central dynamic was purely economic. For Marx – and all those who followed him - human beings were merely bricks and mortar from which a new utopia would be built. For Communists, human lives were – and still are - disposable. Individual conscience and the rule of law are obstacles to be overcome.

Sigmund Freud was the father of modern psychiatry, notorious cocaine addict and a suicide. To Freud we were little more than primitives ruled by our sexual impulses. Our civilized personae, we were told, is little more than a thin veneer, easily discarded. Freud’s ideas regarding human nature sowed the seeds of the family-destroying sexual revolution of the Sixties.

Both Freud and Marx were atheists and both assumed that religion, the impulse that moved men and nations, the source of our notions of right and wrong - was a fantasy and always had been.

Friedrich Nietzsche, noted German philosopher, was also an atheist. But he saw God not as an invention, but as a casualty. He wrote in 1886: "The greatest event in recent times - that 'God is Dead,' that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable - is beginning to cast its first shadows upon Europe." The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way of the development of the New Man who he said would be ‘beyond good and evil’.

Nietzsche knew that in Europe, the decline of religion as a guide to conscience and morality would leave a huge vacuum.

What would fill that vacuum?

Nietzsche thought that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which offered a better and more persuasive explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud.

In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology.

Notions of good and evil would be discarded as the product of weak minds.

But above all, Nietzsche believed that the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.

Let's say that again: the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.

We now know that over 220 million - that’s 220 MILLION - people have been killed by their own governments since the beginning of the 20th century. Not casualties of war, but a casualty of the same evil that now appears to have gotten the upper hand here today. It’s that unappeasable appetite to control - and ultimately to consume - mankind. Yes, ideas matter. And the same ideas that have animated the 20th century’s mass murderers now have a happy home in the White House. Obama's just another worshipper in the same pew as Stalin, Castro, Mao, Chavez and Pol Pot. They bow before the same altar of human sacrifice and power for power’s sake.

That's who we're dealing with today and that’s the pedigree of their ideas. The Constitution and the rule of law are just so much toilet paper to those who would rule us now. Our values – honor, duty, love of family, love of country, reverence for our Creator - are punch lines to sneering jokes told by smug ‘progressive’ late night TV show hosts to applauding audiences.

We’re now in the endgame of Antonio Gramsci’s and Saul Alinsky's heirs and disciples. These are the murderous great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the French Revolution, cold-eyed with contempt for you and yours; spiral-eyed crazy with hate for what you believe in and possessed of that utterly unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.

Just as Hitler was completely candid in "Mein Kampf" about what he intended to do with Germany, the Jews and the world, so the Progressive Left has been completely up front about where they intend to take America, how they've planned to do it and what they're going to do once they get there.

So, when it comes to the Constitution and rule of law, it’s only a game - and when they're tired of it, they’ll not only sweep the pieces off the board, they’ll upend the table and put a bullet in you while they’re at it. As far as so-called 'progressives' are concerned, rules are for losers and history - god-awful bloody history - is my witness.

Take a good long look at what’s happening now in America. Then turn around and take another look. If what they're saying doesn't square with what they're doing; if it looks like there's an concerted effort to destroy our once Constitutional Republic and replace it with... something else - then you're probably right. None of what's happening today makes any sense unless you look at it that way - and then it makes a perfectly clear and terrible sort of sense, doesn't it?

You’ve got to understand that you're not going to talk or vote your way out of the tyranny that’s coming your way. And that’s precisely the point of tyranny, isn’t it?

You’ve got understand that the people who've now gotten their hands on the apparatus of the American State would rather rule in Hell than live in peace with the rest of us. They will happily reduce Western civilization to stinking pile of rubble and corpses as long as they believe that they will be the ones sitting on top of the ruins. Why? Because a free and prosperous people cannot be enslaved. They must be broken first.

You’ve got understand that we’ll never see another truly free, open and honest election in this country until after the next American Civil War – the Left, ACORN, massive vote fraud and gutless Republicans have seen to that.

One of the great lessons from the history of the twentieth century that so many of us have failed to learn is that your circumstances can and will change overnight. But that’s nothing new.

Over 23 centuries ago, Sophocles wrote:
The firm resolve falters, the sacred oath is shattered;
And let none say, "It cannot happen here."

Well, it CAN happen here. It IS happening here. There are those who are actually cheering for it to happen here. Then there those of us who understand exactly what's going on. We can hear that distant thunder rolling through far-off hills. That distant thunder is war.

We're preparing for war.

Change. Change is coming, oh yes indeed - but it's not what any of that Marxist meat puppet's worshipers bargained for. Ayn Rand had it right all these many years ago when she said that there is no personal neutrality today. You can’t sit this one out. There’s no room for ‘moderation’ here – and if you’re a ‘moderate’ - how well has that worked for you so far?

There’s a saying that the only things you find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and road kill.

None of you have a Get Out of History Free card, either. None.

There is hope for the American Republic yet. But you must stand up and make yourself heard, as this may be your last chance to do so for a long, long time - if ever again.

Silence now will prove to be deadly later.

So it's time to start getting together with like-minded people. Time to organize your list of Things To Do, Places To Go and People To Meet. Because when your favorite websites suddenly go dark, when your cell phones and other communications nets no longer work, when the roadblocks go up, when you hear that knock on your midnight door - then it’ll be far, far too late.

It will be too late unless you're willing, like Atlas, to shrug - and then defend yourself, your family and your country through every art, by every means and with all the skill you possess.

Unless you're willing to take action, you aren't going to get your country back, much less preserve your own freedom and dignity – and perhaps even your life.

So don't just sit there with a pile of ammunition and a gun in your closet - here's what you can do right now:

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Participate in the nearest Appleseed Project event and join a community of likeminded people where you’ll learn the history and tradition of the first American Revolution - and you'll learn to shoot like a rifleman while you’re at it.

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To the extent that you can, remove your children from godless public schools where they're taught socialism and sheepery. Teach them history and the principles of freedom instead.

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Take as much of your personal and business economies underground as you can. Don't feed the beast that's feeding on you.

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Join up with Glenn Beck's 912 Project - a latter-day network of the original Committees of Correspondence - to meet more like-minded folks.

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Connect with people in your own neighborhood and build your own 'Alarm and Muster' network. In the times to come, you’re going to have to know who you can depend upon.

Do it now, for it may be the last chance you're going to get.

Ayn Rand once said, "The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. But not without Freedom."

And for those who think that freedom is passé or over-rated; just wait until you see what your new masters replace it with.

One last thing: We ignore the lessons of history at our peril. 2000 years or so ago, Titus Livy, in the introduction to his monumental history of Rome remarked that his purpose in writing was "to trace the progress of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them."

The people of Rome could do neither and night fell in the Western world for a thousand years.

So, when we face the dark dawning of our own modern day of which Livy spoke so long ago, there is a history lesson that every one of you all can and must teach.

It’s the lesson that courageous American men and women taught the British 234 years ago at Lexington Green and beyond.

And the lesson is that the pursuit of tyranny comes with a terrible and deadly cost to its perpetrators. For you are what tyrants fear most - informed, armed and unafraid citizens.

But if you choose to do nothing and surrender to the evil that has overtaken us, not only is your cause lost, but so is everyone else’s. Your surrender will only strengthen those who would perpetrate their evil on others. And that's the greatest crime of all.

Stay well. Stay safe. Stay armed. Stay free.

It’s in your hands now.

Thank you and may God bless and keep you all…

Big Brothers Goodies

Doug

Talkin Bout Freedom the things that stick in my craw the most is Big Brother giving out privileges and invading my privacy, these two tell me we are headed for a socialist society.
Cases in point are privileges handed out by those in Gov. who always know better than us reguarding our own lives. How is a free society granted priviledges by the Gov. they own such as drivers licenses, petty I know but isn't this a right, I understand the need for licenses and control of those using the roads and realize that if the right is abused the right can be taken away but to term this as a priviledge is over the line in my opinion. The other right is the one to determine the directions I will take concerning my private life such as the right to determine whether or not to wear a seat belt in my private car which affects no one else's safety but my own keeping in mind that if you don't wear a seat belt while driving it kinda stupid but I maintain it is my right to make that decision. The term Nanny Government is in full swing in that they say we know what's best for you and and we will make that determination,---Nuf said

SF Jim Kaldor