Some conservatives are falling for a con game and they don’t even know it. Certain major figures of our movement have endorsed this con, and good folks are being tricked into surrendering the political document we hold most dear. This con game is known as the Convention of States Project. They say that in order to save our Constitution, we must have a new constitutional convention where an unknown group of men and women will agree on an unknown number of new constitutional amendments. Is it just me, or does that sound like the exact opposite of what a conservative would support?
Yet, many conservatives are falling for this con game because the people behind it are smart. They are very adamant that the state legislatures will have complete control over the new constitutional convention, and that only amendments that rein in government overreach will be considered. They rely on well-meaning and frustrated activists opting for a silver bullet solution to a far too complicated problem.
Obviously, any conservative has to admit that government overreach is a serious problem. However, if the federal government won’t obey the current Constitution, what hope do we have that they will obey a new one? Proponents of a convention say that these new amendments would be much more clear than the old ones, but I don’t buy it. We’ve seen time and again how the left will take perfectly clear words and redefine them to suit their own purposes. Do you remember when “anti-vaxxer” and “one who opposes overreaching government mandates” weren’t the same thing? Do you remember when “infrastructure” didn’t include free federal day care centers and maternity leave? If the left doesn’t like an inconvenient word, they just redefine it. A new constitutional convention won’t do anything to stop that.
President Ronald Reagan famously said that “freedom is never more from one generation from extinction,” and that still holds true today. Each new generation must do their part to protect liberty. There is no silver bullet solution to let us sit back and relax. As long as we have our U.S. Constitution and a willingness to put our hands to the plow, we have all the tools we need.
