The Risk of the Right-Wing Push to Rewrite the Constitution

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It may take just a few more state legislatures to trigger an Article V convention.

by JAMES M. BANNER, JR.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Radical conservative activists are working with Republican state legislators to trigger an extraordinary special convention to rewrite the Constitution of the United States. The possibility of it actually happening is real enough that everyone needs to pay attention—fast.

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The aim of these efforts is to organize state legislatures, in some of which these right-wing funders wield outsized influence, to call a convention as provided for under Article V of the Constitution. This article authorizes two-thirds of the state legislatures (that’s 34 today) to summon a convention to propose amendments to the nation’s fundamental law. As with amendments proposed the traditional way, three-quarters of the states (38 today) would then have to ratify the proposed alterations in order for them to become part of the Constitution.

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As Edmund Burke long ago tried to teach us, stability as well as adjustment is necessary in a political regime just as it is in society. It’s probably better to live with the constitutional defects we know than the ones, unknown to us now, that would inevitably find their way unanticipated into a new frame of government. But more important is the fact that if a comparatively homogeneous group of men had difficulty coming to agreement on a constitution that, with some alteration, has withstood over 230 years of political experience and change, how much better at the job would be a gathering representing the fractious, brittle, at-each-others’-throats political and social realities of today’s United States?

The question yields its answer. Everyone should be frightened to the core about the damage that even the run-up to such a convention would do to the body politic. Any who write off the possibility or fail to take its proponents seriously assume responsibility for the disaster that’s likely to ensue should the proponents of an Article V convention succeed in setting one in motion. If that happens, the extraordinary American experiment in the self-government of an open society that has endured for over 230 years will be in never-before-experienced peril.

Full article

[Chainfire]

1. Oh, who knows, maybe a far right Christo Fascist Kingdom may not be so bad. We don't know

until we try it, right? We could put women and minorities back in their rightful places, get rid of all of the immigrants and wipe the ugly face of liberalism from the face of the country once and for all. A white and right constitution.

Can I get and amen?