“The train that is the Mount Vernon Assembly has left the station, with no turning back.” So writes Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator. At the first session of the Assembly, held earlier this month at George Washington’s home in Virginia, nearly 100 state legislators met to begin the planning process on behalf of an Article V “Convention for proposing Amendments.”
A common premise in objecting to an Article V convention is that the US Constitution needs no bolstering by amending. It is written on parchment and needs but to be obeyed.
The flaw in this view is that what is written on parchment is no longer “the supreme law of the land” (Article VI). In its place presides the so-called “living, breathing Constitution,” supplanting the written version. Rather than rule of law, US citizens have been subordinated to the rule of oligarchs bedecked in judicial black robes.
Rule by men is like a big cat out of his cage; no one but a trainer armed with a whip can drive him back into captivity – into conformity to the written Constitution. Since Washington, D.C. has no inclination to play this role, our best hope is with the States.
97 state legislators from 32 States assembled on Dec. 7th at Mt. Vernon Virginia
Restoration of the scepter to the supreme written law, under God, is an objective worthy of almost any sacrifice or risk. The contrary view is that a convention is too risky, and that the safer course is to fight a rearguard campaign, defending remnants of a once Judeo-Christian culture and standing stalwartly by our dethroned Constitution to the last.
Current trend lines give this strategy maybe a generation, probably less, before Constitutional pretense gives way to full scale tyranny featuring, among other outrages, persecution of Christians for hate crimes. A civic response to the Gospel would be more proactive: Since D.C. (the District of Corruption) wants no part in restoring the Constitution as written, we must look to the States. The several States are authorized by the Framers to intervene under Article V.
If paranoia about a runaway convention proves justified, then we can stop it by withholding ratification in as few as thirteen States. Alternatively, if 34 (and later, 38) States cannot be won over to a restoration agenda, a new union of willing States might spring forth from the arrested process of pursuing Article V.
In the meantime I owe it to my father, who fought for the USA during both World Wars, that I should embrace at least one more effort to save the Union, before turning all my hopes to a smaller union of citizens determined to live under laws that reflect our Judeo-Christian heritage. Remnants of America’s “greatest generation” still live. Most of them will understand, I suppose, if we give it one last shot to revive the country for which they paid such a high price; after which we look to secession strategies. Even Abraham Lincoln may sympathize from heaven, notwithstanding that here on earth he gave his last full measure of devotion to preservation of the Union. For as he said in 1862,
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Doing battle for a downsized but 
upgraded Republic is surely preferable to a rearguard delaying action which, however begrudgingly and gradually, dooms our children to tyranny. If they must be subjected to despotism or national bankruptcy or both, at least offer them the inspiration of knowing that their fathers and mothers fought the good fight in the spirit of the Framers of the fifth Article of the US Constitution. If we should lose with honor, then posterity might one day take up our fallen torch.
