If their plan works, they’ll rewrite our Constitution and state governors, the US Congress, and the President will have no say whatsoever in the process
Aug 2, 2022·edited Aug 2, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann
The Movement Conservatives that have taken over the Republican Party have been quite clear that this has always been their goal since at least the 50’s with William F Buckley’s God And Men At Yale…. Ugh….please everyone wake up!
It's not like many people didn’t warn us about this. While Sinclair Lewis did not say, "When Fascism Comes to America, It Will Be Wrapped in the Flag and Carrying a Cross", he gave the same sentiment in "It Can't Happen Here":
“But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”
And James Waterman Wise, Jr. added that Fascism would have no shirt or insignia, but would be, “Wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.”
It's easy to look for external enemies, Communists or terrorists or whatever. It's harder to see the rot within.
This convention of states amending or rewriting the Constitution is a recipe for a scorched earth country. These wicked people want to turn the US into a kleptocracy.
Aren't these the folks who are supposed to worship the Constitution? Guess that's just for the peons.
We finally sort of pushed involuntary servitude sub rosa, but how do we deal with "voluntary servitude?" As aggressive as they are credulous, the New Slave class looks to be lifting up their masters to victory. How many of them will even process the question, wait a minute, isn't The Constitution of the USA supposed to be revered? It's protecting us from gun confiscation, oppressive masks and killer vaccines right now. Supreme Court now has it right under the Constitution that those uppity females can just put their aprons back on. Why change what's workin'? You'd think a rewrite would be a hard sell, but then you'd be thinking....
It is biased GOP because it is not based on the important principle of one man/one vote, which is why the President wins without the popular vote, the Senate leans GOP, and SCOTUS is packed with ideologues.
The President is more power than the king we overthrew. Trump showed that it could become a dictatorship. The office is too powerful, and should be made into a ceremonial office like EU royalty was.
Because SCOTUS opened government to a flood of corporate money, people have lost the ability to control government. The US is not much of a democracy.
The Senate can block any constructive legislation, and has rendered government dysfunctional.
We would do well to take a close look at Nordic government, which functions much better than ours, because it has working social programs, not corporate rip-offs.
States rights are an incentive for the race to the bottom, since States compete for lowest taxes, lowest wages, fewer unions, corporate incentives, worst election procedures, and most authoritarian government.
Republicans are fascists and could not make a constructive contribution to any revision. They do not deal in good faith, cannot be trusted, and reflect the worst motivations of humanity.
This is frightening stuff, and it is as real as can be. These people are absolutely convinced of their superiority. They equate personal wealth within a “survival of the fittest” frame as proof and the “free market” with infallible magic operated by an “invisible hand”, despite the absence of proof.
So, how did these ideas gain so much traction and how did these people come to have so much influence, power, money, and conviction? Was it really because civics was no longer a subject in school? Did we get Citizens United because greed was elevated to a virtue by Ayn Rand and her dizzy or ditzy followers?
A conception of morality is there in the shadows driving many of the people who seek control and the promotion of these measures. God is there with his ultimate authority as the model to emulate and copy. Obedience to authority is the ideal for good citizenship in their world.
They dislike government and especially federal government, and they believe that public schools are vehicles for misguided populist, liberal, or progressive philosophy, attitudes, and policies. Authentic education and science do indeed favor liberal ideas and ideals.
However, the reality is that for generations schools have not adequately contributed to authentic education and they have undermined both conservative and liberal philosophies and belief systems. They have created an undercurrent of citizens for whom obedience to authority is second nature and for whom government, civics, principles, values, freedom, and participatory citizenship are nothing more than abstractions and symbolic figments.
The libertarians are right for the wrong reasons about ending compulsory attendance. They are wrong about everything else. Government can and should sponsor, fund, oversee, regulate, and advocate for free public schools. Absolutely. Completely separately, government should take every opportunity to advance education. But our schools do indeed indoctrinate, and that indoctrination must not in any way be influenced by officials of government and especially not with respect to behavior or curriculum. Parents would be involved, and they would be deciding where and how they want their children to be indoctrinated if attendance in school were strictly voluntary.
Schools are crucial to democracy. Education is even more crucial to democracy. The two must be distinguished and both must be about liberty, equality, justice, and openness. The libertarians say the government should not control education but they mean schools. School is NOT education. Our schools have failed to stop the oligarchs and the other fanatics because morality and socialization are their primary functions, not education. Compulsory attendance laws outlaw childhood and create compliant and conforming drones. Democracy will indeed disappear unless we get the state out of the schools. The state is now controlled in large part by the oligarchs making it all the more urgent. It's time to stop conflating school with education and believing that mass education can fix anything. Education is hard and it is not the business of government or of private profit obsessed entrepreneurs.
Given the 'Regressive Party' abuse of the electoral process and its rampant unfair redistricting maneuvers, rewriting the constitution would allow many blue sates to form their own union. RBG was fond of saying that our present Constitution is broadly flawed. Let Koch and crew proceed. We blue states will be so much better off without them.
The way I read Article V, any new amendments from a convention would still require approval of 3/4 of the state legislatures. Am I wrong about that? Also I would still like to know if states who do not ratify the new amendments would be able to nullify their original agreement to join the federation.
Republicans have a Plan to Change the Constitution and it Just May Work
The Movement Conservatives that have taken over the Republican Party have been quite clear that this has always been their goal since at least the 50’s with William F Buckley’s God And Men At Yale…. Ugh….please everyone wake up!
It's not like many people didn’t warn us about this. While Sinclair Lewis did not say, "When Fascism Comes to America, It Will Be Wrapped in the Flag and Carrying a Cross", he gave the same sentiment in "It Can't Happen Here":
“But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”
And James Waterman Wise, Jr. added that Fascism would have no shirt or insignia, but would be, “Wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.”
It's easy to look for external enemies, Communists or terrorists or whatever. It's harder to see the rot within.
This convention of states amending or rewriting the Constitution is a recipe for a scorched earth country. These wicked people want to turn the US into a kleptocracy.
Aren't these the folks who are supposed to worship the Constitution? Guess that's just for the peons.
We finally sort of pushed involuntary servitude sub rosa, but how do we deal with "voluntary servitude?" As aggressive as they are credulous, the New Slave class looks to be lifting up their masters to victory. How many of them will even process the question, wait a minute, isn't The Constitution of the USA supposed to be revered? It's protecting us from gun confiscation, oppressive masks and killer vaccines right now. Supreme Court now has it right under the Constitution that those uppity females can just put their aprons back on. Why change what's workin'? You'd think a rewrite would be a hard sell, but then you'd be thinking....
It's a democracy. Most democracies fail when the population gets ignorant enough.
The Constitution needs an overhaul.
It is biased GOP because it is not based on the important principle of one man/one vote, which is why the President wins without the popular vote, the Senate leans GOP, and SCOTUS is packed with ideologues.
The President is more power than the king we overthrew. Trump showed that it could become a dictatorship. The office is too powerful, and should be made into a ceremonial office like EU royalty was.
Because SCOTUS opened government to a flood of corporate money, people have lost the ability to control government. The US is not much of a democracy.
The Senate can block any constructive legislation, and has rendered government dysfunctional.
We would do well to take a close look at Nordic government, which functions much better than ours, because it has working social programs, not corporate rip-offs.
States rights are an incentive for the race to the bottom, since States compete for lowest taxes, lowest wages, fewer unions, corporate incentives, worst election procedures, and most authoritarian government.
Republicans are fascists and could not make a constructive contribution to any revision. They do not deal in good faith, cannot be trusted, and reflect the worst motivations of humanity.
https://gopiswrong.net/constitutional_convention.htm
This is frightening stuff, and it is as real as can be. These people are absolutely convinced of their superiority. They equate personal wealth within a “survival of the fittest” frame as proof and the “free market” with infallible magic operated by an “invisible hand”, despite the absence of proof.
So, how did these ideas gain so much traction and how did these people come to have so much influence, power, money, and conviction? Was it really because civics was no longer a subject in school? Did we get Citizens United because greed was elevated to a virtue by Ayn Rand and her dizzy or ditzy followers?
A conception of morality is there in the shadows driving many of the people who seek control and the promotion of these measures. God is there with his ultimate authority as the model to emulate and copy. Obedience to authority is the ideal for good citizenship in their world.
They dislike government and especially federal government, and they believe that public schools are vehicles for misguided populist, liberal, or progressive philosophy, attitudes, and policies. Authentic education and science do indeed favor liberal ideas and ideals.
However, the reality is that for generations schools have not adequately contributed to authentic education and they have undermined both conservative and liberal philosophies and belief systems. They have created an undercurrent of citizens for whom obedience to authority is second nature and for whom government, civics, principles, values, freedom, and participatory citizenship are nothing more than abstractions and symbolic figments.
The libertarians are right for the wrong reasons about ending compulsory attendance. They are wrong about everything else. Government can and should sponsor, fund, oversee, regulate, and advocate for free public schools. Absolutely. Completely separately, government should take every opportunity to advance education. But our schools do indeed indoctrinate, and that indoctrination must not in any way be influenced by officials of government and especially not with respect to behavior or curriculum. Parents would be involved, and they would be deciding where and how they want their children to be indoctrinated if attendance in school were strictly voluntary.
Schools are crucial to democracy. Education is even more crucial to democracy. The two must be distinguished and both must be about liberty, equality, justice, and openness. The libertarians say the government should not control education but they mean schools. School is NOT education. Our schools have failed to stop the oligarchs and the other fanatics because morality and socialization are their primary functions, not education. Compulsory attendance laws outlaw childhood and create compliant and conforming drones. Democracy will indeed disappear unless we get the state out of the schools. The state is now controlled in large part by the oligarchs making it all the more urgent. It's time to stop conflating school with education and believing that mass education can fix anything. Education is hard and it is not the business of government or of private profit obsessed entrepreneurs.
Given the 'Regressive Party' abuse of the electoral process and its rampant unfair redistricting maneuvers, rewriting the constitution would allow many blue sates to form their own union. RBG was fond of saying that our present Constitution is broadly flawed. Let Koch and crew proceed. We blue states will be so much better off without them.
The way I read Article V, any new amendments from a convention would still require approval of 3/4 of the state legislatures. Am I wrong about that? Also I would still like to know if states who do not ratify the new amendments would be able to nullify their original agreement to join the federation.