If I had to think of an analogy to this possibility (of a Constitutional Convention), it would be the smell of a Parliament cigarette (1) that fell into a city street near a garbage dumpster filled overpriced profiterole refuse, (2) that was dried out by a bum, (3) that was kept in a grimy Patriots stocking cap, (4) along with the resultant odor after he lighted and smoked it.

[Sarcasm]We have to be very careful with a CoS. I mean, it could throw out the entire protections of the Constitution. The president could be passing executive orders and getting us into wars as if the Exec branch were Congress. The Fed gov't could force states and cities to comply with federal initiatives if they want their tax dollars back. We might even see calls to ban guns, restrict protest, and search through all communications traffic with only a flimsy system to protect against misuse. There would be nothing to stop the gov't from saying you're free from search where there's expectation of privacy, but not if you're travelling by car, airplane, train, or any modern transportation method. They could use that to impose drug prohibition on local gov'ts that are anti-prohibition. We could actually end up with gov't spending accounting for a fourth of GDP, with heavy influence in all sectors of the economy. At that point, the gov't might build a network of military bases and secret prisons around the world, making us look like the Roman empire. There would be nothing to stop them from passing a law saying you need to buy "insurance" against needing things you know are coming like birth control or flu shots. Without protections against takings, they could seize your stuff if they even suspect it was somehow related to a crime.

If it should ever came to this, discourse would turn into a struggle among groups. People who live in separate places minding their own business could be turned against one anther for political gain. Politicians could promise urbanites policies to make rural people uncomfortable, and then the rural gas station owner who previous liked those people and their imports that need high-test suddenly wants to see the city people feeling uncomfortable for a change. Gov't would have the power to do it too. People could go to town making their neighbors uncomfortable, but not the gov't. They need the jobs from the military base, their kids' free college, someone to pay for their medical expenses, the childhood nutrition programs, the gov't paying for their mom's nursing care (how dare they try to "take" her wealth to pay for it!!), all the jobs that come with having so much of the population in prison or on probation of some sort, all the SBIR grants (mostly for war). So they'd steer clear of all that and just stick to calling their neighbors names.

This nightmare scenario could happen in the case of a run-away convention.[/Sarcasm]

Nope, just sayin....I would hope it would be a group with a strong respect for the individual, as well as a strong respect for individual responsibility. That would help erase 80% of their craziness.

I will look it up. Thanks,

Can you really tell the true Objectivists from the false Objectivists?

It is a product of a great conspiracy in 1912. You should read The Creature From Jekyll Island.

I think it is all in the delegates and who goes to it, a big Objectivist presence would be a big help.

That may be true, but it is the same thing as if you are so far in debt you can never pay it back, going back to a gold std would just mean we are really, really poor as well as probably shed light on the fact that most of the supposed gold has already "disappeared". I cannot see a way #10 could ever happen, AND I do not think that was needed anyways, I do not reacall anything in the founding documents that created it, wasn't it a product of the greatest looter in history (FDR)?

Desperation is pretty much where we are all at right now.
The system built by humanoids has become "Too big to curtail".

He is definitely not a part of the statist looters (based on my own experience.)

Its just a bandaid on a severed limb unless #10 is done, imo. The banking cartel is the root cause of at least 90% of the problems going on in America and the world today.

If the process can be limited to specifics chosen by the people before the COS, then I would be more optimistic. It isn't clear that is possible.

I do not understand most of this, but I think you're saying you are a against a CoS because you think the Constitution is fine. You think the issue is with how it's executed, and no writing on paper can force people to follow it. That could be.

As I said, I'm approaching it from a bit of "desperation". I see our not following it as a looming problem that we can plod along with but will eventually become a worse problem. Desperation is not a good starting point.

The precedent of the ratification of the Constitution itself (see Article VII) means that the three-fourths clause is of no moment. Have you never heard of an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitution? That's how Congress passed the ACA, by substituting the entire bill for an original, unrelated appropriations bill. Similarly, an Amendment in Nature of Substitution could have a clause saying, "The ratification by conventions in X number of States, shall be sufficient to establish this Constitution of the Newstates between those States so ratifying the same." Then you would have two different countries, and a "snowball effect" essentially compelling ratification of a new document.

I repeat: no institution can survive a second exposure to the process that created it. It's like throwing a coin into a vat of the metal out of which someone originally made the coin.

Wait, what about the 3/4ths of the state? You don't need to have any rules written when the states were the arbitors of the amendments. If 3/4 of the states want no alcohol, then you get it. Didn't work worth piss, crated crime, but made all the conservative Christians and several special interest groups happy, for a while. If you smell a rat in trying to fix an horribly corrupt system, then the same system must smell like a septic tank. I will take the rat for now.

Actually the article seemed to have been written by someone specifically trying to scare everyone away, and is full if errors and misinformation.

I have seen a lot of these on the list of possible amendments. The balanced budget and term limits seem the highest ones so far, but I like the Senator idea (1) and 2, I do not think we could do 10, since we have fiat currency that has no backing, so we would just implode the economy completely.

Freedom, I do not think a COS is bad, and is the ONLY road left to restoring some control over the statist elite. They are already fighting it, the Dumbocraps, Soros have funded anti COS groups and are flooding the internet with crap designed to scare people. If we do not get control now, it will be too late, if not already. Here is the link to the how page:

https://www.conventionofstates.com/so...

Scratch the idea with "AI"...this may be how that ends: https://youtu.be/R8NeB10INDo

" fairy tale that the Constitution would make people follow it,"
No one said, not even our forefathers, that the constitution would "Make" people follow it.
Surprise!...That job was up to US!!! making sure that our representation Would Follow it and if they didn't?...can you say RECALL!!!

Face it...WE failed epicly. Oh...and we were never meant to be a demoncrapic republic. We were to be a Federal Republic...but we just couldn't keep it. There is Nothing wrong with the constitution, it's the best compromise to date concerning governments and the creatures that would be attracted to it.

Maybe you could conjure up an AI, Circuit, that would ZAP the humanoids that sneak in under our radar, thereby keeping them in line.

Maybe we should adopt a new amendment charging those that don't follow the constitution with Hanging till dead on the White House Lawn?

PS...that's what Morals are for, that's what the 10 suggestions were about, and don't give me that crap about mankind is inherently corrupt and will be tempted by "Power". Maybe Non-Conscious parasitical Humanoids but Not "Conscious Human Beings" and we are the majority here in America...but a minority in the whole world combined.

Now maybe you might appreciate that mankind has survived this long under those odds.

That's my observation and I am sticking to it.

"It does if you follow it"
I learned this fairy tale that the Constitution would make people follow it, preventing the majority from acting like a mob. How is this possible? I still remember the grade-school answer: The founders set up separate branches with checks and balances. So according to this fairy tale, it doesn't depend on people being virtuous. The whole thing is set up to deal with human frailty. So I find it so empty to say the whole system would work if weren't for some villains. Those villains existed 300 years ago.

With the gov't so heavily involved in something like a third of the economy, I have a somewhat "desperate" view that expanding gov't is a looming problem that will destroy the country or at best have it plod along, managing the problems as they come. I absolutely do not want a revolution or major crisis. There's no guarantee they'll reduce gov't. There's no guarantee a Convention would solve it either. But what we have is not working, and I'm a little desperate, willing to accept semi-radical action to avoid a worse crisis many decades later.

ewv and other say what I learned about the Constitution is a fairy tale. The system depends on citizens with a philosophy of a democratic Republic with limited powers. Maybe that's true. But if there's some way people can set up institutions that give "teeth" to the Constitution, I'm willing to take some risk for that.

If success depends on those of who voted for Hilary Clinton not being the majority, then we're doomed because we are the majority. I really, really hope there's an even larger majority that detests the majority acting like a mob.

It does if you follow it...it's Our fault bub, we let them get away with it. We should of realized the progressives were creating useless idiots in an attempt to one up Stalin.

again...I did not mark you down.

Yes but many parts have been blocked by law suits, so, again! a waist of tax payer money.

Score: 1 for America, 0 for agenda 2030...(changed from agenda 21)

The TransAmerican Hwy or the PanAmerican Hwy? I thought that at least parts of it were actually built.

It seems like the current Constitution isn't limiting gov't power, so we don't have much to lose. If they said leave all issues, including repsecting basoc rights, up to the majority, we wouldn't be in that worse a position than today.

People keep pointing out that most people voted for Clinton in the last presidential election. I voted for her and went to her findraisers. I hold her in high regard. On the night I met my wife I invited her to a non-partisan event where Hilary Clinton was giving the keynote. The majority voted for Hilary, but hopefully most of us don't want tyranny of the majority.