Speak with us about this is mark meckler he’s president of conventions of states action hey mark real pleasure having you on good morning good to be with you so once you start off tell us what convention estates is what is this sure well in article 5 of the united states constitution
Are the methodologies by which we can amend the constitution the second clause of article 5 says that the states when two-thirds of them request it can gather in convention and propose amendments and it was specifically inserted there to give the state’s power to push back against federal tyranny so
Convention of states as an organization is spearheading that effort it takes 34 states to call a convention so far 15 states have done so now i understand a lot of people might be concerned about the idea of changing the constitution but what would you tell them
Really what we’re looking to do is not change the constitution but restore the constitution if you’ve looked at what the courts have done to the constitution over the last really 115 years or so they’ve essentially taken what were limited enumerated powers given to the federal government and they’ve expanded them dramatically they’re
Now basically unlimited unenumerated and the power pyramid has been flipped on its head most of the power now resides at the level of the federal government instead of the states we’re just trying to right the ship and put the power back in the states instead of the federal government
And so this is proposing amendments not altering the constitution is that accurate yeah i mean i think people worry about they they call it a constitutional convention thinking we’re going to rewrite the entire constitution this is actually limited in scope there are three things that the states are proposing that we discuss in
Convention one is anything that would put fiscal limits on the federal government like a balanced budget amendment or limits on taxes and spending second is anything that would impose term limits on the federal government federal officials that would include congress of course but also bureaucrats and staffers what
We know as the deep state and third is anything that would impose structural or power limits on the federal government these are things like telling the federal government no you’re not able to be involved in energy or the environment or education and what would stop this from for example leading to different states
Putting in amendments that you know maybe people don’t want such as expanding government power you know like you sang to linda b johnson or something well the states have to agree on the same resolution in order to get to convention it and it is called making something uh aggregate so
In order for all of these resolutions to aggregate and reach the requisite 34 they have to be the same and so all the states are passing the same resolution whereby they agree in advance what will be talked about in convention anything that is brought up a convention that doesn’t fit within that
What i call the law of convention passed by the states is non-german and would just be ruled out of order and how is this different for example from the com from congress right now being able to write amendments how is this any different you know it’s it’s not in the sense that congress
Requires two-thirds of both houses to propose an amendment there have literally been thousands of amendments proposed by congress and then those amendments have to pass out to the states for ratification it takes three quarters of states to ratify so what i would say the main difference is that people trust
Themselves and the people a lot more than they trust congress congress is a sitting convention of states every single day that they’re in if we’re not worried about congress we certainly shouldn’t be worried about the people proposing amendments and so this would allow the states to bypass
Congress for this is that accurate yeah i think that’s the most important piece of this is congress is not involved the president’s not involved this allows the people to bypass and that was the specific purpose in 1787 at convention colonel george mason stood up two days before the end of
Convention and ex explained to everybody at convention they had a fundamental problem with the document they’d given the power to congress to propose amendments but they’d not given that same power to the people acting through the states and he asked the men assembled if they were so naive that they believed that a
Congress or a federal government that had become a tyranny would propose amendments to restrain their own tyranny the answer is really obvious if you look at what congress did or what the convention did at that point madison’s notes say nin calm which means no comment there was no debate
And in fact they unanimously adopted a provision giving us the power to do this and that’s how we got the power today that’s interesting can you tell us a bit about the history of this you know that this was created to make sure that government if further down the road you had pretty
Much a deep state like we have now that they would not create laws to limit their own power and this was given to the states to limit that is this accurate how did this whole thing play out yeah that is accurate and what’s interesting is we’ve never used this
Power so in over 240 years of the existence of our constitutional republic we’ve never reached the requisite two-thirds of states it’s not for lack of trying there have been over 400 applications made for a convention of states we’ve just never reached 34 of the requisite two-thirds of states
Who agree on what to discuss there’s also never been a national effort made like this and so people have been trying people not organized in this way but today we have over five million people in the organization who are organized doing this we have representatives volunteers supporters
In all 50 states in every single congressional and state legislative district so this organized effort’s never been done before in this way it truly is historic if we go back in history what was the what was the discussion the content of the discussion on why this would be necessary
Yeah i mean i think that the founders had an understanding of human nature and that understanding was that when people get power they want more power and when people get power they bring more power to themselves so there was a fear and they had this experience that a central government disconnected
From the people would become too powerful and we become unresponsive to the people and that’s where we are today if you look at history for example over 80 to 85 percent of people consistently pulled for the last 30 years say we should have term limits for congress congress has never and will never
Propose term limits for itself the numbers are very similar by the way on a balanced budget amendment americans understand that you can’t keep spending beyond your means forever that at some point you have to rein in your fiscal house and the and the founders knew this and they they actually rallied against and
Railed against the idea of long-term debt structural debt today obviously we’re like close to 29 trillion dollars in debt and yet the american people who don’t want it that congress will never propose an amendment for a balanced budget amendment so it’s always been up to the people the
Founders knew it would be up to the people and this was considered the firewall for liberty that the states and the people could act and reign in a a rogue or out of control federal government now as things currently stand the the senate the house they’re trying to push through h.r 1
Which would let them basically institutionalize from the federal level all the changes they made to the elections during the 2020 elections and you know of course there’s different views in this i think a lot of conservatives view this as kind of the end of fair elections where the federal governments basically start running
Elections could something like this change this could this reverse this it could and and i i agree with those who think that this is a game changer what the house and senate are trying to do right now uh they call it the for the people act i actually call it the destruction of
Democracy act or the death of democracy act they intend to take the power away from the states the fundamental power to decide how their elections run that’s something that was never intended by the federal government they intend to do away with voter id laws one of the most
Simple protections we can and should have in states against voter fraud one of the things that hr one or the death of democracy act does that i think is so dangerous is it exposes the donor lists of organizations like ours and the intent is that the woke mob the
Canceled culture will go after any donors that support convention of states by the way also churches and other charities and prevent them from doing the work they do so i think this is very dangerous and in a convention of states we could propose and then the country could ultimately ratify
A structure whereby all of this power is permanently reserved to the states and there’s no question that the federal government is not allowed to federalize all of our elections the other big question is enforcement you know of course we have we have a constitution right now that is arguably
Not always followed including by our supreme court uh would you tell people if they doubt this would actually be enforced even if it would if even if it did go through yeah i think that’s actually one of the best arguments i heard against it i’m a little bit biased it was my main
Argument when i first started looking at this and i learned something that was actually stunning and upsetting to me which is we have two constitutions in america we have the one that a lot of people carry around in their breast pocket it’s called the pocket constitution usually about 14 pages our entire
Constitution and then we have the one that you can buy from the government publishing office i actually have one on the bookshelf behind me it’s 2738 pages with the supplements to bring it current it’s over 3000 pages literally says on the spine the constitution of the united states of america
It contains every case ever issued by the supreme court telling us what that beautiful succinct constitution is supposed to mean and this is the document this 3000 page behemoth that is really distorted and bastardized our constitution and has essentially destroyed the republic so the goal of convention of states is to
Go back to something closer to that original constitution this is the methodology that the founders gave us now why would they follow it if we were to amend if we look at the history and that’s really the only lamplight by which we can guide our feet if we look at the
History of amendments amendments are generally followed for at least 100 years and the reason is they’re a very muscular political operation it takes 34 states to call it takes 38 states to ratify that means the vast majority of the american public is in support of whatever gets ratified coming out of a convention
Politicians not the bravest souls in the world they generally don’t stand against three-quarters of the american population and on that note too let’s talk about where things are at how many states are behind this right now how many more do you still need so again it takes two thirds or 34
States to call a convention so far 15 states have called the convention all the way 49 states have actually introduced this resolution 30 states have passed it out of one committee or another in either house 23 states have passed it in one house or another but you have to do it in both
Houses in the same calendar session and so so far 15 states have done that completely today there are 21 states in session considering this i expect that we will pass somewhere between 5 and 10 states this year taking us well past the halfway mark and
Let’s say it does get passed it does go through this is brought nina brought to the state decision what is the process how does this actually play out so what happens is the states will then gather in what’s called a general convention a general convention just means that
All of the states will be invited all 50 states will send delegations they’ll go to convention they’ll decide on a rules package it’ll look to those of us who know legislatures much like a legislature they’ll end up breaking out into committees and subcommittees they’ll come back to the what they call the
Committee of the whole the whole convention and they’ll vote on proposals for amendments if 26 states can agree on an amendment or a package of amendments then those amendments will be sent out to the states for ratification and this is really important people some people panic about the idea
Of a convention a convention is merely a meeting where people get together discuss debate and then make some suggestions the convention itself has absolutely no power constitutionally and then those amendments if they’re passed out of convention go out to the states for ratification and it takes a super super majority or
38 states to ratify anything before it becomes part of the constitution so that’s the process in terms of the reality of this 38 states that’s a pretty big call especially if it’s reigning in the powers of government who makes a decision on ratifying it and really how many states currently do
You think would be behind that if that were to happen so generally speaking it’s the state legislatures that will ratify there are two potential methods this is one of the rare areas where congress has some say it’s either state legislatures or state ratifying conventions the convention themselves are controlled
By the state legislature so really basically the same process either way so it’s up to the states and then the question of ratification i think it sounds a little bit counterintuitive i think it’s harder to get to convention than it is to ratify even though the numbers smaller for
Getting a convention and the reason i say that is getting to convention it’s a new idea to some people it seems radical once you get close and get into convention the entire country will be paying attention this will be the biggest political event in american history quite literally
It’ll be watched on every television network it’ll be on c-span it’ll be in the schools from kindergarten all the way through college everybody will be aware of it and the only things that will come out of convention are things that are very mainstream like a balanced budget amendment with 85 percent support
Or term limits with a similar amount of support these are things that the american people understand they’re quite simple they’re down the middle they’re very moderate reforms as far as political ideology so i think getting to 38 states once you get to the 34 and get out of convention i actually think
That’s a lower bar now and what’s to stop them for example from repealing things like second amendment protections free speech protections yeah look i hear this all the time that they’re going to repeal the second amendment to be clear my son’s a marine my mom was a cop we’re
Big second amendment people so i don’t believe the second amendment is at risk in fact sitting on my legal advisory board chuck cooper chuck is uh the longest term litigator for the nra litigated second amendment cases he’s written a letter that says the idea that this would do away with the second
Amendment or damage it is outrageous it’s the federal government we really have to worry about and here’s what actually prevents it just common sense wise and numerically it takes 38 states to ratify and that means it takes 13 states to not ratify 13 states who just don’t
Pass or approve of an amendment and if you think of it in terms of the second amendment it takes the 13 most conservative states to stand against this and so states like georgia and alabama and mississippi and tennessee the carolinas wyoming the dakotas places where gun culture runs deep and
And by the way texas is not among the 13 most conservative states in the country if that gives you any idea i’ve been in 48 states i’ve been in the legislatures and most of them and i would tell you that if you go into those legislatures and you suggest that
They even debate an amendment to repeal the second amendment well i hope you’re carrying because you probably need to be to defend yourself and i’ve made this challenge i’ll put this out on the air with you guys is i give out my personal email address it’s m meckler at cosaction.com and i’ll
Challenge anybody if you think that the second amendment can be repealed then send me the list of the 38 states that are ratified i’ve made that offer to millions of people i’ve never received a single email in response to that it’s literally just impossible and i’ve also heard the left liberal
Groups say oh they could you know repeal you know they could bring back slavery or something like this what would you tell them yeah i mean that’s just outrageous i would just say use your common sense go look in the country and look around the country and find the
States that are promoting bringing back slavery i mean these are just absurd ridiculous arguments that you’ll hear from people who are opposed on either side really what you have is you have the mainstream of america sort of the great center of america’s in support of this we’ve pulled this all across the country
It’s about two-thirds of americans overall are in favor of holding a convention of states for this reason it’s about 75 percent of republicans about two-thirds of independence and even more than 50 usually 52 54 of democrats are in favor of this so this is mainstream america against the fringes now
I can tell you i’ve heard all kinds of rumors about it from the right and the left i know i’ve heard rumors that george soros is financing i’ve heard from the john birch society there’s concerns about it i’ve heard all kinds of groups right and left what’s really going on here with
All this yeah i love this just in the last couple of weeks there’s been hit piece articles against me personally in convention of states one of them did come from the john birch society all 12 of them out there in the country wrote an article saying that we’re owned by george soros and
We’re a radical leftist organization literally in the same week an article was put out by common dreams which is an agglomeration of common cause center of budget and policy priorities both of those soros funded organizations and a conglomeration of over 250 leftist organizations code pink moveon.org daily cause
Socialist party of america all the major employee unions and all of those organizations say that i am and we are a radical right-wing organization so what you have is the fringe on both sides are really opposed to this they’re really scared of it and the reason they’re scared of it is
Because this is intended to take the power away from washington dc where all those groups are most effective operating and seizing power and giving it back to the states the reality is we’re funded by close to now 100 000 small donors from all over the country you’re looking at my fancy office here
In my house my wife works in a high-rise she’s our development director she raises the money for the organization i call it a high-rise because it’s the office over the garage so you know we’re not funded by big corporations we’re not funded by soros or the koch brothers
It’s really just grassroots folks like me all over the country and so you’re suggesting there’s a kind of a disinformation campaign around this who is behind this which groups are running this and why well look it originally started and the the left started a disinformation campaign in the 1970s against article 5.
Article 5 was really proposed seriously to overturn roe versus wade back in the 1970s and chief justice warrenberger wrote a letter against the idea of using an article 5 convention of course he’s the chief justice that gave us roe vs wade he wrote an article or a letter saying
We would lose our beloved constitution in a runaway convention they then hired or found professors at yale and harvard to write similar articles they were trying to prevent the american right from using the constitutional remedy that the founders intended we use for just such a circumstance unfortunately some
On the right have picked it up today on the right it’s fringe groups like the john burke society and eagle forum those are really the only major groups that oppose this and on the left it’s virtually everybody on the left by the way on the right and this is
Important for folks to know if you consider yourself a conservative or a libertarian every major conservative or libertarian figure in the united states of america that’s taken a position on this subject if they’re nationally known they’ve taken a position in favor and all the radical leftist organizations in america have taken a position
Against yeah and i’ve heard uh different takes and i know there’s the stop con con constitutional convention movement and uh i know they’re concerned about kind of this running away what would you tell them a runaway convention what would you tell them yeah i would tell them just can you do
Math because the numbers make it impossible i laid it out it takes only 13 states to stop anything there are numerous protections along the way my legal advisory board is made up of the finest conservative constitutional scholars in america and the finest libertarian constitutional scholars in america robbie
George at princeton is on my legal advisory board randy barnett who runs the georgetown center for the constitution rob nadelson who is the number one legal scholar in america and article 5 is on the legal advisory board mark levin all of these people against the john
Birch society a fringe group by the way this is very important for people to understand that was run out of the legitimate conservative movement literally run out by william f buckley the founder of the conservative movement barry goldwater ronald reagan these are kooks and quacks to be quite simple
The current president of the john birch society said of ronald reagan when he was running for president that he was a lackey for the communists so you have to look at who’s for and who’s against the rational people the scholars the nationally known figures on the right all in favor the radical
Left all against you got to ask yourself why are groups like the john birch society in eagle forum aligning with groups like planned parenthood and code p now you mentioned of course the changes to the constitution that have already been made in terms of pretty much every time the supreme court
Rules on something it kind of creates a new interpretation these interpretations work almost like amendments you mentioned if you were to get from the government the copy of the constitution it’s quite big could this actually undo some of that given that this is based on interpretations yeah it absolutely could and should undo
Some of this this is really what the founders intended this is why they put article 5 in they understood that the federal government would get out of control we needed to rein it in it’s really obvious that the founders intended amendments to rein in the supreme court as well
After the first 10 minutes the bill of rights as we commonly know them the 11th amendment was the first amendment of course after the first 10 and it was put in place during the time of the founders almost all the founders and the framers were still alive the supreme court took jurisdiction over
Things that the founders didn’t agree with and the founders limited supreme court jurisdiction through the 11th amendment so they sent a message to us over 240 years ago telling us that the supreme court gets out of control if it does things that we don’t like if it takes jurisdiction over things we
Don’t believe it should have then the proper process for fixing that is the amendments process back then they counted on congress to do it but the founders were in congress today congress is very different and we the people are going to have to do it for ourselves what are the current amendments that
Your group is proposing so as a group we don’t actually propose any particular amendments they’re what are called subject matter areas and so what we’re proposing is that a discussion be held around three subject matters one is fiscal restraints on the federal government so i mentioned a balanced budget amendment
Tax and spending caps another one that a lot of people think is a good idea and very popular imposing generally accepted accounting principles on the federal government the federal government i don’t know exactly how they account i’ve tried to talk to government accountants ask them about it they use
No standards i call it sort of the unicorns and rainbow standard they just make it up as they go so anything that would impose fiscal restraints is available for discussion second is anything that would impose term limits most people when they talk about term limits they talk about congress
And that could be a good idea but i think it’s equally important if we’re going to put term limits on elected officials that we also put term limits on the staffers who have a lot of power on capitol hill and the bureaucrats frankly have the most power on capitol
Hill so those would be term limits by the way also the judiciary nobody ever intended at the founding for people to serve on the federal courts for 25 and 30 years the average age of appointment in the founding era was 47 average life expectancy was 54. so you get an idea maybe six
Seven years on the court is all they ever intended so we could limit the terms of federal jurists including the supreme court and then the final area is imposing scope and jurisdictional limits a very good example of this is the department of education the founders never intended for the federal government to
Be involved in education in any way we’ve not had an education amendment we know this for certain because jefferson wrote in a letter to william henry lee one of his close friends that he could not ask for money for university of virginia from the federal government because it was unconstitutional
And it would require an education amendment we’ve not had such an amendment the federal government shouldn’t be spending money on education or energy or the environment these are places that they were never intended to be involved in and a convention of states under the auspices that we’re calling it would
Allow for a discussion of amendments to restrain the federal government in these areas and many more now i know one of the big concerns right now is federal government overreach have you seen more support for this since biden’s been doing his executive orders and such yeah support is off the charts it’s been
Quite incredible to see the transition i mean we’ve been a very successful organization over the last seven years over five million people involved something unique happened just before the election facebook turned off political advertising i think that hurt people on the right much more than people on the left and we certainly felt
The effect of of it as an organization but what we noticed is when biden was elected there was an incredible surge in interest in convention of states and the advertising had not yet been turned back on facebook turned that on just a couple of days ago but we’ve seen a huge
Uptick in interest in convention of states including from people who used to be opposed some of these organizations the people are peeling off of these organizations and coming to convention of states because they see we’re at a point where we don’t really have much choice the the marxists the fascists are really in
Control of washington dc they hold the white house and they hold both houses of congress people are genuinely worried about that and they see convention of states as the only potential remedy now i i was interested to see that david horowitz actually came out in support of it too
What was his general statement on this yeah you know it was really interesting i interacted with horowitz when he first came to me he told me he was completely opposed i laid out some of the case for it and he asked me to send him all original
Source material he said he wanted to do his own research and when he came back about a week later he told me that he was completely in support he’d do anything we needed and he wrote an article basically saying that the campaign against the idea of using article 5
Was a leftist propaganda campaign david horowitz of course is the premier scholar on the left the american modern american left and so he said this is classic leftist propaganda to turn people on the right against themselves against using the remedy that they know will save the country
And so he came out strongly in favor folks can go to our website at conventionofstates.com look up david horowitz they’ll see this article he did the independent research he says we need to call a convention of states and he says that those who are against it who might consider themselves on the right
Have simply been fooled by leftist propaganda now just last question here and i guess first off do you feel that there’s anything people are missing in their understanding of this and second and there’s still a lot of people who have a lot of concerns about this you know what would you tell them
I think that the what people are missing the most important thing they’re missing is they’re panicked about the idea of going to convention and they need to understand that a convention of states as laid out in the united states constitution actually has no power in other words their job is to get
Together have a discussion and then make suggestions literally nothing can come out of a convention other than suggestions then it has to go to 38 states to be ratified you said yourself very high bar i do agree it’s a very high bar the founders intended this process to be incredibly difficult people ask
Mark you’ve been doing this seven years why is it taking so long and i say because that’s what the founders intended they wanted to make sure that we were unified as a nation around any change that we would make to the constitution so it takes millions of people
Many years the building of a broad consensus so i think people who have fear need to remember the founders they faced much more dire circumstances than we did they fought a revolution where the outcome was uncertain they got together and designed a constitution where the outcome was uncertain the
Question that we have to ask ourselves as citizens is do we walk in their footsteps do we deserve to put on their shoes and call ourselves americans and i think if we do we have to be bold we have to be brave we have to be courageous and we
Have to use the tools the founders call called us to use we have to call a convention of states folks can get involved at conventionofstates.com hey mark meckler real pleasure having a crossroads thank you for having me
