Convention of the States to Restore Federalism

South Carolina and Virginia have formally called for an Article V Convention of State (COS). OnSaturday, close to 100 legislators from 32 states met in Mount Vernon, Virginia to discuss the possibility of adding amendments to the U.S. Constitution through a convention of the states. A convention of states, as outlined in Article V of the Constitution, allows state legislatures to vote on amendments to add.

“There was a really important meeting on Saturday. Nearly 100 state legislators from 32 different states met to discuss the possibility of the convention of the states,” Glenn Beck said on radio this morning. “They said that they were looking for congressional term limits and limits on federal taxation and spending.”

“Need six more states, and we got ourselves a convention,” Pat added.

No constitutional amendment has ever been added through a COS, but some say the Constitution specifically allows for states to use the convention as a check against the federal government. Mark Levin lays out the argument in his book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Public.

According to Article V, two-thirds of the state legislatures, or 34 states, must approve an application for a convention to occur. State legislatures would then send delegates to the convention, with each state getting one vote on proposed amendments. For an amendment to pass and become a part of the Constitution, it would have to be approved by three-fourths, or 38, of the state legislatures.

“This was [written as] the last resort, the ejector seat,” Glenn said of the COS. “Your media has broken down. Your parties have taken over. Your Congress is corrupt. Your president is corrupt. Everything is corrupt, but before there’s a coup, you pull this chute.”

“And up until the last maybe a year, year and a half, I’ve always been dead-set against this, and I think you were too,” Pat said to Glenn. “Because the problem is you open up the Constitution. And you could potentially open it up to what everybody fears – globalists and all that kind of stuff. But you’re not because you’ve got enough states that are going to oppose that. You need 13 and you’re going to get 13 to oppose losing our sovereignty or repealing the Second Amendment.”

As Glenn explained, the COS offers an opportunity to refocus our federalist system away from the federal government and back to the states. While the progressives in Washington may want to keep the power as centralized as possible, Article V of the Constitution allows the states to push back against the federal government and exercise their own power.

“That’s the way it was intended in the first place. And I think it would be really good because what you have right now is all of these senators that care about the United States of America, not their own state. They’re supposed to care about their state,” Glenn said. “And it was Woodrow Wilson and the progressives that moved in and said, ‘No, we’ve got to stop all of this. We’ve got to get people to care about the United States of America and not their individual state.’ And that’s why our states are being raked over the coals.”