In the last two decades, many conservatives have been calling for a Convention of States, (a more appealing term than a Constitutional Convention), to restore federalism and reduce the power and scope of the federal government. The effort was spurred by talk radio host Mark Levin, who published the best seller book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic in 2013.
Before this recent call for a reimagining of the constitution, there was a 70s-era push by the political left to implement a “charter for modern America” via Constitutional Convention. The efforts began with progressive economics professor Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979), a member of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust,” architect of the New Deal program, and an internationalist known for his global planning strategies. Tugwell was also a suspected American communist, and co-founder of Progressive Citizens of America (PCA). Winston Churchill described Tugwell and his followers as “cryto-Communists.” Some contemporaries labeled Tugwell a “totalitarian liberal” and editorialists dubbed him, “Rex the Red.”
While teaching at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara (California) in the 1970s, Tugwell along with 150 other “experts” drafted the new charter to be ready if a convention of states (constitutional convention) was convened. Let us consider what the progressives actually cooked up. The new constitution would accomplish the following:
Concentrate authority in the national government, strengthen the Presidency, weaken the national judiciary, and create new branches of government to oversee planning, elections, and economic regulations.[7]
Presidents would serve a single nine-year term. The new constitution would “remove the final power of judicial review from the U.S. Supreme Court that permits the present Court to declare laws unconstitutional.” The Senate would be “composed” of high government officials and former presidents who would hold their position for life. And a portion of the House of Representatives would be elected “at large” on a national basis. But that is not all. Under the proposed Constitution for the United Republics of America
The new constitution would abandon the present theory of a union of small but sovereign states, in favor of a national government with strong central powers. It would be divided into a score [20] or less of regional “republics,” with limited powers. The boundaries of the republics would change as the population shifted so that each republic would contain at least 5 percent of the people. If a republic’s government became corrupt or inept, the national Senate could remove it.
The national government would be composed of six branches rather than the current three—legislative, executive and judicial. In addition to these three, there would be a regulatory branch to house and control all of the present scattered independent agencies; an electoral branch to control political functions that are now supervised by the states; and a planning branch to prepare six‐year and 12‐year development programs…The regulatory branch would share its authority with private industry, which could join in multi-company groups to set standards.
Even though the last item runs counter to antitrust laws, that did not pose a hindrance to the designers of the new America. In their view, “government planning would anticipate the legitimate needs of the people and harness corporate power to the same ends.” One New York Times article noted that “These goals have remained unchanged for half a century.
And that may be true – in 2011, Harvard Law School hosted a two-day “Conference on the Constitutional Convention” to attract Americans to the movement. The Conference was co-chaired by professor Lawrence Lessig, and the moderator for the event was professor Richard D. Parker. Parker was a member of the 1960s leftist organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). A contemporary article written for The Harvard Crimson noted that, “Proponents see a constitutional convention called by the states as the only way to circumvent Congressional and Supreme Court decisions…”
The Harvard Conference is not the only recent example of minds meeting to discuss a constitutional convention. In December 2013, the Mount Vernon Assembly convened at George Washington’s estate in Virginia. The purpose of the meeting was to “establish the rules and procedures needed for a future state-led convention that would propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” In June of 2014, the Assembly reconvened at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis where, this time, nearly 100 state legislators representing 33 states assembled “to build the framework to hold an amendments convention, should one be called under Article V.”
The calls for a convention of states continue today, on both sides of the aisle. In 2023, radio talk show host and lawyer, Mark Levin, joined forces with Convention of States President Mark Meckler, calling for state legislators to do their “duty to help save America using Article.”
A convention of states is a constitutional convention—only with a more euphemistic and appealing sounding name. It is time for Americans recognize they cannot have it both ways–namely, call for a constitutional convention and naively believe the convention can be limited to consideration of only a few specific amendments. The Founding Fathers did not insert a qualifying clause to that effect in Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
The American Founders intended the convention of states method as another way Americans could correct the government if it became tyrannical or oppressive. That is not the case today. The U.S. government is not “fundamentally broken,” as many proponents of a constitutional convention like to argue. What would likely happen at a constitutional convention is that the power of the federal government would greatly expand at the expense of individual liberty and freedom, as outlined in the statist plan that was drawn up in the seventies. Of this, lovers of liberty should be concerned.
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