Call of Duty V - Article V Convention

0:00Rodney gave you the nuts and bolts of how upside down and messed up this situation is. I don't think he's actually telling you the entire truth, because the number I've seen is $120 trillion in unfunded liabilities if you roll in Social Security, Medicare and government retirement programs. That's how deep the debt is. We don't even know what we have overseas because they can't count it. The Pentagon won't do an audit because they don't have I don't have enough auditors on earth to count the debt. That's how out of control this is. But what I wanted to do is give you a little historical perspective on this. Rodney said, and I saw the show of hands, a lot of people here that don't think, we don't want an amendment, we don't want a con con, no constitutional conventions.

0:48The framers are sitting there in heaven looking down going, You do it. I told you not to do it. I'm here to tell you that the framers are sitting up in heaven and going, what are you waiting for? You guys are 230 years too late. That's how dire the situation is. So let's go back to 1788. That's why I call this little talk Article 5, Call of Duty, because it's a video game. We get to shoot a lot of people. I'm In 1788, a man by the name of George Mason went to the Federal Convention in Philadelphia.

1:35You probably call it the Constitutional Convention. Well, since they weren't sent there to draft the Constitution, it couldn't possibly have been a Constitutional Convention. So it was called the Federal Convention of 1787. The great Melvin Bradford called it the Great Convention, because it was. It produced the most long-standing, semi-effective governing document in the history of the planet. So if we go back to 1787, during the summer, as they debated and as they talked about this, they're coming to the end of the convention. On the afternoon of the 12th of September, 1787, each delegate to the Federal Convention meeting under a cloak of secrecy, you know, they were told, don't write any letters home to your Aunt Mamie, don't tell anyone what you're doing here, man, you'll blow the whole thing. So they're all taking a note not to say anything, they're operating under a cloak of secrecy. But on the September the 12th, 1787, they were all issued a draft of what we know today as the U.S. Constitution for their consideration. They had been debating

2:41this for quite some time, and a gentleman by the name of Govindor Morris, who had a and a very, very nice script, that's what's actually on the photocopy documents that you see today, gave each one of them a copy. Now, there aren't very many records about this event, but we can scrutinize one of the copies that survives and it is in the collection of Virginia delegate George Mason. That's how we know that those copies went out on that day. Now, George Mason, who was his cat? Well, he was called the wisest man of his generation. By someone you may know, I think his name was Jefferson, Tom, Thomas, something. Jefferson called him the wisest man of his generation.

3:26That's high praise. That's about as high as it gets in the 1770s, 1780s. But George Mason was better known for things that we don't know him for today. For example, he was a leading voice in Virginia for Virginia's call for independence. A lot of people don't know this, but because, you know, in today's Mark Levin, Sean Hannity world, it was the Constitution that created the states. And then we're all set on our little mission to go bomb brown people all around the world. That's not the way it actually happened. Virginia seceded first. That's right, I said secede. They seceded from the Empire of Great Britain first on May the 15th, 1776. They said we're done. They began the process of drafting a constitution for the state of Virginia, the first document ever drafted and ratified by a free people in the history of the planet.

4:30That's how significant that event was. If we go back two years further, we will find a younger George Mason sitting in the backyard of George Washington's Mount Vernon, sipping mint juleps probably and watching the river go by, hanging out with Jefferson, Henry and Washington. Mason was asked to put the colonist complaints into words. They called this the Fairfax Resolves. 1974, that's what they did. They laid out the case of why they were upset with the king. What was he doing wrong? What was the Parliament doing wrong? And what they did was they stated the case of the rights that they were trying to reclaim. This is key.

5:16They're reclaiming their rights. They're not inventing anything new. Again, another blow to the Stroussing and Neocons. They already had these rights. Brits were taking them away. Now to put in context today Today, what Mason was doing, Mason would have been, he goes to this convention in Philadelphia, he would have been as likely to propose and support centralizing power as a member of today's Congress would be to propose and vote for the balanced budget amendment that Rodney told you about. He was as vehemently opposed to this as he could have been, but yet he Now, Mason had offered many objections during the Great Convention, but had become increasingly concerned over the seeming rigidity of what they were calling the general government in the Convention.

6:07This is what the new Constitution would create. Mason kept standing up and urging over and over again that, look, the people didn't send us here to write a new Constitution, so I think we ought to put all this on hold, go Go home and tell them what we're up to and then we'll have another convention. He thought that once the states learned what the convention was about to produce that they would just reject it and then we would still have the Articles of Confederation. Fortunately, he lost. While he was losing though, he also insisted that, look, if you guys are going to persist in this insane idea of yours, then the states have to have the ability to amend this constitution

7:19So after receiving his copy of the draft of the Constitution on the 12th of September 1787, Mason began reviewing his work and there was an awful lot that he didn't approve of. Among other valid complaints, he noted that Article 1 Section 8 powers were weak and ill-defined. I'm sorry. Imagine if he could see what we do with Article 1 Section 8 today. He accurately predicted what Congress would become and at what price to commerce and trade, noting, and this is a quote, It is at present impossible to foresee whether this government, in matters of commerce, will produce a monarchy or a corrupt, tyrannical, oppressive aristocracy.

8:07It will probably most likely vibrate some years between the two and then terminate in one or the other. Well, we know that it's terminated in an oligarchy, basically, an oppressive oligarchy, and so Mason was correct. Now, if you're wondering, what is the point? I'm laying out the case for what the framers who opposed ratifying the Constitution, that they would want you in this room today to stand up and say, call a convention and fix this or get rid of it. Mason then sets his sight and professorial skills on the Constitution's fifth article, which on that evening, written in Govan R. Morris's hand, read, and I'm quoting from the original draft, Article 5, The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem necessary, or on the application of two-thirds of the legislatures of the several states, shall propose amendments to this Constitution which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part thereof, when the same shall have been ratified by three-fourths of the legislatures of the several states, or by the conventions

9:16and three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress, and they talked about amendments. You'll notice if you're a student of the Constitution, there's a sentence that's not in there. That's why we're here today, to talk about that sentence. And you can just imagine George Mason, the author of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, and a leader in the push to break from the central authority that was not permitting the colony's governments to amend their own charters, reading what seemed to him like a near copy of the centralized government of Great Britain, the same man who inspired Here are the instructive parts of the Declaration of Independence's preamble in Virginia's Declaration of Rights.

10:01A lot of people don't know this. Jefferson was taking a sneak peek at Mason when he wrote our declaration. Here's what Virginia said and what Mason wrote, quote, Whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, the majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or Abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged, most conducive to the public wheel. What does Jefferson's text in the Declaration say? Pretty much the same thing, just differently ordered words. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, as your operative word, to throw off such government, to provide new guards for their future security.

10:52Now, back to George Mason and the problems he had with the Constitution. In the margin of his copy that I told you he took home on or back to his hotel room, you don't have hotel room, Mike, back to his lodgings as he would have called them, that night in the margin of his copy next to the citation for Article 5 he wrote, quote, Article 5, by this This article, Congress, only have the power of proposing amendments and at any future time to this Constitution, and should it prove ever so oppressive, the whole people of America can't make or even propose alterations to it, a doctrine utterly subversive of the fundamental principles of the rights and liberties of the people.

11:40He's scared, he's mortified. Here he is relishing the newfound freedom that they established and yet they're about to draft a constitution that's going to wipe it out. So when the convention reconvened the next day, Mason began lodging his complaints clause by clause, biding his time until the debate got really busy and they got to Article 5. Before Mason could stand yet again this day and oppose the current language of Article 5, he would have to wait until his friend Elbridge Gary of Massachusetts took a swipe at the clause and from James Madison's notes we know what transpired and Madison said that Mr. Gary stood up and proposed all sorts of amendments and that we insert a new sentence into the document that would clarify and give the states the right to not only call the convention but they would participate in it, not the Congress. Congress could go back and So, Colonel Mason thought the plan of amending the Constitution was exceptional and dangerous.

12:46We're summarizing here. As the proposing of amendments is in both the models or modes that depend in the first immediately and in the second on Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people if the government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case. I think it's fair to witness today that he was verily correct. Of course, James Madison being James Madison, he couldn't imagine that the magisterial federal government that they were getting him ready to create wasn't up to any task that could ever be proposed to it, so he went, eh, Mason might have a point, but I don't think it's really necessary. They persisted and the language was changed. We know this today that Article 5 now contains a call to the people in its text that the people in the states, three quarters of them, can call for a convention.

13:43Congress has to convene it and then the people will decide that Congress can say, okay you guys are going to meet in Milwaukee or you can meet in Auburn, Alabama. There's a big stadium there, you'll like it. Then the people in the sovereign states take over. Those were the last words that were spoken in the federal convention and I have some more here that I'd like to share with you but I don't have time. Suffice it to say, though, that Article 5 was left to us by the wisest man of his generation as something we were supposed to use. We're about 230 years too late. The work of these men and the Great Convention did preserve much of those rights, but as we know today, not nearly enough to prevent the fake Federalists to turn nationalists into bringing the 232-year-long project to transform the Constitution from a little instrument of how you plan a government to a big giant Leviathan that you can do anything with.

14:37And perhaps this is why the one vestige of Mason's work, the amended Article 5, remains never having been used by the principal objects of its amended form, the sovereign people of the states. We're supposed to use it. If the Constitution is to ever regain the initiative in the great battle to reestablish its beauty and original form of being a plan of government for the states that enter into the Compact with not equal but superior powers, then it will be necessary for the states to call an Article 5 convention and enter into the labor which must be applied to repair the damage and prevent new usurpations if indeed that's possible. That is our call of duty, ladies and gentlemen.

15:22call the convention, send the men most committed to the cause of our forefathers and pray for the best as an appeal to God and this endeavor may indeed prove to be the last best hope of Earth.