Month: March 2017

The remote northern edge of the American Rocky Mountains, in northern Idaho and western Montana,  is the last stronghold of the John Birch Society.  These two States are where passage of any Article V Resolution is the most difficult.  Because of the political power of the Birch Society, we lost Montana two years ago, and we lost Idaho today in the State Senate, 11-24.

At this point, the only hope in either State is for legislative leaders such as Idaho Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis and Montana Senate President Scott Sales to come to the Nashville Convention of States in July.  Instead of imagining what might happen at an Article V Amendment Convention, they will be able to see, in person, who would be there, and who will lead it.

They will find, to their delight, that the leaders the State Legislatures of this country, those who will control any Convention of States, are cut from the same bolt of cloth that they are.  From Florida to Alaska, and from Texas to North Dakota, the people Davis and Sales will meet are as dedicated to the Constitution as anyone in Idaho or Montana.  An Article V Convention will not be a leap in the dark.  It will be a conclave of patriots.

In the mean time, the Task Force must soldier on, adding as many States to our total as possible.  The closer we are to 34, the more relevant the Nashville Convention becomes.

It hasn’t happened yet, and it may never come to pass, but another hope is that some reasonable Democrats will realize that the BBA is not a partisan issue.   The whole movement started with two Democrats, from Maryland and Mississippi.   Trump’s State of the Union was, among other things, a spending wish list of enormous size.  Does it make sense for Democrats, frozen out of power in Washington, to sit back and watch the Republicans balloon the debt?   Of course not, but counting on the good sense of the modern Democratic Party is not a good option.   The Democrats are in a political hole, and until they stop digging they’re doomed.

There may well be resistance to all this added debt from some Congressional Republicans.  At that point, the Trump administration might want to push aggressively for a BBA, to show a light at the end of the spending tunnel.  Article V is the only way we’ll ever get a BBA.  A call from Vice President Pence to Idaho and Montana might be enough to carry the day.  All he needs is a green light from the boss.  With Trump, who knows?

Article V works when there is a national consensus.  There is such a consensus on forcing Congress to balance its budget.  But the fear of Article V may prevent the safeguard represented by Article V from ever  being used.  Not what the Framers had in mind, but the political leaders we currently have may, in the end, simply be too timid.

We’re up in the Idaho Senate this morning, and it’s too close to call.  Northern Idaho and western Montana are the strongholds of the John Birch Society, and the vote today is a contest between their paranoia and the promise of reform through Article V.  Loren Enns is on hand, and I suspect Greg Casey as well.  We’re counting on the leadership of Senate President Brent Hill, backed by Senators Hagedorn, Lakey, Rice, Anthon, Siddoway and Lodge.

If the vote was purely on the merits we would win easily, but Idaho Senators, like politicians everywhere, are susceptible to public pressure, and the Birchers are pulling out all the stops.  I doubt there’s anywhere in the country where the sentiment against the federal government runs as high as in northern Idaho.  This is the scene of the Ruby Ridge massacre, where the family of Randy Weaver was besieged by rogue federal agents.  His 14 year old son was killed, and his wife, Vicki, murdered  by a federal sniper.  It hasn’t been forgotten, and shouldn’t be.

A few years ago Babbie and I toured the Panhandle, staying at a lodge on Priest Lake.   I felt right at home.  These are my kind of people  — libertarians.  If only they could see that Article V is not a threat to our liberty.  It’s a weapon in its defense..

A nation’s culture is formed by its founders, and in our case we had two of them, one at Jamestown in 1607, the other at Plymouth in 1619.  A generation after the first settlers arrived, their ancestors back in England fought a Civil War in 1642, just as their descendants did in the American Civil War of 1861.

Virginians were descended of the Cavaliers, or Tories, and the Massachusetts men were the children of Roundheads, or Puritans.   Our Civil War was fought between them, North and South.  The political evolution, in the United States, of the Cavalier has been into a libertarian.  The Roundheads are today’s progressives.

The Constitution is a libertarian political document, proposed, largely written, and inspired by Virginians, the libertarian descendants of the Cavaliers.  It has been under sustained assault by the Progressives for over a hundred years, and it is now a shadow if its former self.

The assault has been withstood, barely.  But now the tide has turned, violently.  Trump is the kind of political freak that could only achieve power in a rip tide of reaction to the ridiculous excesses of Progressivism.  Can that rip tide also restore the Constitution?  Can the Amendment power reestablish federalism?

We shall see, in the next couple years.  The strong and steady ally of the BBA Task Force, the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB, as we affectionately call it, has struck again, in the person of their man in Texas, Will Newton.  Apprised of the skulduggery at the Capitol, he successfully intervened, and we are no longer in danger of rescission.  Thank you, Will, and thank you, NFIB.