Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

I first heard about it in high school.  Back then the birth rate of black Americans was very high, and had been a long time. If you projected a continuation of black versus white birth rates, blacks were going to be a majority in this country some time in the 21st century.  A lot of people back then believed it.

Now the Republicans are doomed because whites are becoming a minority.  Good God, how stupid can people be?  They look at the present, and the recent past, and figure they know the future?  Fools.

There are such things as political realignments.  The New Deal produced one, a big one, that lasted a couple generations.  I’m becoming convinced that the political flood tide which began with the rollout of Obamacare may result in a political realignment to rival it.

If it happens I will live to see it.  Thank you, Jesus.

Article V is perfectly proportioned.  It’s the Dolly Parton of the Constitution.

Up to now we’ve been focused on 34.  That’s where our focus will remain, but I think it’s time to look past 34, to 26 and 38.  Moving on up, so to speak.  For the first time since I got involved, eighteen months ago, I think the odds of 34 are in our favor.  Getting 26 of 50, to organize and control the Amendment Convention, shouldn’t be that tough, as long as people don’t let their egos and personal ambition get in the way.  There are 31 red states, with solid red legislatures, which share an interest in saving our country through the rapid economic growth which would result from the Reagan Amendment.

Some of the 31, like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are purplish, it’s true.  But the real key to 38 are the seven actual purple states, with legislatures half red, half blue.  Of these, I think New Mexico, Colorado, and Kentucky would easily ratify the Reagan Amendment, getting us to 34.  The deciding states will be Maine, Iowa, Minnesota, and Washington.  These are the states the Amendment Convention must be cognizant of as it fashions the actual amendment.  There are other possible targets, of course.  Delaware, perhaps, and definitely Oregon, where 52.6% of the state is owned by the federal government.

We should get Washington, where 28.5% of the land is federal.  So we’re down to Maine, Iowa, and Minnesota.  Down on its luck Maine would, like every state in the Union, benefit economically from the Reagan Amendment.  Maybe that would be enough.  Maine’s legislature flips back and forth between red and blue, and its Governor is a right wing Ross Perot type.  We should get Maine.  Iowa just elected Joni Ernst, striking terror in the hearts of hogs across the country.  This is a seriously conservative woman.  They’ve had a Republican Governor for umpteen years.  We ‘ll get Iowa.

So it all boils down to Minnesota, where my mother’s family hails from.  Bemidji, up north, to be precise.  Harriet Brennan Achenbach was her maiden name.  Minnesota was settled almost exclusively by northern Europeans  — Germans and Scandinavians.  Prairie Home Companion, and all that, where all the kids are above average.  They’re good people, but they do have a socialist streak in them.  But I think that’s fading.  Socialism doesn’t mesh well with diversity, and I think they’re figuring it out.  The Twin Cities have a lot of population, but most of Minnesota is farm country.  Yeah, we’ll get Minnesota.

I learned a valuable lesson in Minnesota  — don’t trust strangers.  We were staying in Wilton, about ten miles north of Bemidji on Highway 11.  We went to the County Fair in Bemidji, and a guy offered me ten dollars if I’d pass out flyers all afternoon.  My family was heading back to Wilton, but they let me stay to earn the money, since I could hitchhike back.  I busted my ass for hours passing out flyers, and when it was time to get paid the guy gave me a pen set he said was worth ten dollars.  My ass.  A quarter at best.  I’d been cheated, but there was nothing I could do about it.  I really wanted that ten dollars.  It would have doubled my entire wealth.

That was in 1954.  I was nine.  I’ve tried, ever since, not to be taken advantage of.

It still pisses me off.

Co-founder Darren is spending his weekend doing over the website. Big changes coming. We’re jacked.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to spread the word on the Reagan Amendment.  I’ll decide now, in the woods.

North Dakota will be 27, maybe as early as Monday, according to Guldenschuh.  South Carolina will be 28.  John Steinberger reports we passed out of the full Senate Judiciary Committee 15-6, with two D’s.  We could be on the Senate floor by the end of next week.  The House is wired.  In Wisconsin Lou Marin reports that sponsor Chris Kapenga is waiting on the special senate election to fill the seat of now-Congressman Glen Grothman, the blockhead who beat us last year.  Chris knows what he’s doing.  He’s fairly young, but he has skills.  Wisconsin will be 29, though it might not be ’til fall.

We came in to 2015 ten short.  We’ll almost certainly get five.  But 30 sounds a lot better than 29, and 31 sounds really good.  I’ll be in Boise on Wednesday, and I’ll stay until I get to talk to Bart Davis.  I’ll tell him about the Reagan Amendment, and what it could mean for the economy, for jobs, in his state.  Every Republican legislator I’ve ever known cares about jobs.  A lot.  It’s one thing that unites us all.  I hope he gets it.  Depending on the reaction I get from Davis, I may want to go to Oklahoma City in a few weeks to talk about what the Reagan Amendment would mean for Oklahoma.

Biddulph’s still talking about getting it done this year.  That would require special sessions in West Virginia, Wyoming, and either Montana or Arizona.  I don’t see that happening.  But if we go viral, anything’s possible.

The closer we get, the more focused.

Loren Enns will be doing a pledge campaign in Virginia.  The filing deadline for November’s legislative elections is getting close, if it hasn’t already passed.  The quicker those letters go out, the more effective they will be.  You never know.  Virginia could be 34 next year.

Some guy in California filed our bill.  I may have some free time in Sacramento at the end of next week.  If I do I’ll drop by his office and tell him that when California Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown ran for President in 1980 an Article V BBA was one of his principal campaign themes.  Jerry used to be a thinker, an innovator.  Maybe somebody should remind him of who he was, 35 years ago.  I’ll say this about Jerry.  If he was ten years younger he’d run against Hillary, and he’d beat her.  He smells weakness.

The Republican Party in California is dead.  A big reason is abortion, which is a religion to the women of this state.  If I run for Congress next year it will be as a Reagan Democrat.  I became a Democrat a year ago.  I’d call upon my fellow Democrats in Sacramento to place on the ballot a pro-choice constitutional amendment.  If Rowe v. Wade is overturned they’re going to do it anyway, so why not now?  Because, of course, they want the issue.  To beat Republicans up with.

Running for Congress might be fun. Hell, I know it would.

Or a lack thereof.  That’s why Article V is so hard.  The American people, as represented by their state legislators, don’t trust each other.  What kind of people elect a nonentity like Obama, and then, after four years of incompetence, elect him again?  What kind of people elect, year after year, the same set of fools and blowhards we see in Congress?  Can this electorate be trusted anywhere near the Constitution?

We have no choice.  If the people, acting through their state legislatures, can’t be trusted with the Constitution, then it’s game over.  We lost the country.  The Supreme Court won’t save us.  Chief Justice Roberts made that clear when, in a tortured opinion, he upheld Obamacare.  Nothing will save us.  All we’ve got is an old piece of paper, with some famous names on it.

A republic, if you can keep it.  Truer words were never spoken.  When the basic structure of the Constitution has been so distorted, by a hundred years of “progress”, a free people does something about it.  We’ve forgotten a few things in the last hundred years.  We forgot that the Federal Government is not the sovereign in this country, the people are.  We forgot that when the states gave up a portion of their sovereignty to form this country, they reserved the right to take it back.  As long as they act collectively, according to the procedures of Article V.

We are in dire straits.  You get the feeling that if we don’t do something soon we’ll lose it all, our entire heritage.  The Framers foresaw this day, and gave us a clear way out.  Do we have the courage, do we trust each other enough, to go there?  I believe we do.  I got off the couch eighteen months ago because I saw, with my own eyes, a turning of the tide.  The rollout of Obamacare.  The low water mark.  The moment the tide turned flood toward freedom.

Is that what happened, a year and a half ago?  We will find out soon enough.  When people get to understand the Reagan Amendment, they’ll either like it, or they won’t.  Politics is an unforgiving business.  You either win, or lose.  But it is a business.  I either know it, or I don’t.

When my son Darren and I started the Reagan Project, it was about building trust.  That’s what the Reagan Amendment Summit is about.  If we can begin to form a community there that trusts itself, a community determined to grow, there is no limit to what it could accomplish.  All while balancing the budget.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in on a jail break.