Why I support a new Constitutional Convention

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.” - Thomas Jefferson

I recently finished reading Mark Levin's book The Liberty Amendments which details several proposed amendments the talk show host and attorney advocates.  In addition, Levin advocates for a new constitutional convention in order to consider these amendments. I must admit, I have always been skeptical about the notion of another convention. I traditionally viewed such a process as threatening some of the fundamental principles of government that are established in our Constitution. I have viewed a second convention as a  means those who are less enamored with limited government would use to restrict individual liberty and enlarge the government's control over our lives.

However, after not only reading The Liberty Amendments, but reviewing much of what the Framers of our Constitution said at the time of and following its creation, I've realized something. My reverence for the document created in 1787 (which I still believe to be the best construction of government created by human beings) has undermined something even more important to the Framers - the notion of self-government. As Professor Peter Mancall from the University of Southern California has pointed out, the Constitution is the result of nearly a century of political experience and thought that focused on the principle of self-government - the right of a people to choose how their institutions would function and determine the limits of the power of those institutions.

Thomas Jefferson was just one of the Founders who articulated the primacy of
self-government over allegiance to the Constitution, stating:

"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions...But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times."

But Jefferson wasn't the only one viewing the Constitution as a result of self-government, which was the real principle to be upheld. John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, noted:

"The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is a creature of their will, and lives only by their will."

John Adams also concurred, stating:

"...these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses...Thirteen governments thus founded on the authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery..."

And while those at the convention in 1787 wisely built in a provision for amending the Constitution without having to call for another convention, they clearly anticipated the need or desire for future conventions by building a mechanism to call one into Article V of the Constitution.

However, over time, fealty to the principle self-government gradually become synonymous with fealty to the Constitution itself. Something completely foreign to the notion of the Framers. Today, we live in a surreal political universe in which conservatives resist allowing the people to practice self-government by stridently opposing another convention, while liberals consistently attempt to break free of many of the Constitution's restraints on government power while claiming loyalty to the document, and a public who is woefully ignorant of what the Constitution actually says, and even less knowledgeable of why the Constitution arranges our political institutions as it does.

This only comes about by denying the people the right to practice true self-government, in essence, to revisit

the fundamental law of the nation and make those changes that seem necessary. The process of a convention, whether it produced any amendments that could achieve the necessary vote of three-fourths of the states or not, would be very beneficial to our political society. If changes were made, they would have the legitimacy of the people behind them, which would serve as a greater check on the willingness of public officials to ignore or violate them. If no changes were made, then the Constitution, as currently exists, would have been reaffirmed and granted a new legitimacy by a new generation of Americans. Again, the effect would be for elected officials to be much more hesitant to be seen as violating the principles within the Constitution.

Either way, the legitimacy of the people expressing their will through this process will give greater legitimacy to whatever emerges from the process, and politicians will have less room to negotiate around whatever limits are placed on them and the institutions in which they serve. More importantly, self-government will become a practical exercise rather than a historical event. It will be real to the current generation of Americans in a way it has not been since the Founding generation. A greater knowledge of what the Constitution would say, a greater understanding of why it would say it, and a greater fealty to it from all would emerge, as it became, once again, a  creation of "We the People."

Opposition to this process maintains a schizophrenic political reality in which we claim adherence to the Constitution, while becoming ever more ignorant of the document itself, and while our political figures (on both the left and the right) seek ways around its more restrictive elements. In effect, we are valuing the creation (the Constitution) more highly than the creators (the people).  This is not a situation that can exist indefinitely. Equally important, it is a rejection of what the Founders of this country truly believed about the importance of self-government.