Conservatives and Libertarians: Don’t Be Fooled by These Two Extra-Constitutional Grassroots Movements

The call for an Article V Convention of States has flushed out some strange bedfellows seeking a common goal. Some groups claiming to be conservative are showing themselves to be involved in using deceptive rhetoric and false history to break up the Constitution. These particular political activists lament the formation of the American government under the Constitution. Yes, they look to to undermine it, using bits and pieces of history to back up their claims, much like American progressives do.

“The activists position themselves on the Right, using the organization of the tea party, groups like the Michigan Campaign for Liberty (a state chapter of Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty), and even the Tenth Amendment Center to distort the Constitution so that it fits their agenda.” One activist told me his work for the Campaign for Liberty was to perfect the Constitution by breaking up the bond between the federal government and the states. He lamented that the nation should never have ratified the Constitution, but instead kept the Articles of Confederation. (Keep in mind that the Articles were proving to be insufficient, a major impetus for conceiving the Constitution.) It is those who might have previously been defined as Anti-Federalists, who operate across the nation as nullifiers and secessionists, anarchists disguised as liberty experts, and Constitution-destroyers disguised as constitutionalists, that are racing parallel to the Left.
To be clear, nullification in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the interpretation of its use is what people I call “nullifiers” abuse. Nullifying federal law means to rebuke the federal government for overreach. It is meant as a warning shot, a call of unconstitutionality, or a tool of shame to put the federal government on notice that the state knows it has done wrong. The “nullifiers” believe that states can use nullification as a void of federal law, to refuse to follow it, to break from the federal government. In their view, if enough states nullify federal law, it builds the resume for secession.

The merging of anti-constitutional political thought between the Left and the nullifiers on the Right came to light when Democratic lawmaker Zoe Lofgren, D-Caif. (F, 23%) complained in a hearing that her constituents’ votes counted for less than those of the voters of Wyoming.

Her convoluted reasoning, which she repeated for emphasis, was that many times the number of people in California voted for Hillary Clinton than the number of people in Wyoming that voted for Donald Trump, showing indisputable evidence of how unfair the Electoral College is.

Lofgren claimed that a constitutional convention was needed to prevent, “the majority being ruled by a minority.” She claimed that a dissolution of the union, or secession, would be necessary to prevent future such problems, and further claimed that there was only a need for three more states to call for such a convention. Where she gets that number from is anyone’s guess.

“Rational people, not the fringe, are now talking about whether states could be separated from the U.S., whether we should have a Constitutional Convention,” Lofgren said.

The underlying joke in her comments is obvious; as a fringe, irrational type, Lofgren isn’t quite the right messenger. But the clip is interesting since she uses 1) the movement to amend the Constitution through a convention of states, which she ignorantly called a constitutional convention, and 2) describes breaking apart the union with secession, the same things called for by Ron Paul and his folk.

The Ron Paul cabal position themselves as defenders of the Constitution, even though they disparage constitutionalists in their silly attempts to ultimately destroy the Constitution, while accusing everyone else of doing it. Ron Paul believes states have the right to secede, even though in the past a civil war was fought to keep the union together, a historical fact he refuses to believe, and instead claims the Civil War destroyed the “right” of secession. His views, and carefully crafted phraseology, do not stop his volunteers across the nation from advocating for breaking up government through nullification and secession.

It is not the fault of the Constitution that the federal government has so vastly exceeded its limited powers; it is the fault of people who have consistently tried to undermine it. It seems elementary then to tell both the secessionist nullifiers and the secessionist Left to stop trying to destroy the Constitution, and work to remedy the mess through the people of the States.

But now, as the leftist sour grapes movement builds for the next four years, the similarities between the ultimate goals of the Left and the nullifiers on the Right are striking.

It’s interesting. For years leading up to this point, proponents of secession and nullification consistently described an Article V Convention of States as a “con-con” or, constitutional convention. Using the “con-con” term, they mocked Article V COS proponents, claiming employment of the state convention process would be destroying the Constitution. They claimed they revered the Constitution, while actively working to break it apart. Their vehement attitude against employing a constitutional remedy to our federal mess and their tight grip on employing an extra-constitutional method instead, like nullification and secession, further exposed their leanings.

And now, people like Zoe Lofgren, a confused congresswoman, and her friends on the Left, always on the lookout for ways to destroy the Constitution, are virtually making the case for the nullifiers.

Nullifiers’ ultimate goal is anarchy, the Left’s ultimate goal is something of a dictatorship/monarchy. But serious constitutionalists don’t fault the creation of the Constitution itself as the nation’s worst sin, as these two groups do.

The bottom line is that the nullifiers and secessionists of today are plodding and purposeful. They, on the Right and the Left, have disparaged the very creation of the Constitution and are working to destroy it. (For more from the author of “Conservatives and Libertarians: Don’t Be Fooled by These Two Extra-Constitutional Grassroots Movements” please click HERE)

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