Photo Credit: CNS NewsBreitbart News: With The Liberty Amendments, you’re attempting to launch a movement to amend the Constitution. Do you expect to be successful, and how long would it take?
Levin: What I hope to do, at least in some small way, is begin a discussion among those of us who believe the Republic is unraveling, and find a way to re-establish the Constitution and reclaim our heritage. When you look at the massive debt and reckless monetary policies of the federal government; the ability of five Supreme Court justices to pervert the Constitution and impose via fiat their personal policy preferences on the whole of society without any recourse; Congress’s legislating, through massive bills, outside its enumerated powers and its delegation of unchecked power to a massive and growing bureaucracy, which legislates thousands of times each year by regulatory fiat; and the increasing authoritarianism of presidents who issue executive orders to create their own law and also blatantly rewrite statutes by interpretation and execution (or not) based on whether they agree with them or not; I think this and much more evinces the growing and steady decline of constitutional republicanism.
And I’ve concluded that Washington is incapable of reforming itself, which should seem fairly obvious. After all, it has designed the federal Leviathan, which is getting bigger and more aggressive. And I was thinking: What has this federal government become? It is not a constitutional, federal, or representative republic, as our Framers understood those institutions. I believe the federal government is increasingly operating outside the Constitution and that we are in a post-constitutional period. This is how justices, presidents, and members of Congress are able to concoct and then impose such monstrous laws as Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, among thousands of other laws and rules every year, on an unwitting population.
This book is written for those of us who fear what is happening to our nation–the increasing authoritarianism and abuse of the individual–and refuse to accept these events either by pretending they are not serious or as the inevitable decline of a great republic. This has been building for decades, since at least the advent of the Progressive era, and, in my view, requires a resolute, decades’-long effort to reverse course. So, the question arises, what do we do? For those of us who care, my book explores some of the possibilities. And they are provided in the Constitution itself.
The Framers knew better than others what it was like to confront actual tyranny. So why wouldn’t we look to these greatest men for answers? So, that’s what I did. If you look at Article V of the Constitution, it includes, among other things, two processes for amending the Constitution. The first process has resulted in twenty-seven amendments: two-thirds of both Houses of Congress propose an amendment, and three-fourths of the states are required to ratify it. In the second process, which is every bit as legitimate, two-thirds of the states decide to convene a meeting for the purpose of proposing amendments, which are then sent to the states for three-fourths ratification. It is a process that essentially bypasses Congress. Let me be as clear as I can: this second amendment process provides for a convention of the states to propose amendments, which in turn must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; it does not provide for a Constitutional Convention. Furthermore, because three-fourths of the states must ratify proposed amendments, there would be no “runaway convention” overturning the entire Constitution, as some might fear monger. I fully expect the most vociferous critics of this constitutional process to be among those who support or have contributed to all manner of constitutional evasions and distortions in favor of the increasing centralization and concentration of power, which is precisely what the Constitution was established to prevent.
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