Music
Welcome to the Battle Crypodcast with Convention of States Action President Mark Meckler.
You can watch the original live broadcast Sunday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the Convention of States, Facebook and Rumble channels.
Mark Meckler is the founder and president of Citizens for Self Governance, an organization created to support grassroots activism and taking power from Washington, D.C.
and returning it to its rightful owners, the citizens of the states.
Mark co-founded and was formerly the national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, the largest Tea Party organization in the nation.
He left that organization in February of 2009 and founded CSG to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide.
It's incredibly inspiring to stand up here and see all of you out there.
You know, I have to say four years ago, four and a half years ago, when I started my journey in politics, a total political novice, just a guy living on ranch property up in the hills in Northern California, I had a general disdain for politicians, sorry to admit that in this room.
And my opinion has dramatically changed over the years. I won't tell you that I don't have a general disdain for most politicians.
Because I do, but I also realize that there are people like you all across the country on the front lines who actually are brave enough to put themselves on the front lines, who actually sit down with their families and make the decision that you're willing to go out there and fight the fight first to be elected, to face that kind of scrutiny, to face that kind of abuse and negativism in the press.
It's truly amazing, and I salute you guys for having the wherewithal to do that. Thank you guys very much for your hand for you guys.
It's really important. That being said, and I think it's already been said here today, we come to you today to tell you that you have an incredible power to save the country.
Along with that power, I would propose respectfully that you have a moral responsibility to save the country.
Congress is clearly out of control. I don't think anybody in this room would disagree with that.
I'd like to do a short survey. I do this at every room I speak in around the country, and I speak at conservative events, tea party events, libertarian events, progressive events. I always do this little survey when I speak, and I'm always amazed at the answer.
I'd like to ask you guys, please raise your hand. Don't be embarrassed. If you personally, when you voted for your member of Congress or voted for president voted for continuing $1 trillion plus deficits, raise your hand, please.
Not one? I haven't found that person, by the way, anywhere in the country. Talk in tens of thousands of people.
How about raise your hand if you think that we currently have an education system overseen by the federal government that is second to none?
And every dollar goes spot on where it belongs to the kids. Raise your hands if you believe that.
Still, not one person in the country, anywhere I go. And I'm talking the most liberal events in the country. I'm talking a move on.org event.
Not one person. Raise your hand if you believe that in this country the war on drugs has been a tremendous success, and we have the best criminal justice system in the world.
Nobody. So what's the disconnect? And we're all sitting in this room, and you, all, and me, and all of our fellow citizens are the great majority of us believe that we want to see certain things done by our government.
We want to see our government get their hands off of certain things, and no matter who we vote for, seems like whether we vote for Republicans in Congress, whether we vote for Democrats in Congress, we get more of the same.
The charade in Washington, D.C. continues. The fight continues in Washington, D.C. in the media, the talking heads continue to fight.
And in the end, we get the same thing we've all really got, which is we get less liberty, less freedom, and less money in our pocketbooks.
It's out of control. Over 60% of the American public today says that the federal government has lost the consent of the government.
Think of that. That's an extraordinary number. By the way, in case you're not doing the math in your head, those are not all conservative Republicans.
73% of Americans say that the federal government is too big, too involved in our lives, and spends too much money again, not all conservative Republicans.
Those are extraordinary numbers, and they reflect the fact that Washington, D.C. is most definitely out of control. And it's been this way for a very long time.
Four and a half years ago, we saw this spontaneous movement called the Tea Party Development.
And I was one of the people who just happened to come out of the woodwork in the beginning and say, I just can't take it anymore.
No involvement in politics, right? None at all. I'd never given to a candidate. I'd never walked a precinct.
I'd never volunteered for anything political. I was interested, like so many of my fellow citizens, but I was busy raising my family.
I had a career. I was focused on things at home, like hopefully we should be able to be.
But at that moment in time, I realized that I had an obligation to my own kids.
At that time, my kids were 10 and 13 years old roughly, and I looked at them, and I realized I was absolutely on the current trajectory not going to give them a country as free, or with as much opportunity as I had.
And it wasn't because of some outside force. It was because of my own government.
And I realized along with millions of other Americans in that moment, probably many of you, that I had an obligation to do something.
And so we stepped up and we started fighting the Tea Party fighting, and we were pretty excited and very naive.
So we went out and we fought in elections all across the country. And in 2010, in Congress, we saw the biggest party wave change since 1938.
Incredible. We were euphoric across the country. And we thought, and we believed widely, that we would see tremendous change in Washington, D.C.
What have we seen in Washington, D.C. since 2010? Much change? You guys seen a lot of change? Not much change. We've seen more of the same.
We've seen continuing trillion dollar deficits. We've seen the federal government continue to grow.
We've seen Obamacare stay in place four years later, despite the fact that 53% of the American public want it repealed.
What we see is the federal government continues to spiral out of control.
The ship is headed for the rocks. We all know that. Those folks in D.C., they're the captains of this ship, and they are driving it right onto the rocks.
And they will continue to put that ship on the rocks. They will continue to sink it, and they will continue to profit from the mess
unless we stop them. Are you guys in agreement with that?
So how do we stop them? What do we do? Well, it turns out, as you've heard from folks who know a lot more about it than I do, that the Constitution gives us some mechanism.
And I believe with it, a responsibility for stopping runaway government in Washington, D.C.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of hosting at Harvard Law School. Yeah, I'm believing they let guys like me at Harvard Law School.
And I hosted with a progressive constitutional law professor, Larry Lessig, a conference on the idea of an Article V convention.
And I was pretty much neutral. I just thought, you know, I don't know if this would do anything. I wasn't scared of it. I wasn't a runaway convention guy.
But I just didn't see that it would solve our problems. And then I had the privilege of meeting up with Mike Ferris, and Mike laid out the plan that you heard that we got 75% of your districts, right?
That's roughly 3,000 districts around the country. A hundred activists in each district willing to participate, 25 willing to go to hearings.
And I saw, and Mike, a man who knew how to build a movement like that, who had done it historically over the long haul.
I knew that I'd been involved in building a movement like that in the Tea Party, and I knew that we could bring those networks to bear to pressure the country, to pressure people who were against it, to hold a convention to restore our God-given.
And that's exactly what we intend to do. Here's the deal. The Army is out there. You've seen them perform. You know they're out there. You know what the homeschool movement did, right?
When they protected our right to educate our own children in the way we see fit, and they've done it successfully all over the country for a long time.
You saw what the Tea Party movement did. You understand the power of grassroots, and you know that when you stand and you take a position, you need them there.
And you know how lonely it is, because I'm sure all of you have done it, in the times when you do stand, and you think they're there, and you turn around and nobody's there, right?
We're not going to let that happen to you. We're here with the resources. We're here with the network. We're here with the plan.
And we are here for the long term. And our goal is nothing short of using the Constitution to give us that peaceful revolution that we need to put the people back in control of the country.
Are you guys with me in doing that?
You know, there are a lot of great people in history, and as I look back in history, there's somebody that's always looking over my shoulder.
And I'm not a big one for idolizing the great men and women of history, but I can't help but hear Ronald Reagan's positive optimism, and I listen to his speeches all the time when I run.
He was such an incredible communicator of sometimes complex ideas in words, and with a rhetoric that simple guys like me can understand.
And when I'm running through the woods near my house, I like to listen to those things, and I'm really inspired by those things.
And he said something I've been listening to his speech, the speech, right? Some people call it time for choosing 1960, elevating gold water for president.
And he said that we here right now have a rendezvous with Destiny, you and I.
The question that we have to ask ourselves is, will we preserve for our children this last best hope on Earth?
Or will we sentence them to take the first steps into a thousand years of darkness?
I personally will fight forever, whatever it takes, how long it takes to prevent my children and your children and our posterity from taking those steps into darkness.
We will persevere, we will get an article five convention, and we will restrain the federal government.
Thank you guys very much.
This has been the podcast version of the battle fright with Mark Meckler.
Visit conventionofstates.com slash pod to learn more.
Thank you for listening.