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Hello convention of state's podcast listeners.
This is our weekly podcast featuring historic legacy content from our audio archives.
We hope you are educated and inspired by this week's episode.
In February of 2023, convention of state's co-founder and senior advisor Michael Ferris
speaks to a group of local supporters in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I really appreciate you coming.
It's been a long time since I've been to Wyoming other than Yellowstone.
I've been into Yellowstone maybe ten years ago, but as a kid we used to drive through
one corner of Wyoming a lot and I will just have to say that I had a crush on a girl
from summer camp, from Kimmer, Wyoming one time, a long time ago.
I never knew what happened to her, but we're not going to talk about that anymore because
my wife might watch this.
Just one quick correction.
Nothing I've ever done in my life have I done alone.
There have been a lot of people, the homeschool success for example.
Thousands of people were involved in that.
I was at the point perhaps of that movement, but God and people worked with me.
So I appreciate the kindness that's in that remark, but it does me good from a spiritual
perspective to make sure I correct the record and say that that's what that really is all
about.
And this effort here is like that.
No one person is going to pull this off and so it's going to take a lot of us.
I'm going to talk about a couple of the issues relative to the Convention of the States that
really plague conservatives.
There are leftists that are more loudly and more loudly opposing convention of states
because they like a huge runaway federal government.
They think that's in their interest.
They're socialists, they're Marxists, they're statists, they're humanists, they're woke.
That crowd makes sense, but when they're people on the right that are making the exact same
arguments as that crowd, it's a bit troubling.
And so I want to spend a fair amount of time.
I'm not going to spend an hour or anything like that, maybe 20 minutes talking, but I
mostly want to answer questions that people might have, especially those that are here,
that are members of the legislature.
So I was the guy that dreamed this whole thing up and with a little bit of help, I wrote
the resolution that's now been passed exactly in 19 states.
The reason to do it exactly the same on the operative language is so you never have a
question about whether it aggregates or not.
For example, the balanced budget and member applications have varied considerably and
though if I'm on the Supreme Court, I would rule that they all aggregate, there's going
to be a case about that if they ever get to 34.
But for ours, all 19 states have been exactly the same.
And so I was the guy who principally was the author of that and so the goal of the convention
of states is to bring discipline to the federal government in these areas, in the area of fiscal
restraints, term limits, and reducing the power of the federal government.
Now that's basically setting the agenda for what is permissible to talk about at the convention
of states.
You can't talk about anything else other than those three topics.
And so anything that fits into those would be permissible, a balanced budget, that'd
be permissible, putting a single subject rule on to Congress, that would be permissible,
putting term limits on federal bureaucrats, that would be permissible.
And so anything that has the idea of reducing federal power is permissible.
Now, you know, the scare stories that go around, what if somebody proposes taking away
the Second Amendment?
That is not permissible because that's not reducing the power of the federal government.
That's not germane whatsoever.
And so it would be out of order.
Now the question comes in is, well, why can't they change the rules in the middle of this
stream?
So there's a couple of answers to that.
First of all, there are hundreds and hundreds of applications for an Article 5 convention
that are on the books and are valid today, hundreds of them, far more than the 34 states
that are needed.
But they're not on the same subject.
And so the historical practice has settled the rule.
You have to have them on the same subject for it to count because otherwise we would
have had a convention 150 years ago.
And many of those resolutions are still on the books.
The other more recent example of historical practice is the Equal Rights Amendment.
When the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed originally in the early 70s, Congress said
seven years to ratify, that's a part of the resolution, Congress has the power under Article
5 to choose the mode for ratification.
It can be state-based conventions.
That's only been done once.
And that was for the prohibition, repeal, the 21st Amendment.
And otherwise, they can choose legislatures.
And what the practice has begun, and that's been gone, has gone to the Supreme Court and
been tested, and that is as a part of setting the method of choosing which of those two
options they have, Congress can also set a time limit if they want to.
They don't have to set a time limit, but they can set a time limit if they want to because
the idea is you want an amendment to be agreed to contemporaneously, not let it linger there
for a couple hundred years and then somebody come back and do it.
You add on a state or two.
And so, around 1977, Congress decided that they weren't going to get the 38 ratifications
within the seven-year period, so they attempted to change the rules and add three and a half
years to the ratification.
At this point in my life, I'm two years out of law school.
A friend of mine calls me, and he asks me what I think about the constitutionality of
that change of the deadline, and I said, well, Dottie, I think it's unconstitutional, and
she said, so what are you going to do about it?
And nothing was not an acceptable answer to Dottie Roberts.
And so, I, on behalf of four Washington State Conservative Republican legislators, filed
the first lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the change of the rules of the Equal Rights
Amendment.
Fortunately, some more experienced lawyers, including the Attorney General of Idaho and
senior lawyers from the state of Arizona, filed a similar case in Boise.
I was smart enough to dismiss my case in federal court in Tacoma, fly to Boise, intervene in
their case in which the judge granted my intervention on the day it was filed.
And so, we worked together as a team.
They were more of the senior people, but I had a role.
I student in court and argued, in fact, when they tried to disqualify the judge, a federal
judge because he was a Mormon and the Mormon church had opposed the ERA, I personally argued
the appeal on that issue in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on want.
And so, I'm deeply immersed in Article 5.
In fact, I went to National Archives in that middle of that case and held in my hand all
the original ratification documents from the 13th Amendment forward into modern history
to check them to see if they were following basically the same role you use in legislatures.
And that is, the ratifications have to match the text of the proposed amendment.
It's like two houses can't pass a bill that is sort of the same.
That was what I was doing there.
So, I am deeply, deeply immersed in Article 5 history and have litigated one of the few
lawyers in the country who has actually litigated an Article 5 case.
And the outcome of that case, in Idaho, was you can't change the rules in the middle
of the stream.
And so, that's the answer to the question of, well, can you change the germaneness?
Well, even if they ever tried to do it, I guarantee you I'm not too old to file another
lawsuit challenging.
I'm a little more senior right now, I'm at the age, should be arguing cases like that,
rather than two years out of law school.
Nonetheless, assuming that the litigation didn't work and the convention didn't work
and it all got a skew, anything that comes out of a convention of states has to be ratified
by 38 states.
So if 13 states say no, it's no.
And if one house in each state, each of those 13 states says no, it's no.
So if we don't think that, you know, we'll use the Second Amendment repeal example, if
we don't think that we can get to 13 states that will say no to repealing the Second Amendment,
we don't know how to read politics.
And so, the, you know, there's 25 states where you have open carry law.
You have a constitutional right to carry.
Twenty-five states.
Do you think states that have done that are going to repeal the Second Amendment?
That's just not, you know, that's not rational politics.
Rational politics says it's impossible to pass something radical or dangerous in this
area.
Maybe we won't get everything we want.
I would, you know, if Mark Levin wrote a book proposing 10 amendments that would regermain
under our call for a convention.
And I'd like all of them, but realistically, they're not all going to happen.
So I think that we'll get something modest, but it will be something like a single subject
rule, I think, would be the best, a simple thing that could come through that I think
can get ratified by 38 for sure.
Now, many other things I'd like to see, but the agenda for discussion is one thing.
See what we get out of the convention second, see what we get ratified as third.
And we won't get as much as we want, but simply teaching Congress that they are under
the control of the states is worth doing.
Even if we get, even if we get one out of it, it's worth doing because we tell them.
Now, why did we have Article 5 written in this way in the first place?
We were about four days from the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
And the way it was, and the draft of the Constitution at that point, Congress proposes all the amendments,
the states ratify all the amendments.
George Mason stood up and said, and I'm going to paraphrase.
You said, listen, guys, someday the federal government is going to abuse its authority.
And when that happens, we need the ability to propose amendments.
Elle, come on in.
We need the ability to propose amendments from the states so that only the states will
have the ability, the political ability to restrain the power of the federal government.
Congress will never restrain its own power.
And the record of the convention says, Mason's amendment was agreed to Nim Khan, which means
without debate.
Everybody said, like duh, or they probably said, we hold this truth to be self-evident.
But it means the same thing.
And so that is all state legislators in this country have two basic sources of authority.
Their state constitution gives them a great deal most of their authority.
But the Constitution of the United States gives you additional authority.
Now, if the state legislator says, you know what, there have been criminal laws passed
in our state in the past that are abusive.
They're wrong.
And I don't want to ever abuse anybody's rights through criminal law, so I'm never going
to vote for any criminal law issues because it might be abused and somebody might be prosecuted
inappropriately.
We think that was a dereliction of duty.
You have a moral, you have an authority to do something.
Now, it doesn't mean you pass every criminal law that comes along, but to refuse to pass
any criminal laws because you think that might be abused would be a violation of your moral
authority.
And I would say before God, God has given you the ability to do this.
And so with that authority comes moral responsibility.
Now you have authority also from Article 5 of the Constitution.
You get this directly from the federal constitution, not from the state constitution.
The federal constitution gives you unilaterally the only group of Americans that can do this
that can reign in the abuse of power in the federal government.
With that authority, I believe, comes the moral responsibility to use it.
Does that mean you pass every silly thing that comes along?
No.
So make it propose, there are some proposed amendments that are on the books.
I told you, you know, there are hundreds of them.
There are some crazy ones out there.
There was proposed a world government in, you know, North Carolina passed it back, you
know, 40, 50 years ago.
And a couple other states did.
Nonsense craziness.
So should you vote for every Article 5 application?
No.
Just as you won't vote for every criminal law or every civil law or if you're the governor,
you won't necessarily sign every execution, but to do none of those because you're afraid
it might be misused at some time, I suggest as a breach of your moral responsibility.
You uniquely have the power to say to the federal government, you're abusing your authority,
it's time to stop it.
And it's like having a 250-year-old child that you've never disciplined.
They're going to get out of hand after a while.
And it's time to discipline the kid and get him under control.
The last thing I'm going to talk about is this one makes me mad.
And so if I get a little mad, just hang on, I'll get over it.
And that is people who say the Constitution of the United States was a result of a runaway
federal convention in Philadelphia.
They were only supposed to amend the Articles of Confederation and instead they wrote a
whole new document.
Before I tell you historically why that is just absolutely wrong and effectively a lie,
let me just talk about the implication of that argument.
The implication of the argument is our Constitution was illegally adopted.
That's what it means.
And if our Constitution was illegally adopted, why are people calling themselves a constitutionalist
and making that argument?
If they think it was illegally adopted, they should be trying to tear it down.
And in fact, they are trying to tear it down because they're trying to make Article 5 null
and void.
And to fail to use the very power that we are supposed to use for the states to discipline
our child called the federal government.
So here's why it's a lie.
First of all, if you know anything at all about the Articles of Confederation, Congress
had no implied powers, none.
And the reason that we needed a new Constitution was because it was too weak in many, many areas.
And so states called the Annapolis Convention.
There's no power in the Articles of Confederation for them to call anything and they didn't.
The states called the Annapolis Convention.
They got there.
They were supposed to talk about commerce.
They realized quickly that that wasn't a big enough assignment, that they needed to make
more fixes than just commerce.
And being good delegates responsible to the authority that they were given, they said,
we can't do anything with this limited responsibility with authority.
We got to go back to our states and ask them to give us more authority.
They didn't run away then.
If there was going to be a runaway, that would have been a runaway to violate what the states
told them to do and just go on.
But they went back to the states and said, because the Annapolis Convention suggested this
language, they wanted to hold a convention and I quote, to render the federal Constitution
adequate for the Existencies of the Union.
So they went back and Virginia was a first state to adopt that language.
They appointed their delegates, named their delegates.
Six states did exactly the same thing.
They said, render the federal Constitution adequate for the Existencies of the Union,
named their delegates.
In between states six and seven, Congress, the Articles of Confederation, acted.
They passed a resolution that I, the best analogy, is a national pickle week resolution
passed by Congress now.
It's their opinion on some subject.
It has no binding properties whatsoever.
It didn't call the convention.
When Congress was asking states to do things in those days, there were always, always two
resolutions passed.
One was the substantive measure and the second was a letter of transmission to the state
and they voted on both.
Their resolution was never sent to the states because it wasn't aimed at the states.
It was just giving their opinion on what should happen.
And so the state said that, you know, Congress is the one that said only amend the Articles
of Confederation.
They also said, render the federal Constitution adequate for the Existencies of the Union.
So like all Congress, they were speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
But nonetheless, taking them at their, you know, at their more limited word, it was just
their opinion, six more states appointed delegates and a total of ten said, render the federal
Constitution adequate for the Existencies of the Union.
One state, Connecticut had kind of a mixture of that.
It was pretty close.
And New York said exactly what Congress said.
When it became obvious that they were going to write a new document to the delegates from
New York left.
They participated again.
And the rules from the New York legislature was you can't vote for New York unless all
three delegates are present.
So Alexander Hamilton stayed in the rest of the convention and debated and talked but
never voted again because New York couldn't, why?
Because they obeyed the rules of engagement given to them by their states.
They obeyed the rules.
And so New York didn't violate their instructions because they stopped voting, didn't participate.
And so there was a suggestion that Massachusetts delegates violated their rules but there was
a vote in the Massachusetts ratification convention suggesting that that had been done.
And two to one Massachusetts delegates, or to that ratification convention said, no,
our delegates did not violate their instructions.
They did the right thing for proposing a new Constitution.
So who are you going to believe people from today who, you know, are a little on the edge
perhaps and make these arguments that all this was illegal?
Or you're going to believe the people who actually had given them the authority and then
voted on whether they did it properly?
I would suggest that the people who lived in Massachusetts in 1787 are a better judge
of what happened in 1787 than really anybody today.
And so it was not a runaway.
The Constitution of the United States was not violated or was not adopted in violation
of the rules in place in the articles of Confederation.
One last thing.
Warren Berger talked Phil Schlaffley into opposing a convention of the states.
Why did he do that?
Warren Berger, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, made a speech in Corley
and Idaho where he said the Constitution of the United States was illegally adopted.
He buys the lie, hook, line, and secret.
The Chief Justice of the United States.
And they said it when he was acting as the chairman of the bicentennial of the United
States.
I mean, just the irony of that is just a little bit mind-boggling.
Why did he convince Phil?
Phil was my good friend.
We traveled together on the ERA litigation and I knew her from 77 forward until her death.
I'm still good friends with her daughter and now runs Eagle Forum.
19 states had passed an Article 5 convention to reverse Roe versus Wade.
Millis was sent on a mission by Warren Berger to reverse those.
And six states reversed their call for an Article 5 convention in the 1970s and early
80s.
If that had not been done, we were on a path.
The pro-life movement was on a path to reverse Roe versus Wade 30 years earlier than we did.
Millions and millions and millions of babies have been killed because of the fear mongering
that has gone on from the John Birch Society and their friends.
Millions of babies have been killed as a result of that because they did the bidding of Warren
Berger who was the co-author of the Roe versus Wade decision.
Absolutely outrageous.
And so I suggest that people who don't know their own history don't really get it and
they shouldn't be the ones that we listen to.
We should be listening to the people who have correctly understood the history.
And it's a really simple question.
Do you think the United States of the Constitution was improper, illegally adopted, or are you
defending the legitimacy of the Constitution?
Those are the two sides.
You can boil it down to its essence because that's what the runaway convention people
are arguing is that the Constitution itself is illegal.
If you want to do that, they are not constitutionalists.
I don't care what else they think they are.
They are not constitutionalists when they take that position.
This is an aside, the first two presidents of the John Birch Society supported an Article
5 convention.
They wanted to pass something they called the Liberty Amendment.
Repealed income tax, repealed the 17th Amendment.
It had some interesting ideas in it.
And they both said that they would do it through an Article 5 process.
I was personal friends with the second president, Larry McDonald, who was a Democrat legislator
from Georgia.
I knew him.
Well, I knew I worked with his son on projects.
His son was a Assistant Secretary of Education later.
I knew him well.
So the John Birch Society not only is contrary to the founders of the country, they are contrary
to their own founders.
I don't know why they are listening to George Soros and the leftists and Warren Berger,
but they are.
They have turned their back on the foundation of this country and they have turned the back
on the foundation of their own organization.
It's inexplicable to me why they do that.
It's even further inexplicable to me why anybody listens to them.
So with that little bit of a rant, I would be glad to answer questions that anybody has.
Right now the states do have the power to take over.
They just don't take it.
And why is that?
I mean, we are every governor we have, it's take that power back.
Ron DeSantis has.
Yeah.
And our South Dakota, she took the power back.
Will this really help us?
I mean, we have the power now without the seal.
Well, you have the power to do many, many things.
But I heard Ron DeSantis speak Saturday night.
It was a fabulous speech.
I spent an hour with him personally one on one a year and a half ago.
I was, he was asking me cases about, about ADF's litigation cases.
It was very, the guy knows his stuff.
It was really interesting.
The things that he's done all remain at effectively the state level.
There is no power, even with a great aggressive guy like that, to overturn what the federal
government's doing.
And so you can do a lot, you can do a lot of good, a lot of good with an aggressive
governor.
The one thing that DeSantis's example shows us is that there are going to be more governors
that start acting like him because people see his political popularity skyrocketing.
I mean, he's gaining votes.
Single women voted for him in the governor's race.
You know, more single women voted for him than against him.
It was close.
He had bigger margins and other demographics.
But that's a very reliable Democrat constituency.
And he got their votes.
Why?
People like boldness.
And so he'll have imitators.
When legislators act boldly and call out the federal government for violating their
authority and do the right thing, you'll get imitators as well.
Boldness creates boldness.
I was at the very beginning of the homeschooling movement.
One family that decided to home school their kids and take a stand and weather the...
Evie was telling me today that her family had to hide during the day when they were
homeschooling when she was a little girl.
And a lot of...
Our family did that at times as well.
But I was a little bit more cavalier because, you know, I can sue them.
But the...
You know, I went through that.
One family made another family more bold.
And so if we go after the federal government right now and curtail their power, this will
be a historic sea change in this country.
And we will see, I believe, a real realignment of power completely if we just kind of get
the first domino going.
And so doing this, I believe, will be the first domino and a real sea change.
And federalism will become robust again.
freedom will become robust again because the truth of the matter is the federal
government has some authority. The state governments have some authority but
there is a big batch of authority that belongs to the people themselves and no
government has legitimate authority over those things. And so if we can get this
on the right trajectory the authority of the individual, the authority, the family,
the authority of the local business, the authority of the church will all become
more robust over time because we have stood against the people that are doing
more than any other. States are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
But the worst culprit by a long shot is the federal government and we need to
push back and push back hard. Yes. I know you do a lot of discussing
restoring the general welfare clause and I've talked about it when I just
didn't taste it. Could you explain that? Sure. Now okay we're going from the
straightforward to the advance but here we go. The question is I mean if I had a
magic wand and I could ensure that 38 states would pass this would be my first
my highest priority and that is to restore the general welfare clause to
its original meaning. And there were the first thing you need to know about the
original meaning of the general welfare clause is they took it from the articles
of Confederation and so if it's from the articles of Confederation you know good
and well that it doesn't mean Congress can spend money on any fool thing it
wants because that's what it means today. That's what the Supreme Court has said
it means starting in the 1930s and so so what does it mean? Well there are two
schools of thought. James Madison's school of thought was this that the
general welfare clause is not a grant of power but it's a limitation on power.
When you use your authority to build postal roads when you use your authority
to regulate interstate commerce when you use your authority to do anything that
Congress has the authority to do you have to do it in a way that is for the
general welfare. No private deals, no regional deals, no personal gimme's, no
law-grolling none of that. You have to do it for the general welfare. That's the
majority view of the founders. The minority view of the founders but it's
shared by some important people James Madison, George Washington among them is
that it is a grant of power but it's this grant of power. Congress has the
jurisdiction to do to enact laws on things where the states are
jurisdictionally incompetent and so what does that mean? Are states
competent? Do they have jurisdiction over education? Yes. Can the federal
government regulate education? No. Do the states have can states pass
environmental laws? Yes. Can the federal government pass environmental laws? No.
Can the states regulate banking? Yes. Can Congress regulate banking? No.
Anything the states can regulate the federal government cannot regulate and
there's a flip there's a parallel to this in the Commerce Clause and it's true
both ways whether it's spend money and that's a general welfare clause can you
spend money on things that are not within your enumerated powers the correct
answer is no and the Commerce Clause which is its twin can you regulate things
that are not within your power? The answer is no. Commerce means some of your
old enough to remember Dion Warwick trains and boats and planes that's what the
Commerce Clause is shipping stuff it's not about manufacturing it's not about
banking it's not about agriculture it's not about mining none of the general
motors factor factory is not engaged in interstate commerce I don't care where
they get their products from or their components from that when those when the
cars come out of the factory and put on those weird trucks it's commerce when
the truck starts and in fact truck crosses the state lines or intends to
cross the state line that's interstate commerce if it's it's going to stay in
Michigan that's in trust state commerce when the truck gets to the car dealership
in Virginia and the truck cars come off the truck commerce is over and that
nothing that happens at the at the car dealership is commerce commerce and so
those two things together if we go back to that and say if states have
jurisdiction and spending authority or regulatory authority the federal
government cannot regulate the same thing because the founders were really
smart their rule is this one level and only one level of government can regulate
anything that's it and so we don't need the department of this and that you know
I once doing homeschool work in New York walk past the state education offices
there was a regional program there called BOCES which is an intermediate
regional office for education then I passed the local government's office that had
you know a city department of education and I ended up in the federal building
where I was filing a federal lawsuit on homeschooling the federal department of
education four departments of education in about a mile and a half and they were
at least represented by the buildings and that's not what anybody that doesn't
produce good educational results that just blows up the bureaucracy and it helps
explain why a Vanderbilt University scholar found that the most inefficient
educational program in the world is the United States and the way they measure
that is points you know how many dollars does it take to get a rise of one point
on the international achievement test the Soviet Russia not so you know Russia
is number one the United States is last and so it's because we're paying for
four level three and four levels of bureaucracy we're not paying for a lot
for education we're paying a whole lot for bureaucracy yes sir so you touched
on this a few minutes ago but we'd be willing to I just want to set the ball
so you can spike it here there many people will point toward Jefferson's
idea of nullification or Madison's interposition and use that as the
silver bullet there arguing for an extra constitutional solution we're arguing
for a constitutional solution that's the starting point point number two is
nullification is an act of revolution it's not an act of supervision it's an
act of revolution and you know it's not going to happen no state I mean
particularly this is things of this nature gonna end up in court and I've
been close friends with the Chief Justice of Alabama Supreme Court for a
long time he and I litigated cases about public education in the early 1980s
both about secular humanism issues so I've known him since the early 80s
Tom is as pro-life as you get and as constitutionalist you get and that court
is probably the most conservative state Supreme Court in the country that an
abortion case they're not not many years ago and Tom wrote a opinion blistering
Roe vs Wade at the end of opinion I'm paraphrasing obviously said even though
it's horrible as a state judge I'm bound to to follow it and he may give all the
reasons why it should be reversed now if you can't get Tom Parker to nullify
Roe vs Wade it can't be done it just simply can't be done my final point is
you don't want it to be done because here's why I was the chairman of the
co-chairman of the drafting group that wrote the religious freedom restoration
act Hobby Lobby won its case in the Supreme Court of the United States not
on the First Amendment as it should have but there was a bad decision in in
1990 called Employment Division v. Smith that messed up and so we had to pass
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act I named it it was you know what should we
name this thing I said well what about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
nobody else had another idea so I named it and so so California wouldn't like
the decision letting Hobby Lobby win under Rifra and they nullify this federal
law saying no the federal law says you don't have to fund abortions because
your religious freedom we're not gonna follow that in California we're gonna
nullify it do we really want that I would suggest not in fact I would suggest
that it's not a good idea for one state to nullify anything is it it's a good
for a collection of states to nullify things it's called Article 5 when 34
states to get together and say we're gonna change what the federal government
is doing and then that's ratified by 38 states that's how you want to use the
state power to do that it's the only responsible way to do it other ways you
know I guarantee you if we have good stuff going on if there's a you know
another Republican president anytime soon or you know just hypothetically
where there's Trump or DeSantis and they're doing things against well
pro-gres in the public schools I guarantee you California New York
Massachusetts would nullify everything that a good president would do and and
that's that's just simply not appropriate yes sometimes I hear people being a
little bit concerned about the the caliber if you like of legislators who
will be chosen to go to a Article 5 convention can you speak to that a
little bit yes I can speak to it first of all the reason we have the structure of
the federal government that we have it is because our founders correctly
understood the nature of man we have limited power everywhere first of all
it's the federalism feds have this much power states have this much power and
then the executive branch has this much power the legislative branch has this
much power the judiciary this much power and they're all supposed to check and
balance each other limited power why because men are sinful and you can't
trust any of them they wrote it for sinners they wrote it for such a time
as this and so and they weren't much as angels as you think they were about the
convention in Philadelphia Patrick Henry said I'm not going because I smell a
rat so he didn't like the caliber of the people that went to the to the
convention and they weren't all you know as saintly as we suppose them to be they
were ordinary people they were committed people but and I believe that they are
great heroes and they were brilliant and everything but I don't believe that we're
we're lacking people like that today now first of all you don't have to appoint
other legislators the legislature can appoint anybody they want you can
appoint as many as you want because it's one state one vote if you want to put the
bill for sending a hundred people as your delegates to a convention station you
could do that and I wouldn't recommend it I'd say five to seven would be the
number that I would send and but you don't have to pick only legislators you
can pick people that are you know you know I sure hope that the state of
Virginia picks me and if it's controlled by Democrats at the time we have the
convention I am open to move and so and I wouldn't my move into Wyoming to tell
you the truth because I like to fish and hunt and so but there there are there
are people that will be capable of leading but again it's a group process
it's a group of sinners and it's really two choices boils down to this who do you
want deciding how much power the federal government should have there's only two
choices in that Congress and the federal government gets to decide how much power
they should have or a group of sinful state legislators get to decide how
much power the sinful people in Washington DC have and the reason they
set it up that way is because we didn't trust anybody we wanted them check and
balance each other it was sinners against sinners and so I would suggest as bad
as state legislatures are when I ran for lieutenant governor of Virginia and I
was by far and away the best candidate and I did win the nomination by basically
a two-to-one margin I had three state legislators support me and dozens
supported my left-wing Republican opponents pro-abortion pro-gay rights and
so I've seen state legislators be stupid and and do bad things not just on that
on lots of things I've been in this this world for over 40 years so you can't
convince me that they're oh wonderful you'll never do that but nonetheless I
trust that group of sinners to decide how much power other people have more
than I trust the people who have the power to decide how much power those
people have.
You have a book up there on your podium. Yeah, explain that. Okay. This book I
discovered right at the beginning of the convention of states movement is called
the Constitution of the United States that's his name that's it it's not a
bridge annotated it's the Constitution United States this is the Constitution
with a summary of all the decisions relative to the Constitution this is
the Constitution as practiced people say why don't we get back just just follow
the Constitution that's all we need to do well they are following the Constitution
not the little one you have a lot of you have in your pockets but this one this
is the Constitution of the United States that the federal government's act actually
following we need to change the law so that the Constitution that's in place
supersedes much of this not all of it can't do all you know wouldn't be
appropriate to some of them is actually okay but we need to be able to start
shrinking it back so it looks a lot more like the Constitution in your pocket
and following the original meaning of those things so that's a quick
explanation for this fat book sometimes I'll hear that you know the federal
government isn't following the Constitution now and so why would amending
it change anything okay well the answer is they are following the Constitution
now this one and there there have been a number of amendments the 11th
amendment the 13th amendment the 13th amendment reverse the Dred Scott
decision the 14th amendment reversed well Dred Scott and others the 15th the
19th amendment reversed in case called minor versus half percent without the
right of women to vote and and so on so on the amendments were the Supreme Court
has been reversed they follow those faithfully I don't know of any deviation
on any of those fronts where they get out away from the original meaning of
those things now sometime in the case of the 13th and 14th amendment we had to
get to a little further down history reconstruction mess that you know the
when the Republicans gave up reconstruction and basically handed the
south over the Ku Klux Klan things went a little awry for a while but in the
long haul those amendments are faithfully followed and so I think that
that we would have that effect is that we would faithfully follow things and so
some things are faithfully followed like how old you have to be to be president
of the United States that's faithfully followed friend of mine wrote a an article
once time one time called Bill Clinton is unconstitutional I like that but it
was a tongue-in-cheek article saying well 35 doesn't mean 35 it should be a
percentage of life expectancy and in 1789 35 was 75 percent of life expectancy
and so you should be 75 percent of life expectancy now so you should be at least
64 in order to be president of the United States and you know and and the
only person that was in the presidential succession line at that point in time
was strong Thurmond and so I testified in the Senate Judiciary Committee on
stomped thermo's 93rd birthday and boy could that rascal read questions he
couldn't answer ask a follow-up question to save his life but he could read those
questions really really well so term limits yeah so all right thank you all
for coming if you're in the legislature let me give you my card because it's got
my cell phone number on it and if you have any questions about this obviously
call me but I'm still I divide my time between third to third a third with
convention a stage project alliance defending freedom which is again the
largest conservative Christian legal organization the world we have 400
employees and if it's about any area that free speech right to life religious
freedom transgender bills anything on in that subject or you know I also work
for National religious broadcasters so anything you have questions about any
of those things I'll give you my cell phone number just call me glad to help
you about anything any questions you have on any any subject where I know
something about if you have questions about mechanical issues I would just say
this when I was in the ninth grade they gave us this test in school and they
told me I got the second highest score in the school but the counselor said in
mechanical reasoning you were five points below the average girl don't go there
and so I'm not your guy on those things so find somebody else on that but if
you're something on the constitutional areas I would love to be able to help
you God bless you thank you for coming and it's been a thrill to be with you
here in Wyoming
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