Today our nation faces a grave and terrible foe. One that will be tough to take on. One that has amassed more and more power for itself over the past two and a half centuries. One that has unsuccessfully been assailed before. Its name is the federal government.

This may come as a surprise to many readers. What is so harmful about the federal government? What has it done that warrants these kinds of accusations? Many of you will start taking the route of “He must be talking about them Democrats” or “Recently, Trump has been pretty much an authoritarian dictator.” However, I want to blame both parties for what they have done, and I want to present a solution to the problems.

But before we get to the solutions, we must talk about the status quo, the current situation, if you are to understand anything.

First, let’s talk about why money matters.

As you probably know, the federal government is now around 20 trillion dollars in debt. This is an immoral action of our generation because we are buying things for ourselves and telling our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren that they are the ones who will pay for all our stuff. How would you like it if your grandpa bought a mansion on credit and then passed the debt off to you? That is essentially what we are doing to our descendants – we are leaving them with a mountain of debt, which should make us feel really bad. Because it is really bad. What’s worse is that we just continue to let it happen.

Why is it that we are so deeply in debt? How do we manage to spend all this money that we don't have? It's because our Federal Government is too large and is doing too much.

Back when the Constitution was written, we had this really cool idea called federalism. It was this concept of having two distinct levels of government: State governments would do most things, but things that needed one, solid, unified approach like war or mail (or pirates!) would be handled by the federal government. Why was this done?

It turns out, one of the best way to prevent tyranny of rulers is to keep the power as close to the people as possible. It is comparatively easy to influence a State legislator, to talk to them, to have coffee with them, and to kick them out of office if you dislike them. With a federal legislator, far far away, you can’t do that. There are some things that only a National government can do (we found that out with the Articles of Confederation – there was almost no federal power, and the whole thing fell apart), but we shouldn’t give them too much power, or else we see the kind of waste and abuse that we see today.

Currently, the Federal Government is so massive that is beginning to micromanage every aspect of our lives. How are they able to reconcile this with the Constitution? It has been a slow, gradual process that has been facilitated by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has gradually expanded the role of the Feds over the past few centuries, using more vague clauses in the Constitution to explain. For instance, one particularly useful section for the Court was the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Well, Congress can also regulate anything that directly affects interstate commerce, said the Court. Well, anything that indirectly affects interstate commerce, said the Court later. Well, anything that has anything to do with anything pertaining to interstate commerce, they say now.

This has gotten to the point where if you open up a restaurant, if you sell any food that has come from another state you are engaging in interstate commerce. Worse, even if you decide to use local only foods, you’re still screwed because if anybody from another state tries to eat at your restaurant, that is interstate commerce too! And of course, this is super damaging to your business because conducting interstate commerce subjects you to the will of the Feds, who love to wrap up your business in red tape, health and safety regulations, inspections… not bad things in moderation, but Congress and the bureaucracies don’t know what that is, so oh well. Too bad you can’t bring this to some sort of local representation that is more likely to come up with reasonable solutions?

This is the kind of stuff that is stagnating our economy. Unemployment rates are terrible, debt is at its highest percentage of the economy since WWII and the number of business startups dying are through the roof. We can’t allow this to continue any more. As long as we do, we are feeding the cycle of shrinking the middle class, and putting dollars in the pockets of billionaires who can afford the regulations, and crushing anyone who can’t.

So, what is the solution?

I’ll tell you what’s not the solution: Congress. Sorry to down your hopes, but Congress isn’t going to wake up one day and say, “Hey guys, why don’t we take away our own power and give it back to the states? And let’s totally try this whole balanced budget thing – you know, when we only spend what we have and stuff. And best of all, let’s give ourselves TERM LIMITS!” Sorry, not going to happen.

What needs to be done is we need to pass constitutional amendments to make it clear what the vaguer phrases mean, clearing up definitions like the Commerce Clause and other things to ensure that nobody can stretch the meaning like we have seen. Congress will never pass those kinds of amendments.

Too bad the Founding Fathers didn’t plan for this one. Oh wait, they did.

George Mason was the one who stood up during the debates that formed our Constitution. With the current draft in front of him, Congress was the only entity that could suggest new Constitutional amendments. He was concerned that one day the Federal government would become abusive, and would overstep its power. Thus, we needed a way to modify the Constitution without Congress, because otherwise the proper kinds of amendments would never be brought up.

And so, into Article V, the Founders inserted Article V, which allows two thirds of the state legislatures to call for a Convention, in which amendments are proposed. These proposals, like all others in our nation’s past, must still be ratified by ¾ of the states. In other words, the process is exactly the same as Congress proposing amendments except we drop-kick Congress and drop in the states. Pretty neat idea.

However, some organizations (like the Eagle Forum and the John Birch Society) are direly opposed to this plan. They are filled with fear that somehow, at the convention, there will be chaos and disorder, the delegates from Colorado and Oregon will be high, Congress is going to inject their two cents, liberals are going to inject their fifteen cents, we are going to completely rewrite the Constitution and our entire nation will collapse, a steaming wreck.

Hmm, well, I’m not so sure about that.

What these organizations forget is that we’ve had 30+ conventions between states in our history. Yes, they did not propose constitutional amendments through the power of Article V, but we built Hoover Dam, we managed Indians, created river compacts, and so much more. And never did any chaos like this ensue in any of these conventions. It’s a safe process.

And the ultimate safeguard is that three quarters of the states must ratify whatever comes out of the convention. That means that it only takes 13 states to stop any nonsense that could possibly come. If you ask most of the states to rewrite the Constitution, they will say no. In summary, this is a non-issue, but one that is being propagated by a lot of fear-mongering individuals.

We now have a movement called the Convention of States project, by which we hope to bring an Article V convention to fruition for the express purpose of reigning in the federal government, placing fiscal restraints on it, and enforcing term limits. If you are interested, you can find out more and sign the petition here: http://www.cosaction.com/?recruiter_id=216874

This, I believe, may be the only route left to save our country from the cliff of fiscal insanity. We can end the nightmare – we need to use this tool that the founders gave us and reign in the power of the Federal Government!