How would conservatives — good-hearted, well-meaning, Constitution-loving conservatives who have been persuaded to join the Article V con-con camp — react if they knew that some of the leaders of that very movement were not only accepting the participation of liberals in the planning, but praising their contribution?
I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, as soon as Mark Meckler’s latest article begins being bounced around the Twittersphere and Facebook.
From the headline to the final full paragraph of a piece published June 18 at Breitbart, Meckler (shown) makes sure his leftist cohorts get their props.
As if to assuage the often delicate feelings of the substantial Leftist bloc in the “convention of states” coalition, Meckler takes time to highlight the “bipartisan” makeup of the committee tasked with crafting rules for the “inevitable” Article V convention.
Speaking of a recent meeting of pro-constitutional convention state legislators held in Indianapolis, Meckler writes:
On the Assembly’s second day, delegates elected committee chairs and co-chairs for three committees: Rules and Procedures, Judiciary, and Planning, Communication and Finance. Importantly, the working committees of the Assembly of State Legislatures have bipartisan leadership — with a Democrat and Republican legislator serving as co-chairs for each.
Of course, for readers of The New American, this unholy alliance of Republicans, Democrats, and outright socialist reformers is not news.
This reporter first broke the story of the participation of prominent progressive organizations in the Article V movement. In a more recent article, The New American devoted a cover story to the union of Right and Left in the race to rewrite the Constitution. In this comprehensive review of the bipartisan push for a constitutional convention, Christian Gomez highlights the cooperation between Meckler and former Obama 2008 campaign advisor and current Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig. Gomez reports:
As recently as March 21, 2014, both Lessig and Meckler spoke at the same event, this time at the Citizen University’s (motto: “Let’s Do Democracy”) Annual National Conference in Seattle; Lessig’s topic was “How to Start a Rebellion,” featuring “bottom up change and passionate cross-partisan political rejuvenation.” Lessig’s connection with CFA and Mark Meckler is not so much an endorsement for a BBA or limited government as it is an opportunity for Lessig to work alongside conservatives toward the common goal of a constitutional convention. The Right is being used to help facilitate the aspiration of Lessig and others for a convention to make far-reaching changes to the Constitution.
It’s no wonder that the Article V camp’s celebrity cheerleaders have kept mum on the love being shown the Left by leaders of that movement. One cannot blame popular entertainers such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin for not filling airtime with adulation for their progressive partners in the call for a con-con.
These men rely on the loyalty of conservatives who would likely be in uproar if they were to become savvy to the prominent role “Democrats” and socialists are playing in the planning of the convention they consider so crucial to the survival of the Republic.
Also of note, it seems The New American and The John Birch Society’s effort to educate constitutionalists on the dangers inherent in a con-con are having an effect on the opposition.
In his article bragging about the bipartisan composition of the committees crafting rules for a future Article V convention, Meckler makes passing mention of a significant change in the nomenclature of the meetings of state legislators.
Explaining some of the guidelines being “hammered out” by the committee, Meckler calls the group “the Assembly of State Legislatures,” admitting parenthetically that it was “formerly the Mt. Vernon Assembly.”
Although he would never admit it, it is likely that the confab changed its title in order to avoid association with another, historic Mt. Vernon conference that was a significant step toward the convening of a full-blown constitutional convention in 1787 (a convention that committed to confining itself to amending the Articles of Confederation, but ended up tossing it out and approving an entirely new Constitution in direct violation of the meeting’s mandate).
Conservatives are encouraged to pay close attention to the adulation heaped upon the Left-wing leaders emerging in the Article V convention movement. Quite a number of these legislators and lobbyists have explicitly called for scrapping many of the guarantees of fundamental liberties contained in our current Constitution — including the First and Second Amendments.
Finally, most of Meckler’s right-wing supporters understand that the United States is a Republic, not a democracy. What’s more, they recognize the substantial differences between the two forms of government. Meckler, it seems, doesn’t appreciate the distinction, quoting one of the state legislators who claimed that “states are the laboratories of democracy.”
Maybe this advocacy of democracy is not accidental, but is rather another hat tip to his progressive cohorts, many of whom see the Article V convention as an opportunity to “reform” the Republic and make it more democratic.
For example, on its website, con-con collaborators and progressive organization Wolf-Pac pushes for an Article V “convention of the states” as the best way to accomplish its “ultimate goal”: “To restore true democracy in the United States by pressuring our State Representatives to pass a much needed 28th Amendment to our Constitution which would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in our country.” (Emphasis added.)
As conservatives become more familiar with the company they are keeping in the Article V convention coalition, perhaps the proposed meeting will not be quite as “inevitable” as its “bipartisan” leadership believes.
Photo of Mark Meckler: AP Photos
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].
