In surveying the state of the world, one is often at a great loss, whether to ascribe the political misery of mankind to their own folly and credulity, or to the knavery and impudence of their pretended managers. Both these causes, in all appearance, concur to produce the same evil; and if there were no bubbles, there would be no sharpers.
There must certainly be a vast fund of stupidity in human nature, else men would not be caught as they are, a thousand times over, by the same snare; and while they yet remember their past misfortunes, go on to court and encourage the causes to which they were owing, and which will again produce them.
A forgotten influence on the Founding Fathers, John Trenchard, wrote that in 1721, but it could have been written yesterday.
There are people who think all you have to do is change the name of something and people will fall into old traps with new names. Sadly, they are often right.
Take the Convention of States (COS), for example. Their new name is Convention of States Action, but they are still using the same tactics to trick otherwise well-meaning Americans into supporting a scheme that would wind up shredding our current Constitution and replacing it with something drafted not by James Madison and George Washington, but by Jeff Bezos and George Soros.
In one of their latest blog posts, COS Action tries to convince conservatives to support the group’s call for a new constitutional convention by rehearsing a roster of famous names who back the scheme.
The names of the members of the corps of “conservative” celebrities fighting for a Con-Con are well known and need not be repeated here.
What does need to be rehearsed, however, is the writing in 1787 by Samuel Bryan, a Pennsylvania anti-federalist who employed the pseudonym “Centinel.” Note how very applicable Bryan’s words are to our own situation, particularly when it comes to the big names associated with the Article V movement:
Whether it be calculated to promote the great ends of civil society, viz. the happiness and prosperity of the community; it behoves you well to consider, uninfluenced by the authority of names. Instead of that frenzy of enthusiasm, that has actuated the citizens of Philadelphia, in their approbation of the proposed plan, before it was possible that it could be the result of a rational investigation into its principles; it ought to be dispassionately and deliberately examined, and its own intrinsic merit the only criterion of your patronage.
Conscientious constitutionalists must avoid joining the ranks of those pushing for an Article V constitutional convention (and, yes, it will be a constitutional convention) because of the influence of the “authority of names” who have made the issue their latest cause célèbre.
Next, the COS Action post takes aim at The John Birch Society (JBS), claiming that we must have some sort of leftist secret agenda if we’re opposing the constitutional convention, because Hillary Clinton opposes it too!
Embarrassing logical fallacies aside, there are many on the Left — legitimately on the Left — who advocate for a new constitutional convention, by whatever name the billionaire backers want to call it today.
In fact, within the ranks of those clamoring for an Article V convention are found numerous extremely radical, progressive, and socialist organizations that otherwise would have little in common with the conservatives fighting on the same side.
Wolf-PAC is one of the groups that I suspect many conservatives pushing for a convention would be ashamed to have as a compatriot in the battle for a Con-Con.
On its website, 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.
In order to persuade Americans to join its cause, Wolf-PAC will:
Inform the public by running television commercials, radio ads, social media, internet ads, and using the media platform of the largest online news show in the world, The Young Turks.
The Young Turks? Most constitutionalists (and I imagine most fans of Mark Levin) don’t spend much time during the day watching the Young Turks, the YouTube-based news and entertainment channel that dubs itself the “world’s largest online news network.”
As unfamiliar as they may be with the Young Turks, it seems certain conservatives pushing for a Con-Con are even more unfamiliar with who pays the bills at this online purveyor of progressive ideology: George Soros. Dan Gainor reports:
In fact, Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States. Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium. That organization ‘is a network of the country’s leading, progressive, independent media outlets.’ The list is predictable — everything from Alternet to the Young Turks.
That’s right. George Soros — the financier of global fascism — is pumping millions of dollars into the same Article V campaign that is being promoted by Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other popular conservative spokesmen.
What will those in Wolf-PAC do if they are able to get “their amendment” proposed and accepted by an Article V convention?
“Celebrate the fact that we had the courage and persistance [sic] to accomplish something truly amazing and historic together.”
So, does COS Action know that there are dyed-in-the-wool socialists and leftists fighting alongside them to see a constitutional convention come to pass? Do they really believe that the JBS is a socialist sleeper cell in league with Hillary Clinton?
Those are serious questions, by the way, the answers to which would reveal much about the moral character and veracity of those funding and fronting COS Action and similar organizations.
Finally, the idea that such a convention as the one COS Action is promoting can be limited is absolutely a lie, a lie that has been proven historically wrong.
So, here again, Convention of States Action is either ignorant of the history of how such conventions have completely disregarded such strict limitations on their agenda, or they know this history and they want to see it repeated. Either way, patriotic Americans supporting COS Action should be wary of such an organization.
