The Misnomer of the “Runaway Convention”
For years, I have warned that a convention called under Article V of the Constitution — whether it be dubbed a “convention of states” or a “constitutional convention”— poses a grave and imminent threat to the American Republic. And while critics of my position have dismissed such concerns as alarmist or unfounded, the truth is far more sobering: It is not that such a convention might exceed its authority, it is that it cannot be bound by any such authority in the first place.
Let us be perfectly clear: In the strictest sense, a convention of states cannot “run away,” because from the moment it convenes, it ceases to be the servant of the states and becomes, instead, the voice of the sovereign people themselves. Once that body gathers, its powers are not limited to the amendment of the existing Constitution; it possesses, inherently and undeniably, the power to abandon that Constitution altogether and to erect in its place an entirely new form of government.
That is not hyperbole. That is history.
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