It’s not rocket science. We’ve been doing it successfully for 400 years!

By Mike Kapic – December 10, 2021

The objection to calling an Article V convention of states is very confusing. Much false rhetoric abounds about a runaway while rejecting over 400 years of using the convention process in America. It’s obvious that most of the objections are based on ignorance of the more than 648 recorded administratively successful historical records located and analyzed by scholars and historians.

And then in the spring of 2017, as if we hadn’t skipped a beat, we did another one. Just like the 1787 convention and even earlier ones dating back to 1620. There have been hundreds of meetings to resolve issues that legislative bodies could not complete in their own state capitals. A place for the big problems.

The only variation of the recorded conventions from 1620 to 2017 was that along the way, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the process was codified into Article V.

In 2017 the Arizona legislature called on all the States of the Union to attend a Planning Convention for the limited purpose of planning, recommending rules and procedures for a prospective Article V approved amending convention to be called at some future date.

This Planning Convention, held in Phoenix in the fall of 2017, met its obligations including the formation of the Phoenix Correspondence Commission. The Commission was to act as a liaison with Congress, track state applications, suggest a time and place to Congress, provide legal representation as necessary, and perform tasks necessary to organize the Article V convention. That is happening today.

The Phoenix Planning Convention operated almost exactly like the July 1847 Chicago River and Harbor Convention in which Abe Lincoln was one of 2500 commissioners from nineteen states in attendance for two-day event to resolve a regional problem.

Why do state legislators balk at the Founders solution for solving the big problems?

Mike Kapic is a great-grandfather and author of Conventions That Made America: A Brief History of Consensus Building and he is editor and publisher of HuntForLiberty.com.