As many of you know, I'm a libertarian in the sense that I believe the federal government should be brought back within its constitutional limits and that there are numerous areas that are not properly the role of government. However, I also believe that if the American people are dissatisfied with the Constitution as it presently stands they should amend it or replace it with a new Constitution. With that in mind, is it time for a Constitutional Convention? I believe it is.

Questions such as "What should be the role of the federal government?" are legitimate and we, as a nation, should be asking it and debating the answers. So, I propose that there should be a Constitutional Convention. The participants in that Convention would be as follows:

An equal number of representatives from each state, selected by the states without interference from the federal government and excluding any elected officials.

An equal number of representatives from every political party (Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Constitution Party, American Socialist, etc.). This equal representation would be included in the equal number of representatives for each state, though it would not require each state to make sure its representatives equally represent every political party (New Hampshire, for example, could possibly have more Libertarians or Massachusetts could have more Democrats).

The first question to be debated is the earlier question: "What should be the role of the federal government?" This would be followed by the question: "Can establishing this role for the federal government be accomplished through amending the current Constitution or is it necessary to write an entirely new Constitution?" Other questions that can be debated would deal with specifics such as whether the Constitution should enumerate the rights citizens have, the powers of the states vs. the powers of the federal government, the role of the media, the status of trust territories, etc.

While the primary topic for debate is the question of whether it's time for a Constitutional Convention, feel free to debate anything else addressed in this post.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I support that idea. I say we need it, and we need it badly. But we should exclude politicians and partisan politics. Have Independents run the show..

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Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

Well, we do have to throw the Democrats and Republicans a little bone since they do represent the majority of the population. I did suggest excluding elected officials.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

What gives “independents” any more right to have a say in government than anyone else? Is it even possible for someone to be “independent”? Don’t we all have political biases and ideologies on an issue-by-issue basis if not consistently on all issues?

We have the technology to completely rethink the way government runs.

The world has become to flat and far to small to try to decentralize it. The fed and stat governments should in someway act as checks and balances. Say replace the house of REP with extensions of the stat legislators. And have people with no real authority of there own representing those governments.

Let states collect taxes and the fed tax the states. Drop the fed reserve all together.

The senate should remain as it is now. But without the house Washington lobyist will have to devide them sevles among the 50 states.


just a few Ideas of the top of my head

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I would define an "independent" as someone who either has no political affiliation or who is registered with the state-level Independent Party in those states that have them.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Not that technology is required.

Those are some of the issues that would be addressed in debating the role of the federal government.

I like the idea of repealing the 16th Amendment and returning to taxation based on proportionment among the states.

The problem with this, though, is that the larger states end up with having more power than the smaller states. The House of Representatives was set up to prevent that.


Well, that's what this thread is for.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Care to give some examples for a newcomer who is likely to disagree with you?

I have been thinking for quite a while about a way that such a convention could be conducted online; I’ve even prepared a set of parliamentary rules that could be used to manage an online convention using a message board. But, I don’t know anything about setting up or running a board. And I am concerned that choosing delegates from among people that are likely to use an internet message board would give libertarians too much representation- compare the amount of money that Ron Paul raised on the net to the number of votes he actually received at the polls. For reasons that I cannot figure out libertarians seem to be overly represented in the internet population. I am a conservative and as such I want a society that is stable and functional. I believe that the government (at whatever level is necessary) must do whatever needs to be done when individuals and private efforts cannot or will not do it.

In the meantime I have been working on a model constitution that incorporates my own ideas.

I’ve also wanted to set up a message board that would have limited membership so no part of the political spectrum would be overly represented- I want debate and discussion, not argument and hostility. Would be members would have to take an extensive political ideology placement exam before they could post anything and the number of posters with each ideology would be limited. Such a message board could provide a mechanism for choosing a balanced set of delegates for an online convention.

I know that Florida law already has provisions in place whereby delegates to a convention would be chosen in the event that Congress doesn’t specify any procedure for choosing delegates. I would guess that other states have similar stand-by provisions in their statutes.

This would likely make the convention too unwieldy to get any work done. Right now Florida’s election officials recognize (I’d say) at least a dozen different parties- some of which are exclusive to Florida while others are associated with parties in other states. To represent every known party would likely lead to too many delegates.

The existing constitution is as much about what the states can and cannot do as it is about what the feds can and cannot do. I think any constitution must do the same.

Why do we have to throw them a little bone? they've been screwing the pooch for the last 227 years.

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Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

This is what the Senate was originally since senators were chosen by the state legislatures.

What would be the point? If the federal government didn’t tax the states at the same rate people would simply move from state to state in order to avoid being taxed on Washington’s behalf.