The Hidden Flaws in Article 5—Why Congress Controls the Convention Process

Summary

This episode features constitutional law scholar Joe Wolverton discussing the intricacies and pitfalls of Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution, the process of constitutional amendments, and the dangers of a constitutional convention. Gain insights into the legal and political challenges of amending the Constitution and the importance of safeguarding our foundational principles.

Key topics

• Article 5 of the Constitution and its methods for amendments
• The risks and legal challenges of calling a constitutional convention
• The role of Congress and states in the amendment process
• Loopholes and ambiguities in Article 5
• Historical context of the 1787 Constitutional Convention
• The importance of clear rules and amendments to safeguard liberty
• The influence of wealthy interests in constitutional reform discussions
• The importance of education and virtue in preserving the Constitution

Titles

• Unpacking Article 5: The Hidden Dangers of a Constitutional Convention
• Why a Constitutional Convention Could Wreck the Founding Principles

Sound Bites

• "Congress plays a substantial role in the process."
• "The 1787 convention was a convention of states."
• "The digital currency is the most fearful thing."

Chapters

00:00
Understanding Article 5 of the Constitution

05:31
Challenges and Loopholes in Article 5

10:14
The Role of Congress in Constitutional Amendments

13:23
The Need for Clarity in Article 5

18:15
The Role of Property and Identity in Governance

19:26
State Power and the 10th Amendment

21:04
The Tipping Point of Economic Control

23:06
Convention of States: A Misunderstood Concept

26:12
The Challenge of Constitutional Integrity

28:42
Education and the Control of Knowledge

Resources

• Joe Wolverton on Twitter
• John Birch Society (JBS)
• Western Islands Publishing
• Article 5 for the Citizen and Citizen (Book)
• Make America States Again (Project)

Guest links

• Twitter
• Website

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Worldwide, it's on the episode of David and his guest guys and welcome solutions to some of the biggest challenges. So if you're ready, be prepared to be a light, amused, be shocked by what you hear. And now, the real, the authentic, the one and only, Dave Campbell.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Clarity from Chaos. I'm your host, Dave Campbell. I would like to thank you so much for take making us part of your day. Now, for several episodes here on Clarity, we've been discussing the need to assert changes in our government. Now, one way the founders gave us is Article V of the Constitution. It states that Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislature of three-fourths of the several states, or by the convention and three-fourths thereof, as the one or other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress, provided that no amendment, which may be made prior to the year 1808, shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article, and that no state without its consent shall be deprived of equal suffrage in the Senate. To help us unpack this article, I'm extremely pleased to welcome Mr. Joe Wolverton. He's the Constitutional Law Scholar of the John Burke Society, a firm former constitutional attorney, and nationally renowned constitutional scholar, educator, and celebrated for his passionate defense of liberty and the principles of the Founding Fathers. Welcome to the show, Joe. Thank you, sir. It's a pleasure to be on with you. Well, let's start, let's start with just the main Article 5 and kind of unpack it. Yeah, let's do that. And explain to the audience the two methods for calling, uh for you know asking for the call of a convention. Right.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

The first method, which is the only method that's ever been used, is Congress proposes an amendment to the Constitution. That's the only method we've ever used. The second method is for the states to present applications to Congress, uh, petitioning Congress to uh call for a convention. And in that case, um the states would, in a manner not describe Article V, elect or select or appoint delegates to a convention, uh, or the legislatures of the states could serve as that voting body, as Congress decides. Now, see, and this is where we get into the problem, is people that are pushing for an Article V convention, they propose this as a way for the states to take control from the federal government. But if you read Article V, which is something these groups never cite, they never cite Article V because they know how bad it is for them to cite it. Congress plays a substantial role in this progress, in this process. So you're not going to have simply states coming together and forcing Congress to do something, because Congress has an enormous amount of oversight. And the, and quite frankly, so that's the first thing, the enormous oversight exercised by Congress. It's not states say do it and you do it. It's not that at all. And the second thing is the blanks that are left in Article V, right? Who who will serve on these on these uh at these conventions? If it's not the legislators, who will serve? Who decides who will serve? Are they able to be removed if they violate rules? Who is able to remove them? Congress, the state legislator, the governor? Who is able to remove them? There's no there's no accommodating that.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

I'm just wondering if Article 14 would take care of that, Joe. 14th Amendment? Yeah, the 14th Amendment, as far as um how would that be? Getting delegates. I I'm not I'm not entirely sure, but I I guess. Well, you bring up a good thing though.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

You bring up a good topic, which is no matter if it were to happen, if this convention of states, as they like to call it, were to happen, it will be challenged immediately by us and by many other groups in the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court, we would instantly challenge it on basically we would challenge it on an Article IV uh challenge, which would be denying the states a Republican form of government by depending on who was appointed and how they were appointed, we would instantly file with the Supreme Court to challenge it. Okay. All right. Um because there's too many holes in it. You know what I mean? If it was set forth very clearly, it would be more difficult. But in this case, gosh, the amount of uh potential constitutional challenges is innumerable.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

I I would agree, but I guess what bothers me, Joe, is the fact of applications being made and being ignored. Um because to me that's illegal. They've that they have a sworn oath to uphold the Constitution. Now, granted, Article V may be wrought with loopholes and my you know, hidden minds and all kinds of other things. But the simple fact that they've ignored, and and I I think if if if memory serves, there's been quite a few applications for a convention by the states. Um, but they have not been tabulated. I ch at least according to my research, they haven't tabulated those those applications.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Well, many of them have been rescinded, which of course is a principle of Republican government that when the people elect their representatives, those representatives can undo anything the previous representatives did, which is a basic principle of representation. You know, if you get rid of one guy and replace him with a guy, the idea is you think this new guy can do better than the old guy. Right. So rescinding these applications is definitely a key component of Republican government. And so many of them have been rescinded. Uh, many of them don't actually qualify because they violate the restrictions in Article V. So to say we want a convention and it will only deal with term limits, just for the sake of discussion.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

There's no provision for that.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Yeah, there's no provision in Article V for naming a topic. Right. Right. And so many of these state applications, that's what they're doing. They're saying, here are the three things we'll discuss. Well, you can't do that. That's not what it is. Right. Conventions, by their very nature, are plenipotentiary, meaning all powerful. They exceed, as they explained in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, these conventions exceed the power of Congress once they are called and once they are uh conducting business. Uh that was explained in the convention that of 1787. That we're not going to go, they said we're not going to go to Congress with this because Congress has no power over this convention. And that is still, that's still how it works today, ever since the days of Blackstone, when he when he described uh a convention of the people being plenipotentiary or all powerful. Right. And that's the problem is boy, how do you once that freight train gets going, how do you derail it?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

There's no answer. And that's that that's a question that I wanted to get to as well. But on the topic of recension, once the application is made, isn't that now part of a the congressional record? It I I suppose. I don't know how they qualify them or how they tabulate them. Well, see, once it's made up. Yeah, I think the problem is that they don't tabulate them. And that's and that's allowing for the recension. But my my point being Well any any recension would be valid, even if they had tabulated it. But don't doesn't Congress have to vote to have it removed off the congressional record once it's put in?

SPEAKER_03 9:03

No. No, I mean they can put it in and say this this you'll find that all kinds of things that are put in the congressional record that aren't voted to be removed, that you that are just there as sort of vestigial remains of some. If they are there. That's my that that's my point. Yeah. And should they be should they be tabulated? I mean, I I would say yes, insofar as they qualify under Article V. If they don't, then they shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

No, I think I agree with you there, but my point, I guess, being is once it once it's there, if it's part of the congressional record, then it's part of the congressional record. Whether they rescind it or not, it's part of the congressional record, right? Right. And the rescission would also be.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

So it sets each other it sets each other off. And that's that's you know, one of the big things that we push and that states have finally started listening to. We're we're about 10 and 0 in the battle this year on fighting a con-con. And so uh one of the things we push for these states is you know, rescind. You don't have to just say, well, in 1970, we made no rescind it. You have a new legislature with new people, rescind it. And we've had success at that lately. So we're we're very happy about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So if if if I'm hearing you correctly, then because of all the or the lack of clarity in Article V, um, to me, number one, there shouldn't be an amendment to clarify Article V, right? That's that's completely doable, yes, sir. There should be. Um but obviously, obviously, um then that that would probably wrest control, to your point, away from Congress if a convention was called, right? Right. And therein lies a big problem.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

Exactly. Yeah, Congress isn't just gonna say, oh, okay, we're powerful. Exactly. Come on, yeah, come on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, the idea being that maybe the states pushing would compel Congress to do something, that's rubbish. That's never gonna happen. Because the Congress, unfortunately and unconstitutionally, right now, exercises the lion's share of power in this in this republic. Right. That's not how it should be. The states are the constitution. But I agree. But in reality, you're right. The Congress would not simply stand by and say, okay, I guess we can't do anything about this.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

No, exactly. But I I still come back to, with all of its faults, it should have it there should have been tabulations. There should have been because not all of the applications were were done incorrectly.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

I can't believe No, that's that's true. No, no, and there are some. I mean, I think that I don't know how they were tabulated. I really don't know. I know that there must be some tabulation because if you contact uh the Congressional uh research center, they will tell you how many there are. So they've tabulated them somehow, but um they've never in any case reached the requisites. Reach the threshold? Yeah. Yeah, reach the threshold of it. Right. Um And that's that's good for us because uh I can't imagine what would come out of a convention like that. I can't imagine who would pay to have seats at such a powerful meeting. Um, you know, the people that have the money to do that are not people that agree with our principles.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Well, I would agree with you there. The other the other part of it is um I I would tend to put my put my um my uh hope in a delegate being elected as opposed to a current politician, because I think the competency of our elected politicians is pretty thin.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

I I mean I don't know how I would I mean I just I just can't see someone like uh you know a uh a Soros or a Bill Gates or uh Jeff Bezos. I can't imagine them just saying, oi, I'm not gonna have a they're gonna want a seat, whether it's they who come and represent the surrogate. Right. Do you have to be a citizen?

unknown 13:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Say in there. You could be a delegate to a convention and not even be a citizen. Can you imagine? Can you imagine in a state like California or New York where their delegation is completely uh foreign? So because we have no, despite what they want to say, there's no making rules in advance. You can't do that. It's not part of the Bible. And so when you get there and you sit down and you sitting, I'm from Tennessee, I live in Memphis, Tennessee, and let's say all of my, you know, the governor just signed the new uh congressional reapportionment map into law today. And so, you know, we'll have what nine Republican districts, uh, one Democratic district, and um, you know, we would probably send mostly Republican, not to say that's a guarantee of people that won't go off the rails, right? But we'd sit across the table and see California with delegates who insist on having translators.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah. But I I guess my point, Joe, would be given given its faults, since it's in the Constitution, it would seem to me that it would be in our best interest to come together and define it and give it the clarity that it's needed so that we so that the people in this country have a mechanism that can be used as opposed to just declaring that this this Article V has got so many damn holes in it that we're just gonna ignore it. To me, that's the wrong approach.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

Well, we haven't ignored it because for 240 something years, we've used Article V, just not the state convention version. We've used the congressional version. True. So we haven't ignored Article V. We've ignored, and I think wisely, the part of Article V that is rife with landmines. Yeah. That's what I think we've done. And now to your point, though, of should we have a uh an amendment clarifying our that would be wonderful. That would be wonderful to have an amendment clarifying Article V or setting boundaries. I would be a hundred percent behind that. If they if we would clear up, it would fill in some of the blanks that exist in Article V. But um, but even that is dangerous territory because you see how it is in Congress. If you want to vote, if you want to vote on anti-abortion, well then you've got to support anti-free speech as well in the same package. Yeah, I I completely agree with that. If you want to support, if you want to support the armed forces, you've got to support you know federal surveillance.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Those two things aren't related. No, no, not at all. And and I completely agree with you that, and that's what I'm trying to get to, I think, in essence, is is a mechanism, because if Congress can call a convention, why doesn't the rules of Congress then apply to a state calling a convention for representation?

SPEAKER_03 16:36

Well, this Congress determines what form of convention will be held, and then the Article V is silent. Now we have the only precedent we have is the 1787 Convention. Right. Which was above Congress. Congress never had a say in that, never had a say on approving the document, other than a pro-forma sort of way that really didn't matter after the states had ratified. And how did the how did the states they either appoint does every state had a different manner and that a method, and that might be what happened would happen today, which is why I say it would be fraught with peril. Because no tell I I can't imagine who would be sitting at that meeting. Because I can guarantee you and me won't, you and me won't be there.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Oh well, heavens no, you're not you're not gonna I won't be able to get in a parking lot without a chance. Oh, heavens no. I mean you're not gonna you're not gonna find any rational USA forward kind of thinking person at this thing. You're gonna you're gonna be getting the people that are currently trying to wreck what we've had for 250 years.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

And that and I agree with you, Clark.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

I wanted to read you this quotation if you don't mind, because this is right on the point of what you're saying. This is Barry Goldwater in 1979. He said, if we hold a constitutional convention, every group in this country, majority, minority, middle of the road, left, right, up, down, is going to get its two bits in. And we're gonna wind up with a constitution that will be so far different from the one we've lived under for over 200 years that I doubt the Republic could continue. I agree with Senator Goldwater. Well, I do I think that that's that's enough for me to say let's find a different way.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Well, I I agree, and then I'm back to amending amending what we have.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

100%. Yeah, we could do, and that's something that, you know, I've brought up actually. I wrote a book about on this subject, Article 5 for the citizen and citizen legislator. And it's about 100 pages, really brief. I made it so that legislators could read it, you know, uh at their leisure. And then I I have this brief that I it's a 16-page distillation of that hundred pages. But um, one of the things I talk about in there is yeah, we could have an amendment amending Article V and closing some of these loopholes. Right. But the people supporting a CONCON do not support that. They do not support that. They like, because frankly, they're gonna shove a mile of tyranny through these loopholes.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah, well, they like the loopholes. To me, that's the same kind of silly ass laws that get written that people in Minneapolis have been able to figure out a way to defraud the country because of all the loopholes in these innocuous laws that these legislators, for some reason, can't figure out a way to write a law that is clear, concise, and to the point. They leave these leave these mine fields open for anybody to walk through, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

And they do, and the people pushing for a convention, they they like that because they know that their success depends on these loopholes. Because if they were if we were to explain you have to be a citizen, they're gonna fight that. They're gonna fight that in court. If we say uh, you know, you have to be um, I don't know, what else could you say? You have to be registered to vote. I don't know. Just think of something that you could say. You have to be able to do that. They would fight right a problem, they would fight all of that.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Oh, Christ, yeah. I mean, it you've gotta be, you've got to be non-binary, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, they absolutely there would be, yeah, there would be, you know, you'd have to pick your pronoun before you walk to the door.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

I mean, it it's enough to gag on. But yeah, it is. And so that's that's you know, that's the danger. And to amend it, I would think they'd be in favor of it. But of course, I would think if their real goal, as they state, if you go to like, you know, one of these groups that support it, they claim that their goal is to return power to the states. Well, that's just not true because we already have an amendment protecting the power of the states, and that's the 10th Amendment. That we don't, that we talk about ignoring an article. How about we ignore a 10th Amendment? And these people, I've debated them so many times in public, and they've never had an answer. Because to me, an Article V Convention is a chainsaw. If you, you know, if you've got to have a tumor removed, the tumor of tyranny from the body politic, they're wanting to use a chainsaw. And the Tenth Amendment allows us to use a scalpel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Well, everybody, everybody recognizes the logic in that. See, yeah, and that would be my point. The only problem that we now face is the easiest way to do that would be for Congress to call, and they have no appetite for giving a little bit of their power away. So I don't know how we get across that bridge. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

We have a le we have there's a legal term called disgorgement. I don't know if you ever heard it disgorge. When you disgorge someone in the law, you take back from them what was uh illegal. Legally gotten by them. Right. And you bring an action for disgorgement. Well, we can, the states have the power, if they were to exercise it, to disgorge power from Congress through the Tenth Amendment and through Article 4, Section 4. They have that power. They don't exercise it because they love their position at the federal trough. They they like that they have 30, 40, you know, if you're talking to Alaska, nearly 70% of its budget comes from the federal government. Right. So you're looking at these states and you're trying to tell them, hey, cut, you know, cut the tie, get away from the trough, turn back to your state, exercise its authority, say no to anything unconstitutional. Right. But it's hard. That's a hard uh road ahoe because they, well, they they don't have the stomach for maybe losing 30% of their funding.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Well, you know, the interesting thing is a show I did last week, I talked about the titler cycle and and the quote that democracies go away the minute they start taking you know gifts from the public treasury. Right. And that's exactly where we're at, only times a thousand, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

I mean, that's exactly yeah, we're we're definitely at that place. We're we're at the tipping point where our GDP and our outlays are are right at the tipping point, where you know, how how soon until cash is wheeled in in barrows to buy a loaf of bread, so to speak. Yeah. Oh, I I agree. Or well, what's worse than that, though? What's worse than that is the coming digital currency, which will be controlled by the Federal Reserve. And if you try to buy ammunition or a gun, you can't can't run your debit card with that citizen, you know. Yeah, so that's that's the the most fearful thing, I think, is the federally controlled digital currency.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah. And and it doesn't surprise me that a non a non-governmental agency would be pushing for that. Oh it doesn't surprise me at all.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Oh, I mean, you you've got so many people that would be supporting that. And um that's frightening, terrifying, terrifying. And but you can see that that would be something maybe that would be introduced by, you know, someone at a convention. They would they would be all in favor. Because are we gonna have the chairman of the Federal Reserve on that board? I mean, you could imagine that Congress, you know, would want to make it where it has people favorable to its cause in that room. Now, how did how do they do that? They exercise, they, they, the trough, they cut off your access. Look, you're gonna play by and they're not gonna do it overtly, obviously. That's you know, silent and gradual, as James Madison said.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Well, yeah, that's you know, it's like boiling a frog. Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what's going on. Um one thing that puzzled me, and maybe you could offer some insight, is I keep seeing, I keep seeing this reference to convention of states. And and I don't know where the hell that comes from.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Because I don't know. Well, they copyrighted that phrase in 2016, I think. They copyrighted that phrase because it doesn't exist in the Constitution. No, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

And I was sitting there w wondering how in the how in the world did they get to the Convention of States from the Article V.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

Well, that, and you know, the funny thing that I did uh an interview uh probably last year about the fact that I did some research and discovered that almost all references to the convention of 1787 described it as a convention of states. And these people are adamant that the convention of 1787 was not a convention of states. Although, as I showed, I had the receipts and I showed it on screen. Ever almost every time the convention was written about, it was called a convention of states or convention of the states. And it doesn't, that phrase exists in that way.

unknown 25:57

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

But the article, but the CONCON people don't want to say that because they don't want to admit that the 1787 Convention was an actual constitutional convention. Right. They don't they don't want to admit that. And so they don't want to admit where they got that phrase. But I did look up and see that they copyrighted it in, I think, 2016, if I'm wow remembering correctly, because you couldn't copyright it if it was think about that, you can't copyright the Constitution. Right. You can't copyright anything in the Constitution. So the fact that they had to copyright it proves that it's not in the Constitution.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Yeah. Simple as that.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

And if you have to, I mean, if we're starting out with the group that puts out the most money, because they've got Texas billionaires funding this whole thing. If this group starts out on the path in an unconstitutional trajectory, what's going to keep them on a constitutional directory trajectory if they're already calling their organization calling their organization something that doesn't exist in the Constitution?

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

I'm perplexed by how they think about this, but I I think it's less perplexing when you remember that billions of dollars in uh Texas oil money is theirs for the for the using, despite they're like, they want to say they're a mom and pop organization, rubbish. We have the receipts on that too, and they've got Texas billionaires backing them. Why, I don't know. I guess the Texas billionaires want a seat at the table.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Yeah. I guess I mean I guess to them being able to tinker with the Constitution is is worth the millions they put out for travel for these guys and for, you know, the conven the fake conventions that they hold every year and all that.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah. Well, I want to tinker with it a little bit, maybe, but I want I want the people tinkering as thoughtful individuals that tinkered with it the first time, right? Well, yeah, I mean, that's the problem. Where are you gonna find a James Madison George Washington? Precisely. And and that and there and and therein really lies the root, the root of the problem right there is what yeah, anyone with that attitude, with that learning and with that virtue is gonna be excluded.

SPEAKER_03 28:12

Yeah. Because the states will know that you're intent on, you know, dismantling the federal leviathan, to chopping it up. And they don't want that because again, there they lose a third of their budget. Right. And so, you know, you and me won't be within a country mile of that. And that's the problem because I think you and I, I think we would be thoughtful and I think we would be uh, you know, try to fill the shoes, although we couldn't. We would make an effort to fill the shoes of James Madison and George Washington and John Dickinson and these people. I think we would try. I I I don't even think I qualify to serve drinks close, but we would yeah, that's right. In real life, no, we're not we're not worthy just yeah, to be the waiters at that thing. But I think that we would at least try, and I don't think there's many people who have a shot at being in that convention who could tell you anything about James Madison or George Washington or the principles upon which the Constitution was founded. I mean, you could throw out names that, you know, Ben Franklin said, for example, Emmer De Vaudel, his book was every member of Congress carried that book around. Well, I I would hasten to think that we don't have a single congressman who could tell you who Emmer De Vaudel is today.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

No.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

I mean, it's like that, it's like that Joseph Sobran, you know, uh quotation where it's like, uh, we used to teach Latin and Greek in elementary school, and now we teach remedial English in college. Yeah, exactly. And that's that's where we are today. So we have we have congressmen who think we had World War XI. And so, you know, we've got that kind of thing. We've got, you know, congressmen who uh, you know, just completely violate that sacred oath that they swore. They violate, they call God down as a witness to their perfidy, which I don't understand, but they do it. And they put their hand on a Bible, and then as soon as they take that hand off a Bible, they're over there pushing the button to vote for something unconstitutional.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

I don't get it. Right. Yeah, I don't either.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

That's on us. That's on us. We read it.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Oh, no, absolutely. I was gonna say um you and I can sit here and and talk about the the lack of competency, virtue, character, and a number of other um adjectives that go along with these uh politicians. But at the end of the day, it's the electorate's fault. That's right. For bringing for bringing them and putting them in a position that they're in. And what do you notice?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

If you go back and look at the federal attempts to control education, you'll see that the first Department of Education was formed under Abraham Lincoln's administration. Now, what's the point in that? The point is if we can control education, we could control what these kids from five years old to 22 learn about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. Right. All of this. And so if you control education, you control everything because it will change the language. Do you think I knew what the word non-binary was when I was in high school? Hell no. Hell no. If someone had come to me from the future and said, hey, there's 57 genders, he probably would have got what are you talking about? Boy girl. Look at the bathrooms, boy girl. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

And so and so I I, you know, this is awesome. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, the whole Marxist movement started up in New England. We've got to have it. And it's been pushed in education ever since.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Well, do I had I've done some research on this. Dewey and all the rest of them. Right. And, you know, one of the funny things is though, you go back, what I wanted to do, instead of reading what Dewey said and uh um uh Horace Mann and all those, I wanted to read how the state governments pushed for this. And boy, you'd be shocked. Governors would make speeches saying, if our electorate is going to be educated, we need to take education away from families and churches and give it to qualified instructors. I I don't know about you, but um most of the teachers that I've had something to do with aren't the type of teacher that I would call qualified. Now, do they pass some sort of test? Yes. Do they get a fingerprint card swearing they've never, you know, been convicted of a felony? Sure. But how does that qual? You know, I I taught in a charter school, which is a public school with, you know, private funding.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

And in that school, I, you know, we had teachers that, oh, I'm a, you know, I've got a PhD in science, but I'm teaching uh world history. Right. Shouldn't you be teaching science? No, the science is being taught by the economics professor. What? And it's just like that. And you know, you'll have what does that mean? What does that mean? That means you go to YouTube, get a video on the subject, and play it while the kids fall asleep. And so, you know, education is such an important part of an educated and able electorate. We've got to take our kids out of those indoctrination camps as soon as possible. And start, you don't feel qualified. Well, God sent you that child, so he deemed you qualified. So get at it. If you have to learn something, if you have to learn something yourself, learn it, man.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

You know that's the way you do. It's funny because um I got my hands on an 1895 primer for graduate eighth grade. Nice, right? And I've yet, I've yet to have anybody pass the test. I I've I've given it I've given it to people with master's degrees. I gave it to a person studying for their doctorate right now. They couldn't pass the damn test. And this was a test to pass eighth grade in Kansas in 1895. So you tell me how far we've dropped.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

No, it's it's not it's easy to tell. I, you know, the smartest kids, I taught world history, U.S. history, and the Constitution. And the smartest kids in there couldn't write to save their souls.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

I mean, they would write, I would, you know, this is before AI. So they would write their stuff, but it would the punctuation, the capitalization, the spelling, all over the place, even in the brightest students. And when I was, you know, in high school, you you would just get an F for something like that. Oh, yeah. But today we have to accommodate this and say, okay, compared to everyone else's, how bad is it?

SPEAKER_01 34:58

You know. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Whereas in the city. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So where can people find your social media stuff, Joe? To get more information on the stuff we've talked about.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

I would, you know, JBS has John Bird Society has a great social media team. So just JBS on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Uh The New American also has great uh social media feed. Um and Western Islands Publishing. Uh, I'm the president of that. That's the publishing arm of the John Byrd Society. And we've got, we're printing out vintage books that we published in the 60s and 70s that read like they were written yesterday. And so Western Islands Publishing, we also have great social media accounts there: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Yeah, go to any of those things and you'll find. And if you go to jbs.org uh slash states, you'll find our information on the Constitutional Convention.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah, and then you've got a project Make States Great Again. Make America States Again.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

Make America States Again. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. And we've got books and briefs and videos, lots of stuff for free, lots of resources for free, because we're not just in making money, we're interested in protecting and preserving our Constitution.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and an honor to speak with you. Equally so. And I thank you very much. Thank you. And if you don't mind, I'd like to share a verse from Colossians 3 1, 2. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is. Seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of this earth. Again, Joe, it's been an absolute pleasure. By the way, amen and amen to that. So thank you very much, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you for the time. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more Clarity from Chaos shows on demand, go to Clarity from Chaos Podcast.com or send David an email. Information on the previous show. You can also show up on the Well, everyone.