Why 'we the people' need to assert our sovereignty, or risk losing it

FRANK MIELE

In the France of Louis XIV, the king could say without a shred of irony, "L'etat, c'est moi! The state, it is I."

In the years following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, Americans could proudly say, "The state, it is we the people."

But in this day and age, who exactly is invested with sovereignty in the United States of America? Is it "we the people"? And if so, why do we feel so disenfranchised, so alienated, so used?

Or is it the president? Could it be? Then why does he look so drawn and haggard, so diminished and so beaten?

Or perhaps sovereignty today belongs to the Congress of the United States? Could our elected representatives have seized power from us, right under our noses, and left us none the wiser?

It sure feels that way to many of us who watched the Quentin Tarantino-choreographed pantomime in the Senate the past two weeks as all 326 pages of the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill were shoved down America's throat to the tune of "La Cucaracha."

The senators claim that America wants - no, demands - "comprehensive immigration reform," so the senators all have cleaned their hands just like jesting Pilate when he freed Barabbas and sent Jesus to his death. Only doing what America wants, they say. But America doesn't want reform that throws up its hands in surrender; it wants reform that enforces the law and enforces the border. It doesn't want immigration reform; it wants immigration control. It doesn't want a government that washes its hands; it wants a government that does its job.

Which is why last week I proposed that the people of the United States, through their state legislatures, ought to take back the reins of power and ask for - no, demand! - a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution - in particular, an amendment that requires border enforcement and denies citizenship to anyone in this country illegally, including those who were born here because their parents were here illegally.

If you think it is going to happen any other way, you are mistaken. And if you think the Constitution should not be handled by "we the people" because it is too fragile and too delicate, then you missed the point of having a Constitution. We are a self-governing people. It is not "we the dead people" who have the power in this country; it is "we the living."

But yet I have heard from many people who are afraid that a constitutional convention would give power to the wrong people - presumably the left wing of the Democratic Party or the right wing of the Republican Party - who would strip away all the liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

Such a fear is absurd for two reasons. First of all, it would never happen. The "convention to propose amendments" to the Constitution would do just that - propose. Any amendment proposed by the convention would still have to be ratified by three-quarters of the several states, which currently means 38 state legislatures would need to approve any changes. It is safe to assume that wholesale changes to our fundamental liberties would not survive such a process.

Second, it is absurd because such changes could only be accomplished if they represented the will of "we the people" - and to deny the will of "we the people" is to deny the whole principle, basis and intent of the Constitution in the first place.

God forbid that anyone tamper willy-nilly with that divinely inspired document, but also God forbid that anyone deny "we the people" the authority of self-government. Our forefathers did not write the Constitution to enslave us, but rather to empower us - and to protect us from either tyranny or mob rule.

In fact, you can think of the Constitution as the chariot which tamed the power of a pair of dangerous, belligerent snorting horses named Majority and Minority.

Those two stallions, not quite thoroughbreds, always want to go in opposite directions, and without the constitutional chariot of a republic to harness them, they would always be trying to overthrow each other. Majority is the bigger, meatier horse and has the natural advantage to dominate and destroy the much smaller Minority, but that does not mean the matter can be so simply decided. It turns out that even the tiny Minority can use terror and fear like a set of pincer teeth to keep Majority at bay, and in some ways that is an even more frightening picture.

So the strictures of the Constitution, which keep both the rough and tumble Majority and lean and hungry Minority in check, were clearly a brilliant feat of social engineering. You certainly would not want to tamper with it.

But on the other hand you probably would not want to leave it alone either, anymore than you would leave your 1967 Rolls Royce alone. You would not let just anyone mess with it, but you would surely expect a certified mechanic to do the necessary work to keep it running in smooth order.

That finally is what I realized about the Constitution, too. For a long time I mistakenly thought that if we had a constitutional convention, it would be like throwing dynamite into the chariot. But then I realized that a constitutional convention was not about tampering with the Constitution, but rather about bringing in an expert mechanic to look at it and figure out why it is chugging and clicking instead of whirring and purring.

Because the expert about the Constitution is not a blue-blood senator, and it is not the president, nor even the good men and women of the Supreme Court. The expert about the Constitution, and the one mechanic you would want to call in if things started to go wrong is "We the People."

Which is why a great many people who give lip service to the ideals of democracy quiver at the thought of actually trying it. Such people, and I'm not at all sure if they are mostly liberals or mostly conservatives, will tell you that the Constitution is too valuable and rarefied to be messed with by common folk.

But one thing our Founding Fathers were is ingenious. They seemed to anticipate many of the conflicts that would inevitably ensue in a constitutional republic, and provided safety valves in the somewhat ambiguously worded document so that if at all possible the Constitution would be self-correcting as the decades and then centuries passed.

Most obviously they provided for amendments to the Constitution to be made when experience and reason taught us that something was amiss. That amendment process has been used sparingly - just 27 times in the past 220 years - which is testament to the enduring quality of the workmanship in the original Constitutional Convention.

But we should not assume that a lack of change is automatically a good thing. It took, for instance, 78 years, from the ratification of the original Constitution to the admission in the 13th Amendment that slavery ought to be abolished. Other changes came more quickly, such as changing the way presidents and vice presidents were elected in 1804 or repealing the prohibition on liquor just 14 years after it was first passed in 1919.

Change is built into the Constitution, but for the most part the changes made have been relatively minor, relatively technical. Those which are most significant such as the addition of the income tax or giving women the right to vote show how powerful a document the Constitution is, and how much it shapes our society as a whole.

But up until now, all change to the Constitution has been in the hands of Congress. The amendments proposed have all originated there, and been approved by two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate, then ratified by three-quarters of the states. Considering that challenging process, it is surprising that any amendments have ever been approved, let alone the important ones.

That slow and deliberate quality has served us well, and protects us from mistakes which could harm or even imperil our great republic. But such mistakes, have, of course, been with us from the beginning, perhaps most recognizably in slavery and denial of full citizenship to women. Whether we act quickly or slow, we are subject to the same human foibles as all other people, and fool ourselves to think otherwise.

But we also possess the same human majesty which was celebrated and exemplified by our Founding Fathers, and by such token we should not be afraid to seize the power granted to us by our forbears and by God in order to revivify the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed" and "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…"

It may be scary to think about changing the Constitution, but living in fear of consequences is a guarantee of paralysis, and paralysis is a guarantee of atrophy and ultimately dissolution. Jefferson was our foremost political philosopher at the start of our republic, and he argued forcefully for change in the Constitution that would keep it current and honest. Indeed, he promoted the idea of a constant freshening of government by the forced entry of We the People into the halls of power in every generation.

Thus, taking my cue from Jefferson, I am calling for a constitutional convention to quickly and once and for all establish the duty and necessity of the commander in chief acting to secure the borders of the country against foreign intrusions of any kind and establishing the authority of the Congress to regulate legal immigration but never to provide blanket amnesty of any kind for illegal residents of this country.

Such drastic action is necessary because it now becomes apparent that the people of the United States can no longer depend on the Congress of the United States to do our business. A constitutional convention may well be the only way to deprive the Senate of its plan to legitimize as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and change the face of America for all time.

The Senate's smug, secret plan was introduced two weeks ago with great fanfare, as if the people might not notice that our sovereignty was being sold for a mess of pottage. But even if that "comprehensive plan" goes away in defeat, the problem will remain. There is no enforcement of border security or of immigration control. We certainly cannot depend on the Senate to fix the problem.

Perhaps, the senators are so out of touch with reality that they are truly convinced that what they are doing is supported by the great mass of the American people. Or perhaps the Senate is convinced it can get away with anything it wants regardless of the people. I'm not sure which of those delusions is more accurate, but it leads me to decide that the time has come for Jefferson's ideal to be implemented.

Let's take back our Constitution, and take back our country.