U.S. Representative Thomas Massie reveals several problems with a balanced budget amendment.
▶️ Watch Thomas Massie’s Full Presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsYk4kL0vAw&t=355s
🚫 Stop A ConCon:
https://www.jbs.org/con-con/
#ThomasMassie #BBA #StopConCon
Small organized groups have changed history. It’s the highly motivated and tireless minority that is successful in overcoming the majority’s apathy.
Our small, local chapters are layers of strength that, when working in concerted action, multiply into an educational army that has overcome opposing forces many times our size and many times our budget!
Being a Chapter Leader is the single most important role in The John Birch Society. These leaders are integral in ensuring a chapter is actively working on the issues, as well as recruiting new members.
To start a local chapter in your community, start by contacting your local field coordinator, who will assist you in this process. To find your coordinator, click here.
The hub of member activity in a community is the chapter. The more chapters, the more activity, and the faster you can educate the electorate and begin to see officials obey the Constitution and the electorate holding them accountable.
“It is the leadership that is the most demanding, most exacting of its followers, not the one which asks the least and is afraid to ask more, that achieves really dedicated support. …we need disciplined pullers at the oars, and not passengers in the boat.” Robert Welch
By stepping up and leading you will receive the rewards back two-fold. Not only will you be at the forefront of the battle for liberty, you will also get the opportunity to see your chapter grow. Are you up for the challenge?
Are you ready to maximize freedom and join the front lines in reducing goverment’s size, cost, and intrusiveness? Take the first step in furthering your education today. Our step-by-step education empowers anyone at any level of awareness.
Whether you’re passionate about protecting the Constitution from a constitutional convention, getting the United States out of the United Nations, or ending our participation in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), The John Birch Society provides the most comprehensive information to get you started. By beginning your education progress today, America will be one step closer to preserving freedom and restoring liberty.
The John Birch Society is a non-partisan civics and education organization. We are concerned Americans from many races, religious beliefs, and national origins. Since we were founded on December 9, 1958, we have been men and women of good character, humane conscience, and religious ideals who have worked together to safeguard the Constitution.
The John Birch Society is principled, coordinated, and effective activism. Members are locally organized into small chapters and follow a National Agenda. By working as one, members create great pressure and influence originates locally and is felt nationally.
Our mission is to bring about less government, more responsibility, and — with God’s help — a better world by providing leadership, education, and organized volunteer action in accordance with moral and Constitutional principles. The John Birch Society enthusiastically endorses the U.S. Constitution, and we have worked for over 60 years toward educating and activating Americans to abide by the original intent of the Founding Fathers.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence, 1776
The John Birch Society endorses the timeless principles of the Declaration of Independence which proclaimed that our personal rights come from God, not from government.
A solution is only as good as your understanding of the problem. The Society labors to expose the forces that seek to undermine national independence, rewrite or abolish the Constitution, build a one-world government, or erode our personal liberties.
America has many enemies both foreign and domestic waging war on its very foundation. We seek to awaken sleeping patriots who will defend the Constitution and educate an apathetic population. Will you stand in the gap in America’s time of need? Our 10-Step National Agenda exposes globalist plans and works toward reining in an out-of-control federal government that these forces are using to satisfy their own agenda. Learn more about JBS, apply for membership, or talk to your Local Leadership for opportunities to get connected and involved.
The JBS Agenda details our entire agenda and serves as a reference manual for members. It is our game plan for securing our God-given freedoms and rights by stopping the globalists’ drive towards a UN world government. In addition, our monthly JBS Bulletin fosters concerted action by our national network of chapters by providing direction to members regarding the latest priorities and specific action requests for the various Agenda items.
Click here for a PDF of the JBS Agenda booklet.
A Constitutional Convention is an official meeting of representatives of the people of a state or nation for the purpose of writing or amending its constitution. Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides two ways to propose amendments:
The first method has been used 27 times; the second method has never been used. Any proposed amendments would have to be ratified by three fourths of the states before being added to the Constitution.
An Article V Constitutional Convention would threaten individual rights and our nation’s very form of government. Individual rights are secured by the Constitution, and a Con-Con would have the inherent power to become a “runaway” convention that could completely change the Constitution. How do we know such a convention could become a “runaway”?
The preceding Annapolis Convention of 1786 recommended a convention with delegates from all 13 states to devise changes to the then-government Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States prior to the current Constitution. These revisions, or changes, to the Articles of Confederation, would need to be agreed to by Congress Assembled (the Congress under the Articles of Confederation) and then be “afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state” as required by Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation. Early in 1787 Congress issued a resolution recommending that a convention be held at Philadelphia to “render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government.” Likewise, the commissions of all 12 states (Rhode Island chose not to participate) instructed their state’s delegate to render the federal constitution to exigencies (or to meet the urgent crisis) of the government. All 12 commissions and a letter from the government of Rhode Island reminded the delegates that whatever came forth from the convention had to be confirmed by the legislatures of every state, in accordance to Article XIII.
Instead of simply revising or amending the Articles of Confederation, delegates at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 replaced them with an entirely new Constitution. The newly proposed Constitution established a more national form of government as opposed to the strictly federal government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. Justifying these changes not authorized by their state commissions, Edmund Randolph, a delegate from Virginia, urged fellow delegates: “[t]here are great seasons when persons with limited powers are justified in exceeding them, and a person would be contemptible not to risk it.” And rather than adhering to the Article XIII requirement that any alternations would have to be “confirmed by the legislatures of every State,” the newly drafted Constitution would be ratified in accordance to its own mode of ratification found in Article VII.
On September 13, 1788, with only 11 of the 13 states having ratified the new Constitution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution declaring that it “had been ratified.” North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified and would not do so until nearly a year and a half later. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th state to ratify the Constitution.
What was originally a “limited” convention for the “sole and express purposes of revising the Articles of Confederation” had transformed into a runaway convention producing an entirely brand new Constitution. With such clear precedent, who is to say it will not happen again?
Article V convention promoters make many false claims. For example, they complain loudly if you refer to an Article V convention as a constitutional convention. They insist that everyone refer to an Article V convention as a convention of the states or an amendments convention. However, the widely used Black’s Law Dictionary defines “constitutional convention” in a way that clearly includes an Article V convention. Some editions even go on to explicitly mention an Article V convention as an example of a constitutional convention.
Convention promoters also say the Article V convention is for reining in Big Government; however, the Founders said it was only for amending errors in the Constitution.
Soon after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, the Convention of States Project (COS) began to deceptively claim him as an endorser of their initiative to bring about an Article V convention. They used a 1979 quote from Scalia in which he endorsed holding a constitutional convention, meaning from the context an Article V convention, but didn’t tell the reader what year the quote was from.
The other deceptive aspect of claiming Scalia as an endorser is that COS also did not quote Scalia’s very recent remarks in which he vigorously opposed a constitutional convention, such as his statement in 2014: “I certainly would not want a Constitutional Convention. I mean whoa. Who knows what would come out of that?”
JBS CEO Art Thompson raises some questions about the new drive for a constitutional convention (Con-Con) and recommends taking action to prevent a Con-Con by visiting The John Birch Society’s new “Choose Freedom — STOP A Con-Con” campaign web page at http://JBS.org/Con-Con
JBS CEO Art Thompson introduces The John Birch Society’s new “Choose Freedom — STOP A Con-Con” campaign to oppose the new drive for state legislatures to petition Congress to convene an Article V constitutional convention (Con-Con) at http://JBS.org/Con-Con
