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Richard Munro's avatar

Amending the Constitution where needed, YES. I can think of a few important examples Replacing it would be a stupidity in my personal opinion. It could be the first step towards the end of constitutional government. Too many people today are influenced by totalitarianism and fanaticism. If they could they would tear up the Constitutional and leave us a tyrannical government.

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Jim Guleke's avatar

And I thought I was going to enjoy a leisurely Saturday afternoon watching a horse race from New York and a baseball game from Palo Alto, not contemplating weighty questions raised by this new essay.

If by order of thirty-four states, Congress set a place and time for a new convention, if the convention met and wrote a new Constitution, which specified that it would take effect for the first thirty-eight (not all 50) states that ratify, where would that leave the non-ratifiers? Where would it leave the Constitution? Where would that leave the old federal government? Where would that leave property presently in federal ownership and control?

How could a new constitution, then in effect for the ratifying states, have any authority over non-ratifying states, their citizens, their property, and the federally owned property-parks, courthouses, buildings, highways, military bases, and nuclear weapons, then located in those non-ratifying states, military bases located in other countries through leases with those countries, naval vessels in international waters, aircraft in international airspace and in outer space, and the like? What about treaties made with other foreign governments? With a “new government” wouldn’t all those treaties be no longer binding, at least arguably, on the ratifying states or on the foreign governments? If the old federal government would continue to operate under the existing Constitution and in those states that did not ratify the new constitution, why wouldn’t federal assets remain with them?

I have probably taken around ten oaths, pledges, and vows in my life, and in four of the five oaths, I pledged to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. If Texas ratified the new constitution, would I then be relieved of my obligations and duties to the Constitution of the United States?

The “new” constitution cannot be truly a new constitution, but an amendment, perhaps writ large and grossly, of the existing Constitution of the United States, and be binding upon all of the states, including the non-ratifying ones, as long as three fourths of the states did ratify it. Or, more pragmatically, as happened in 1790, when Rhode Island was the last of the original thirteen states to ratify the Constitution, now when every state ratifies it.

Otherwise, we have a great problem of legitimate succession of power and authority. Isn’t that the problem that all empires have experienced, from the Mongol Empire; Egyptian and Chinese Dynasties; Greek, Roman, Holy Roman, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, Austrian, Russian andJapanese Empires?

And more currently, isn’t that really why billions are being spent and thousands dying in Ukraine? Nasty knots these questions of constitutional law tie.

Jim Guleke

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