Will The USA Be Stuck With Intervention For Foreseeable Future?

 Does That Future Include Us Non-Interventionists?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Remember, governing affairs, almost to a fault, almost all affairs of government have something to do with foreign policy.  If you’re not going to be able to stop, if it’s not possible for the U.S. to be non-interventionist in foreign affairs, then I would argue that it’s not possible for the same government then to be non-interventionist in domestic affairs.  They’re the same.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I know there’s been this series of debates and presentations in Virginia about the prospect of an Article V Amendment Convention.  There was a meeting last night that continued this discussion.  Once upon a time here on this show we used to talk often about an Article V Amendment Convention, yes, if you’re wondering, long before that certain someone’s book came out.  As a matter of fact, in April of 2010, we held a symposium at the XM studios to discuss an Article V Amendment Convention and some of the things that may be accomplished out of it.

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Now, there’s something interesting that’s going on here with this, and that is that as more people are talking about an Article V Amendment Convention and are discussing it as a means to do certain things, one of the most popular ones is to propose a balanced budget amendment, which I would think is advisable.  One of the problems that we are encountering is that the Constitution is notoriously and the union of states are notoriously averse to holding or calling said convention, almost to a fault.

There have only been three instances that I’m aware of that an Article V Amendment Convention was actually a possibility.  One of them would have been around the time of the campaign to repeal prohibition.  If prohibition had not been repealed, or Congress wasn’t going to act to propose an amendment to send to the states for ratification, then the states were going to call their own convention, and they were going to get prohibition, the constitutional amendment that made prohibition possible, they were going to get it repealed.  It was going to be repealed.

Around the time of the election of Ronald Wilson Reagan, there was great concern over budget deficits that were amounting into almost $100 billion.  No, not that!  Yeah, $100 billion was a big whoop-de-doo at the time.  Many states were signing onto a convention so that a balanced budget amendment could be proposed and could be voted on.  President Reagan, in his speeches during the campaign and in the early days of his administration had promised that that would be job one and that he would tackle that.  Many people, believing the president to be honest and true, backed off.  That convention died.

The most famous, or should be the most famous push of all, for an Article V Amendment Convention would have been when the Bill of Rights was proposed.  I bet many of you didn’t know that.  Patrick Henry, who ran the Virginia Legislature, immediately after the State of Virginia had ratified the Constitution, Henry, along with the governor of New York, George Clinton, along with other anti-federalists who were still smarting from having been hornswoggled into ratifying the Constitution that they did not want to ratify and had grave fears about, were, as soon as the ratification instruments were going into effect and the Constitution would go into effect with the meeting of the first Congress, they were already in the beginning stages of planning a new convention if little Jimmy Madison and company did not deliver on amendments.  Of course, they did, but there was threat, and the State of Virginia actually passed resolution, telling — a letter was sent to the first Congress informing them: Either you give us amendments or we’re going to call a convention.  We’ll undo what you just did, pal.  So the rest, as they say, is history.

There have been three instances where an Article V Amendment Convention could have come to fruition.  I bring this up because there is a line in this — I think this is pertinent today.  At The Atlantic, David A. Graham writes this, “Is Rand Paul a True Believer or a Flip-Flopper?”

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One way around this question is the view that Jesse Benton, a friend and aide to both Pauls, espouses to Lizza: … “Ron is much more of a purist about non-intervention, and that’s fine, but in many ways Ron’s foreign policy can exist only in an academic sense. It’s just not possible for the United States to be non-interventionist…”

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Mike:  Let’s just say for a moment that Benton is correct.  Let’s just use that phrase “It’s just not possible for the United States to be non-interventionist.”  If that’s true, if that’s the case and it’s not possible, that means that many of us then will, barring a conversion to some form of neoconservatism or even worse, progressivism, or even worse, outright Marxism, many of us then will live the rest of our natural-born days out as citizens of the United States and we will live out our days watching our kids and grandkids grow, knowing and having to live with and having to suffer under an interventionist government.

Remember, governing affairs, almost to a fault, almost all affairs of government have something to do with foreign policy.  If you’re not going to be able to stop, if it’s not possible for the U.S. to be non-interventionist in foreign affairs, then I would argue that it’s not possible for the same government then to be non-interventionist in domestic affairs.  They’re the same.  It takes the same attitude, takes the same commitment, takes the same threat of force, takes the same will to impose your will on a reticent population.  They’re the same.  That means just drop all of the pretentions and drop any possibility that the tyranny of the consolidated government is ever going to abate.  It will be here.  It will be with us.  We’ll be stuck with it.  We’ll suffer under it.  We can protest against it, we can raise our voices mightily, but it’s not going anywhere.

If that is the case, if that is true, then let’s go back a couple years to when we first started the Article V Amendment Convention talk and when the possibility was held out that an Article V Amendment Convention wouldn’t produce any results either.  What then was the alternative?  Well, folks, the alternative is, if it’s true what I just talked about — I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t say yea or nay, although I do think that Benton is probably more correct than he’s incorrect — if that’s the case but you desire to be a non-interventionist, and you desire to live in some republic or country or union of republics or countries that is non-interventionist, or as non-interventionist as you can be, what are your alternatives then?

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What’s the alternative?  You can expatriate and move to Switzerland.  You can expatriate and move to Hungary.  Scotland could have been in play but Scotland is out of play for the moment.

So what’s the alternative?  If you rule out expatriation and you rule out moving somewhere else, what’s the alternative?  It would seem to me there are a couple of alternatives, but it would seem to me that the alternative that holds out the biggest prospect for success would be the alternative that would seek to then stitch together constituencies — you’d have to start locally — that shared a common theme and interest with the plan and the goal of ultimately becoming independent.

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This may happen across entire states.  It may happen across entire regions.  It may happen inside states, in small regions.  That’s the opportunity.  Those are the alternatives.  Otherwise, the consolidation that we live under, suffer under today is here for good.  Remember, it took Rome almost 400 years to be dismantled from within and for the Roman Empire to ultimately crumble.

End Mike Church Show Transcript