Amending the Constitution - the right way

(Update: The commenter calling himself "statusquobuster" has provided us with the url to the site of a group calling itself "Friends of the Article V Convention," or FOAVC. I've embedded the hyperlink to the site, as you can see, within the group's name itself. Y'all be sure and check it out, there's some interesting information I certainly wasn't aware of gathered at the site.)

My good friend, Mike Tams, has a nice post up over at the AFB concerning the Article V provisions for amending the U.S. Constitution, ummmm, constitutionally. Since this has been one of my favorite topics of discussion ever since I first discovered the distinctive provisions of Article V a few years ago, Mike's post really resonates with me...

As I said in my comments to the post, there are basically three methods of amending the constitution, only two of which are provided for in Article V. The other method - the liberal method - is illegitimate precisely because it is in the truest sense of the term "extra-constitutional." And by the way, my fellow AFBers know that when I hear the term "unconstitutional" bandied about, by liberals or conservatives, I usually just dismiss it out of hand. Why? Because first of all to many conservatives, anything "liberal" is considered unconstitutional, and vice versa. And second, since the people retain ultimate and final authority to themselves, it is they themselves who will ultimately determine what is or isn't "constitutional" either directly or indirectly.

Now, as a conservative and a traditionalist, I find it thoroughly non-traditionalist and non-conservative to alter the existing constitution by any means other than that provided for in the constitution itself. So when liberals use their preferred (extra-constitutional) method of amending the constitution -the federal courts- so effectively in establishing as dominant the destructive ideology of liberalism in America, I can think of but one proper, legitimate, and effective remedy: a constitutional amendment via the second provision of article V restricting the self-destructive influence of liberalism itself - a return to balanced constitutional government. Indeed, if this is not the purpose of having a written constitution, not to mention the second of the article V provisions itself, then I don't know what is.

And by the way, for anyone wondering what such an amendment would look like, or read like, I'll refer you to Lawrence Auster's skeletal amendment proposal from a couple of months back as I recall. This VFR article is permanently linked in the left sidebar of this blog under the heading Select VFR Articles.