by Mike Nichols/Publisher January 18, 2021 12:17 p,m.
Over a million peaceful demonstrators were in Washington January 6 to express their belief the presidential election was fraudulent. Some followed Antifa posers into the U.S. Capitol. Now all Trump supporters are branded "insurrectionist." (Photo: Dan Qualls/ACV Reports)
We have entered into perilous waters in the United States. In a matter of two and a half months we have gone from a great hope in the potential reelection of President Donald J. Trump to the brink of a new civil war or a "second revolution." Conservatives, Trump supporters, are demonized, banned from social media and labeled "radicals" or "insurrectionists."
There are people who claim to love this country calling for an armed revolt, the sooner the better. This would be a grave mistake. It could come to that, eventually, but now is not the time. Prayerfully, it never will be.
How have we come to this point?
We were not paying attention. Or we did not care enough to act on the warning signs. There are various reasons. Those warnings began appearing with the rise of the Centralist movement in 1804. In less than a generation from the Revolutionary War, the sins of self-aggrandizing power, privilege and prestige infected our government and diverted representatives and senators from the path of republican democracy and away from the preservation of our freedom and liberties.
Over the intervening 216 years, our government has become more and more centralized and the force of the Tenth Amendment has been criminally ignored. Today's Federal Government should more appropriately be called the Centralist Government as it has usurped powers delegated in the Amendment to the States, claimed a right of taxation that the Constitution never advocated and allowed those elected to public office to enrich themselves by the powers of those offices without fetter or anything other than self-accountability.
Those elected officials could do none of these things if the Constitution was followed to the letter. Our Founders and Framers never intended for a "professional government." They were farmers, shop owners, brewers, and yes, lawyers. These men who defied the most powerful nation on Earth and won, expected that men of their same honor, vision and work ethic would continue in perpetuity to come to Washington for two or three elections cycles and then return to their shops, factories, law offices and farms to make way for the next generation of lawmakers.
These last two centuries have proven that such honor is dead, such vision blind and such work ethic is replaced by greed and avarice. The lawmakers of the post-Jeffersonian Era have gathered as much filthy lucre to their coffers as possible while making excuses for not retiring to their homes, claiming they and they alone should continue to lead and guide this nation. In other words, to hell with the Founders and Framers, they couldn't possibly know what the future held and only each succeeding group of politicians — a word that didn't exist in 1776 except as a curse — could navigate the treacherous waters of government and an ever-fluctuating world order.
Founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) Vladimir Lenin introduced the idea of "democratic centralism" to the 10th Party Congress in 1928. (Photo: Soviet Archives)
Let me be clear, democracy as viewed through the lens of a republican form of government cannot coexist with centralism. This has been proven time and time again, most recently by the failed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR consisting of Russia and its satellite states from 1917-89) and by the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP from 1949-Present).
The democratic centralism of the USSR purported to combine two opposing forms of party leadership: Democracy, which allows for free and open discussion, and central control, which ensures party unity and discipline. At the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party (1921), the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin declared that the party was not a debating society in which all opinions were tolerated and freely expressed.
Instead, he claimed, it was a “vanguard” party whose role as leader of the revolution demanded extreme discipline and a high level of organization. professed to combine two opposing forms of party leadership: Democracy, which allows for free and open discussion, and Central Control, which ensures party unity and discipline.
Unrestrained discussion, Lenin insisted, would produce intraparty disagreements and factions and prevent the party from acting effectively. On the other hand, absolute control by a centralized leadership would discourage new ideas from lower-level party members. Therefore, Lenin argued, free discussion within the party should be tolerated and even encouraged up to a point, but, once a vote was taken, all discussion had to end. The decision of the majority should constitute the current party line and be binding upon all members.
The principles of democratic centralism were adopted by the 10th Congress in the form of a resolution written by Lenin, “On Party Unity.” In practice, particularly under the leadership of Joseph Stalin from 1928-53, democratic centralism was much more “centralist” than “democratic,” as party congresses became infrequent occasions for rubber-stamping decisions made by the top party leadership.
If that doesn't sound familiar, you aren't paying attention. Again, power, privilege and prestige in individuals thwarted any slim hope a socialist state ever has for success.
It is that exact same centralization that is now advocated by our own Democratic Party today, joined by a not insignificant number of Republicans.. Knowing the direction the USSR of the 20th Century and the current CCP have taken, we must be concerned for the future of our nation. Venezuela was the richest Latin American democratic republic of the 20th Century and it took less than a generation to destroy it with socialist-fascist centralization and individual power, privilege and prestige,
An Article V Convention is a formal seeking of a redress of grievances as mentioned in the First Amendment that allows the people to restore power to themselves and wrench it from the hands of a corrupt government. (Photo Illustration: AVC Reports)
Still, we have multiple options before we foment revolution. In fact, they are already calling us insurrectionists thanks to a small number of Trump supporters insanely following Antifa posers and actors into the U.S. Capitol Building January 6. Beginning a shooting war at this juncture would be insanity, crushing democratic republicanism before we could reasonably reassert it as the intent of our Founders and Framers.
What do we do, then?
For one, we continue to peacefully protest against the direction the Democrats want to take our nation. We let our elected representatives know where we stand and that if they fail to follow our lead — the lead of their bosses as an informed electorate written into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — they will suffer the consequences at the ballot box on November 8, 2022 and November 5, 2024. Washington works for us. We don’t work for them. We have been lax in reminding them of that fact, and it is time to overwhelm them and their ability to commit fraud and election theft by our sheer numbers.
For another, we can counter any unconstitutional actions of the 117th Congress through an Article V Convention of States. There is a great deal of bad information, warning against such an action, out there on the internet. Do not believe it. The Article V Convention is the tool our Founders and Framers gave us to correct the errors of an unpatriotic, diseased government drunk on the sins of power, privilege and prestige.
The Article V Convention requires that only specific amendments for consideration can be put before a Convention of States. Those considerations will have been made by the collective state legislatures from a list provided by the petitioning organization to call such a Convention. Each state at the Convention can send as many delegates as they wish but the states each get only one vote. So even if California or New York send a thousand delegates, the delegation only gets one vote.
Three-fourths of the Convention must approve the measures, as must three-fourths of the states within seven years of their passage. In short, an Article V Convention cannot rewrite the Constitution. It can only write Amendments to our existing framework.
There is much that can be done before we resort to a shooting war. It would be completely detrimental to our cause, as it would have been for our forefathers for the 20 years leading up to April 15, 1775. A few badly misguided people who followed the Antifa thugs through the doors of the Capitol have give our entire patriotic movement a bad name.
We must act reasonably, not rashly. Work for peaceable solutions, prepare for the unthinkable and distasteful, as that may ultimately become our last actionable resort.
But again, that time has not come.
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