Why would a prominent professor supposedly in favor of having the nation's second constitutional convention organize a symposium where the keynote speaker is dead set against a convention?  And why pack the three subsequent panels with people against a convention?  I kept asking myself these questions as I attended the recent symposium that Larry Sabato had the audacity to title "National Constitution Convention."

On the Friday before July 4 Republican Senator Arlen Specter showed his respect for the U.S. Constitution and his anger about President Bush's repeated pissing on it by introducing the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007.  What happens to this crucial bill will test both congressional integrity and courage.

The frog-in-boiling water model helps us understand political upheavals: how citizens wake up early enough (or too late) to respond to social and economic oppression.  Sometimes the greed and arrogance of Ruling Classes makes them careless and social waters heat too quickly.  Sensing doom, alert citizen-frogs escape or revolt.  Or they stay complacent and boil.  The Bush Administration has turned the heat up on us, explaining why nearly 75 percent of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track and 70 percent think the economy is worsening.

There are numerous reasons to admire you, as I have for many years.  Clearly you are running for president as a Republican, rather than a third party candidate, for the sole purpose of getting media and public attention not available to those outside the two-party duopoly.  In last night's debate among Republican presidential candidates you proudly described yourself as a "champion of the Constitution."  However, you are missing a major opportunity to demonstrate your courage and allegiance to our constitutional republic.

Joel S. Hirschhorn

What is this thing called democracy?  So easy to talk about, so difficult to make real.  Pure democracy is not what our Founders gave us.  Who would want a simple majority to control the minority?  Instead, America was given a representative democracy within a constitutional republic where laws that protect all people trump majority rule.  Standing between majority-won elections and government power are elected representatives: writing, overseeing and implementing laws.  But when you can no longer trust the elected representatives what happens to American democracy?  It becomes an oxymoron.

It's hard to avoid labels.  I am a proud political dissident.  Could the majority of Americans be dissidents?  Think of the two-thirds of the country that believe the nation is on the wrong track, the 52 percent that believe politicians are dishonest, the majority that do not vote, and the vast majority that think of themselves as centrists, libertarians, moderates or independents, rather than liberals, Democrats, conservatives or Republicans.  And definitely think of the many thousands of Americans out in the streets in recent months to protest the Iraq war, and the larger numbers reading Internet sites to sidestep the mainstream corporate media.  Dissidents exist because placing faith in mainstream politicians is as delusional as George W. Bush believing that sending more American soldiers into the Iraq cauldron is justified.  It flies in the face of reality, experience and sanity.

You may not want to know this.  Americans have been successfully brainwashed to fear exactly what their revered Constitution gives them the right to have.  Those smart Framers of the Constitution decided that we needed exactly what the establishment, pro-status quo elitists who run our plutocracy do NOT want us to have.  There is even a well funded semi-secret group organized to prevent what we the people have a right to.  

Has the brainwashing worked?  You bet it has.  In the absence of public furor, for over 200 years Congress has not done what Article V of the Constitution says it "shall" do.  Congress has never issued a call for an Article V convention of state delegates to consider constitutional amendments, in response to two-thirds of state legislatures asking for one.  That numeric requirement - the only specified requirement in Article V - has been satisfied, with 50 states submitting over 500 requests.  Such a convention operating under authority of the Constitution would be a fourth, impermanent branch of the federal system, not beholding to the three permanent branches.  Such independence has been cartooned into a frightening monster.

No matter how awful you think our government and political system have become, odds are you do not know about this travesty of justice, an incredible failure to honor our fabled Constitution.  This failure has removed the sovereignty of we the people, and made Congress much more powerful than it should be.  Let me acknowledge that even though I have been pegged as "Democracy's Mr. Fix It," until recently I too was ignorant about this blatant disregard for a key part of our Constitution.

Our Founders were acutely aware of the need to create a mechanism for we the people to, when necessary, circumvent the political power of the federal government.  They built in a critically important form of direct democracy that, however, our elected MISrepresentatives have refused to implement.  Here it is: Article V of our Constitution specifies two distinct routes to amending our Constitution: "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress..."