Church & State w/ Mark Meckler Article V: Convention of States

Spokane Valley could become a sanctuary city. A different Houseman Caleb Collier says that this I'm. Proposing that the City of Spokane Valley issue of proclamation stating that our city is a Second Amendment sanctuary. Welcome to the. Fire today on Church and State the Convention of States with Mark Meckler. Hello Christian Patriots, and welcome to Church and State, where we drive morality and religion over tolerance and apathy. And I'm your host, Caleb Callier, once again, your favorite for all right shock Jock and the show that talks about politics and religion. Jesus Christ is our referee, so it's always nice and clean. Real quick, I'm gonna point you to the website Church and State dot Media. I want you to go here and fill out our registration form so you can get our newsletter and a personal phone call from yours truly. While you're there, check out some of our latest episodes and some of our incredible featured guests. And the person we're interviewing today, he will certainly be on this very very soon, so look forward to that. Also, check out some of our great affiliates. It's a great way for you to support us and get some items that you may need, so go check those out and of course hit the donate button for us. Please, ladies and gentlemen, take so much money to be a part of n OURBTV and newscasters and OBBM and we need your help and so if you can find it in your heart to give even as little as ten dollars a month, it means the world to us. Lastly, if you want to get Ahold of US Church and State seventeen seventy six at Proton dot me with that, let's go to our guests. Now. Mark Meckler should need no introduction. I'm sure most of you have probably heard of him, but he's a political activist. He's an attorney, a business executive, no one for co founding the Tea Party Patriots you remember them, and of course leading the Convention of States. Mark, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's so great to be with you. Thank you. Yeah, And I just want to let the audience know because this really speaks to character. When I was approached about having you on the show, I was forthcoming and said, hey, I have a lot of questions about the Convention of States and I've actually talked about it on the show before as being more in opposition to it, and you agreed to come on right away. Yeah. Look, I love to have these kind of discussions and the fact that we can disagree have the discussion. I'll learn stuff from you, You'll learn stuff from me. That's the way dialogue should be. Yeah, I completely agree with that. So first off, I mean, I suppose I need to congratulate you because you just had a victory in Kansas. Correct, Yeah, we did. Kansas became the twenty estate. So that's a huge threshold. It takes thirty four states to call a convention of state. So obviously we're well passed the halfway mark. And we had a huge victory in Kansas by a big margin. We passed the House there, we'd already passed the Senate. And what happened immediately after that is we passed the Senate committee. In South Dakota. We passed the Senate by a huge margin in South Dakota. That was a twenty four to nine vote. And I'll be headed out to South Dakota next week because we're going to be in the House else I think that's going to become state number twenty one. So let me ask you this. You've traveled all over the country. This is just a personal question that I am am enjoying. I've been traveling a lot for my work as well. I'm trying to hit all fifty states. I assume you have. The state that I feel is going to be the hardest for me to actually check off the list is North Dakota because I just don't see a reason to go there. You know, it's funny you would say that out of all fifty, I haven't been to North Dakota. It's literally the only one. I actually specifically scheduled a trip out there in September to meet with my grassroots so that I can check it off and be done with that item on the bucket list. So funny that out of all fifty, you and I haven't made it to North Dakota. You know, it's just I'm sorry for anybody that's in the audience. It's like, hey, that's my state. But you got to admit, there's not a lot there. There's not a lot to see. Yeah, So I'm excited to make it out there. I mean, there is a lot of natural beatup. Been really close to the border. People have said to me, Oh, Mark, you should have just driven across the border so you can claim it. I don't like to go to states like that. If I'm going to go to a state, I really want to go to the state, and so I'll be there, I'll be at the capitol. I'll get a chance to actually visit the state and claim that. Check that off the bucket list. There you go. Yeah, I'm the same way. I don't let my wife claim airports because she tried to. That does not count whatsoever. All right, enough, fun, let's get into this. What exactly to the audience who may not be informed, what exactly is a convention of States? Yeah, I think that's the perfect question because most people don't know. So the Constitution in Article five contains the ways that we're allowed to amend our Constitution. The first way is the way we've always done it. We've gotten twenty seven amendments that way, and that's when Congress proposes an amendment. It takes two thirds of both houses to propose an amendment, and then it goes out to the states for ratification. It's just a suggestion, and it takes thirty eight states to ratify something. Three quarters of the states, and so that's how we've always done it. There's a second way, and that is when two thirds of the states agree to call a convention for proposing amendments. It's the goal is to give the states a mechanism essentially to override the federal government. The way that that got into the Constitution is really important and relevant. September fifteenth, seventeen eighty seven, was two days before the end of convention. Colonel George Mason stood up. He addressed the Assembly. He's the guy that was one of the prime authors of the Virginia Plan, one of the most influential guys there, and he said, we have a terrible problem with the Constitution. We've done is we've given the power to Congress to propose amendments, but not to the people acting through the states. And he asked the men assembled, are we really that naive that we believe that a federal government that becomes a tyranny will propose amendments to restrain its own tyranny. Now, I wish we had video, because I'm pretty sure they would have slapped their foreheads and laughed. The reality is we don't have video, but we have Madison's notes, and Madison's notes reflect something really interesting. No debate. It said nincom Latin abbreviation for no comment or no debate, and they unanimously put this right in the constitution. They understood we would come to this point no matter what where the federal government got out of control, wasn't listening to the people, and we would have to intervene on behalf of the states. So the way the process works is each state that wants to do this has to agree to pass the same resolution. You have to get thirty four matching resolutions. You do that by passing it in both houses of the state, and no governor's signature is necessary because it's not legislation, it's a resolution. So that's what we've done in twenty states so far. In our particular case, and again that it's very relevant. It's limited to three subject matter areas. The first is anything that would impose term limits on the federal government. And that's not just Congress, which is what most people think about, but we believe that you have to impose term limits on staffers and bureaucrats as well, otherwise you just empower them. It also would give you a power to impose term limits on the federal judiciary. It's something that I'm in favor of, maybe a certain age limit in the judiciary. The second is anything that would impose fiscal restraints, like a balanced budget amendment. Tax caps are spending caps. We all agree. I think thirty eight trillion is enough. I think one trillion was enough. It's really out of control. So we're going to have to do that to them. They're never going to do that to themselves. And then the final one is to take power from the federal government to remove jurisdiction put limits on them. This is something the Constitution did. It gave them seventeen enumerated powers. They now have something like seventeen thousand thanks to the federal judiciary. So we could say things like no more Department of Education, no more Department of Energy, no more health in human services, things that you and I probably agree the federal government shouldn't do. We can prevent them from doing constitutionally. So that kind of gives you an overview of what we're doing and what the process is. I got to tell you, you start talking about banning the Department of Education and so many of these other alphabet agencies libertarian in me. I'm starting to drool a little bit. It sounds really, really good. I mean, that is exciting to consider. What is the difference between a convention of states and a constitutional convention? Is there any difference. There's a huge difference. That's a crux question. And a lot of people accuse us of trying to call a constitutional convention. So I'm going to use a big legal word right now. Forgive me, I'm a lawyer, and we'll bring it down to normal people terms. But a constitutional convention is what's called a plenipotentiary convention. What that means is all powerful. They can draft a constitution from scratch. That's not what this is. This is a convention of states for proposing amendments that has to operate under Article five of our existing convention. So it cannot start from scratch, it cannot replace the Constitution. It can only do what the states authorize it to do. In this case, do things within those three subject matter areas sure. And so the original constitutional convention was actually not technically legal. I mean they've they've been sent to work on the Articles of Confederation, which were kind of a mess, and so they but they decided to roll with the Constitutional Convention. This was a good thing for us as Americans, and we've certainly as their posterity, we've we've benefited from it. But with this they would there be some pretty big risks because when I look at government these days, let's just say, I have some pretty deep concerns. Well you should, for sure, But you're gonna love this as a guy who loves history. I know you love history. Here's a little buried piece of history that's probably gonna make you feel better, which is what you said about that original Convention is not actually true. And there's a lot of reasons we believe it's true. I'll explain what those reasons are. But if you go back and you pull the commissions for the convention, the commissions are literally a piece of paper that each of the delegates brought with them to convention, and seven states empowered their commissioners before Congress even said anything. The commissions themselves, you can find those on our websites, actually have this language in them. They say the Commissioner is entitled to take all actions necessary to render the Federal Constitution adequate for the exigencies of the Union. It literally says all actions. There's no limitation. It actually does not refer to the Articles of Confederation. So the states knew exactly what they were doing. They sent their delegates to do whatever was necessary. There are actually two states that did not do that, Massachusetts and New York, and neither of those states voted because their delegates did not have the proper authority to vote in that convention. So this is a really important side project for me. If you think about the idea that we thought that the Convention was a runaway convention, it actually besmirches the reputations of the framers of the Constitution, And if we move ourselves back to that time intellectually and we think about what it was like. Honor was such a high value maintaining your honor and being honest that if I said to you, hey, I think you're a liar, you could say, here's a pistol, let's step outside. I'm going to kill you for saying that, and in most places that was legal. So imagine that the States sent these men, including by the way, George Washington, James Madison, and other really pre eminent people of the time, honorable we believe to be honorable men, and they all just said, yeah, we don't really care what the States say, we don't care what we're empowered to do. We're going to do whatever we want. That just doesn't make any sense. Imagine Washington, he's the president of the Assembly, he's in charge of that assembly. Imagine him saying, yeah, we don't really care what the States said, We're going to do whatever it want. Doesn't make sense. And the reality is, the historical record shows that those men had the authority to do what they did. Now, the reason we don't know that, or most people don't know that, is because after seven states empowered their delegations, Congress waged in and Congress did what they always do even today, which is they kind of, you know, finger to the wind and said, oh my god, the states are doing something, we better say this is our idea too. And they passed what they call a recommendation. So they recognized they didn't have the authority to call a convention. That's not in the Articles of Confederation. So they recommended that the states gathering convention. Now, they used similar language to what the states used, but they also added the language to amend the Articles of Confederation. So most historians, when they look back at the Convention. They never pulled those commissions. They looked at what Congress said and they said, oh, okay, this is what this was about, and they exceeded their authority. Those commissions actually didn't get pulled and read until Rob Nadelsen did the research about thirteen years ago. And if you talked to Professor Rob Nadelson, he would say he thought he was going to find out they exceeded their authority. He actually went to the National Archives. I like to imagine him sort of as Indiana Jones, you know, pulling the papers out of blowing them off. I'm sure it wasn't like that, but he actually pulled out these actual commissions and read the language, and he was completely blown away because the narrative about the Framers had been historically entirely incorrect. Interesting. And he was a memory serves me correctly, professor out of Montana and kind of the founder of the Convention of States movement. So he was a professor at University of Montana law. Myself and Michael Ferris were the founders of the movement. And he just came along and said, Wow, you guys are doing this. I have all this intellectual research I've done all the scholarship. You guys should probably use this scholarship. Okay, understood. So let me ask you this. As I was looking into this and I went to Blackstones, you know, which is obviously as a lawyer, you're very familiar with Blackstone. They claim there's really no difference between a Convention of States and a constitutional convention. You've heard this before, you're nod in your head. Can you break that down a little bit for me? Sure? I mean the first thing I would say, and I don't mean to be harsh about Blackstones, but there is not a lawyer in the world that would quote Blackstones. It's not considered an authoritative reference. If you ever as a lawyer, I'm a lawyer, if you ever put that in a brief or in a memo to a partner at a law firm, anything quoting Blackstones, you'd be laughed out of court, You'd probably lose your job. It's just not considered an authoritative resource. Also important to remember, Blackstones is an English legal dictionary. It is not an American legal dictionary, and so it's just not authoritative. And they're just wrong on that point according to American law. Okay, I appreciate you answering that question. Who would it during the Convention of States? Who would represent the will of the people. I know you've brought up these specific amendments that you want to the Constitution, and you know, on face value, they sound really really good. Term limits, balanced budget, yeah, restricting the government, getting rid of some of these alphabet agencies, maybe all of them. That's just the libertarian me. But look, that's my preference to regard with a clean slate. It sounds pretty pleasant. But who would be the representative of the people in this? So the way it works is once a state decides they want to go, they will select their own delegation. Once the convention is called, each state gets a single vote, but they could have one hundred people in their delegation if they want. And generally speaking, what we recommend as an organization, and what we're seeing the states do is once they pass the call for Convention, states are passing what we call a Delegate Selection Act, and it specifies how any individual state will choose their delegation. One of the things I love about that, and as a libertarian, you'll love this too, you're a federalist as well. I assume each town an anti federalist, to be honest. Well, I think that's that's a more accurate term. By the way, George Mason was an. Anti christ I love George Mason. No, he's the man. And so basically, by being a federalist today, what I mean is we believe the power should reside with the states and not with the federal government. I think the anti federalists have the better argument. Historically speaking, we actually know that for sure. So what happens, though, in a federal sense, is each state decides how they choose their delegation. So I've seen states that say, we're gonna have the Senate choose too, We're gonna have the House choose too, We're gonna have the governor choose one. They could actually do it by election in a state if they want, elect their slate of folks who are going to convention. Some states have said, you know, we're gonna have experts in subject matter areas. I like that idea too, somebody who understands government budgeting, somebody who understands the agencies, somebody who understands historical precedent around term limits and things like that. But then in the end that delegation. Whether it's one or one hundred, they're each going to get one vote at convention. Interesting, now, Donald Trump just came out and was talking about abolishing the seventeenth Amendment, which I'm all for. I'm sure you are as well. Yeah, in that scenario that you were talking about, these states that have decided, hey, the Senate gets to, the House gets to wouldn't the abolition of the seventeenth Amendment actually be better for you guys? Oh, I think it would be. I think it's way better for the states. I mean, this is a really interesting one to me. If I could just do one like one amendment, it would be the abolition of the seventeenth Amendment. And I want to clarify this. A lot of people don't even know what the seventeenth Amendment is, and don't feel bad if you don't. It's not been talked about in most of our lifetimes. The reality is the seventeenth Amendment changed our government more than almost anything else that's been done to the Constitution. We used to directly appoint our senators from our state legislatures. Now that the House and Senate would get together and they would say, we want this guy to represent us with the federal government. Why this was so important is because the House was meant to represent the people, meant to represent us as the population. The senators were meant to represent the state government, not the people. Right, It wasn't a representative branch in regard to the people. There's a reason this is so important. I want you to imagine we have unfunded mandates now, where the federal government says I'm going to make you do something state, and you don't really have a choice about it, and you're going to tax your people and you're going to run the program. How we say back then, the senators their main job was to say no. They would have just said no to that. There's no way if they came home and said, well, hey, Texas Legislature, I just voted for something that you're gonna have to tax your people. You have no power. It's actually stripping you of power. The Senate and the House would have got together and said you're fired. That's why they would in Donald Trump language, you are fired, and they would have got rid of them. Now, the interest of the senators really is not to represent their state. They're paid by Washington d C. They live in Washington, d C. They really represent the machine in DC. So if we could drive that back to the States, I would love that. Now, I want to say, in reality, that's a long shot. And the reason I say it's a long shot is because if you say to most people, on a very simplistic level, I'm going to take away your right to vote for your senator, they don't like the sound of that. And that's a very easy narrative. You have to explain that to people why that would be a good idea. The old adage in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing. I think that's a rough one, though, that's my fantasy one. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I think the seventeenth is actually worse than the sixteenth. I'd rather repeal the seventeenth and then tackle the sixteenth. But there was a lot of bad ones during the progressive era. Luckily we got rid of one of them at least. But anyways, interesting, and I love what you said there. I love your breakdown of the states versus the people because, and I'm not trying to attack the audience in any way, but the founding fathers understood that the people can be fickle. I mean not only do they understand people can be This is one of my pet peeves is people talk about we're saving our democracy and I want to tear my hair out. Yeah, we don't live in a democracy, right, And in fact, the framers of the Constitution, the founders of the Republic, were completely opposed to a generalized, broad democracy. They called it mobocracy. They understood and anybody who believes in any kind of minority rights should understand that if you have a pure democracy, what that means is the majority you will impose their will on the minority. And so our framers built a system that prevented that kind of mob rule. And so, yeah, I think this is really important, the way the power was distributed, and we really broke that with the seventeenth Amendment. I would completely agree with you on that one. So let's talk about the people a little bit because and once again trying to be gentle here. But you don't have to be gentle. I can handle it. Not with you, I mean specifically with the audience. I know you could handle it. But when we look at like public education, for example, which I like to call public indoctrination, there's not a lot being taught now the people feel good. The kids are feeling good, and they feel like they can be a puppy if they want to, and things like that. But we're not teaching them civics, we're not teaching them the Constitution. We're not even teaching them how to balance a checkbook. Is there a concern when we start talking about amending the Constitution? Yeah, I'm not concerned about that for multiple reasons. One is that, like you, I travel a lot. I'm all over the country. It's pretty rare. There's a week that I'm not traveling somewhere, and so, you know, this week, I'm in DC. Then I'll be headed to Oklahoma City, and so I'm getting out in the heart of America and the worst place in America. And then i live in Texas, and I'm pretty much everywhere, and so I talk to people everywhere I go, and I meet a lot of people everywhere I go that are studying the Constitution, that understand the Founding, that understand what the Framers intended, that understand their Bible. I think there's a huge revival going on in America. I think we are in the third Great Awakening in America right now. I think you don't often don't realize it when you're in it. I think if you ask George Whitfield, when he was riding around the country and preaching all over the country, how's it feel to be in the second grade awakening, I think he would have said, it's hard. I don't know how I feel it. It was just really hard. So I think we're in the third grade awakening. I think we're having a constitutional awakening in America. And in regard to calling a Convention of States right now, the biggest reason I'm not concerned is that the system that the Framers designed is, in my opinion, foolproof. One of the things they were so good at was they understood system systems of governance, structural systems of governance, and the structure for a Convention of States is set up such that, in my opinion, it's foolproof. Let me kind of explain what I mean by that. I might be jumping ahead here and we'll get into this more later, but just briefly, remember, anything that came out of convention has to be ratified by thirty eight states. I'll put out this offer to your listeners. I give out my personal email address, M Meckler at cos Action. There's nothing that you or I could think think of that we wouldn't like, that we wouldn't be comfortable with, that could be ratified by thirty eight states. I always ask people, send me the amendment, send me the thirty eight states. I've been making that offer for thirteen years now. I've never gotten a single email. I mean, you do bring up a fair point there. Most the states can't agree on anything, and thirty eight is quite a large number to get them to agree to this. So even along those lines, then, so we have the balance budget, we have term limits, and we have taking away some of these federal powers or taking back I should say to the states, yep, if thirty eight states need to ratify that, how convinced are you that this could even occur. So the way that we structured this intentionally was to look at the things that we thought were most important to fix the biggest problems in the federal government. It's not a silver bullet. We're not going to fix everything here. This is not I mean to be as a perfect example, this is not the spiritual fix. And if we don't go back to God, we're not going to fix America. No matter what we do. So this is one important tool we have in our tool belt. So I just want to be clear. I don't think we're going to fix everything. Two, as we designed it so that we'd fix the most important things. I think the three areas that I've mentioned are critically important to saving the country. And then four, we wanted to make sure that we had something that was broadly supported. You're not going to get an amendment pass that doesn't have seventy eighty percent support. So if you look at term limits, for example, there's eighty five percent support across the board, across the parties. There have been for literally thirty five years that it's been pulled. The same is true for a balanced budget amendment of some form, fiscal restraints on the federal government of some form. The same is true for getting rid of some of these agencies. Amazingly, I travel literally to California or New York, Illinois, very liberal states. They hate the Department of Education. They want to be able to do whatever they want. If you think about the Department of Education, all it does is take money out of the states. It filters it through the federal government, where they waste a whole bunch of it, and then they send it back to the states and tell them what they have to do to get their money back. Liberal states don't like it. Conservative states don't like it. There's broad support for doing away with the Department of Education, and I would argue that will transfer to some other departments as well. So I want to be clear. As a you call yourself a bibilitarian, I love that. I might steal that from you. I like it, please do. I generally refer to myself as a Conservatorian. And what I mean by that is at home, in my own life, I'm very conservative, and the closer it is to home, the more conservative I am. And so but I want the federal government pretty much out of our lives. That's very libertarian perspective, right. So the further away it is from the people, the less it really touches our daily lives. I just want them out of our daily lives, and so I think this model allows for that. And so this is why I think this is so important to do. Now. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I heard you talking about, specifically with the Department of Education was going back to the original intent of allowing the states to be com heecitive with each other. Is that correct? Yeah, I would take it further, but this isn't handled by the convention. I want the states to themselves. Once we get it back to the states, to drive it to the localities. I want the localities. I want the individual school districts. I want the individual schools to be competitive with one another. I'm a radical school choice guy, and I think school choice actually benefits the least among us the most. That's why I'm always amazed when like wealthy liberals oppose school choice. To me, then what they're doing is locking inner city kids into the worst schools. So yeah, I'm radically for school choice. First, you take it out of the hands of the federal government and get it back to the states, and then in my own state, I'm going to try and drive that as local as I possibly can. So, in regards to school choice, doesn't that allow the government into the schools right there? Because at this point the money is following the children and that allows In my case, my kids go to a private Christian school, and so if I'm doing school choice, we don't have them in Washington State. I'm behind enemy lines. But wouldn't that allow a foothold for the government into that school. You mean, because the money is following the kid. Yes, yeah, And I think there's a legitimate argument to be had about that among people who are conservatives on education. I understand the concerns about that, and I don't think those are illegitimate concerns. But that's a debate to be had once we get the power back to the local level. Okay, I understood, And I certainly don't want to take it from the greater conversation that we're having, so focusing back in on some of these things. Let's break down the balance budget amendment, the term limits. Term limits is a really interesting one, and I actually my heart kind of fluttered a little bit when you were talking about not just the politicians but the bureaucrats. I love that idea. You said, it's pretty much almost universally, I would say, favored Democrats Republicans really doesn't matter. Do you really believe that this will fix the system or potentially help the system, even though at this point they'll just usher in more politicians that are bought, more bureaucrats that are bought. I mean that deep state, the swamp is we're all familiar with. They're not going to say, oh man, they took us out, they beat us back to the drawing board. No, they're going to just funnel that money to a new bureaucrat, a new politician. Yeah, I think this is important to use two different words, and it's important that we are careful about the language we use. So you said, will it fix it or will it help? And will it fix it? Of course not, because you can't change human nature. And human nature is that where there's a lot of power, that the money is going to float to the power and the attempt to corrupt the power is always going to be there. I mean, that's Satan is the king of this earth, and he's going to try and do that no matter what. And so, no, it will not fix that. Will it help absolutely, Here's why it helps. You got to understand the nature of lobbying. Lobbying requires relationships, and lobbyists work over the long haul to build relationship with the people who are in office, with the bureaucrats, with the staffers, and so if they're is turnover, that makes a lobbyist job much more difficult. Look, Mitch McConnell has a whole cadre of lobbyists that he knows, that he has lunch with regularly, that he knows their families. He's known him for twenty years, twenty five and. Mark, I apologize, but this is a good cliffhanger. We hit that hard break. I hate interrupting guests. You know that about me. But hey, we're gonna come right back. He's agreed to come back. This is Caleb Collier with Church and State dot Media. This is a gentleman. If you're not sleeping on my pillow, do you even Patriots? I gotta tell you, this is the most wonderful stuff from a man who's given it all for your freedoms. Whether it be the pillow, the sheets, or the slippers. I absolutely adore my pillow. My pillow has the greatest products around. I know when I want to shuffle around in my bathrobe and slippers and yell at the neighbors. Of course, I'm buying from my pillow. 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It's a very powerful statement and can tell the people that are around you that, Hey, this isn't a guy that's just gonna bend over, that's just gonna say, hey, you know what. The government's the government this is They're gonna do what they're gonna do. No, I'm gonna fight. I was born for the storm and I'm gonna take it on. So check it out. Make sure to use the promo code, Church and State. And also, once again, please hit that donate button for us to keep us on the air. We really do need that support. All right, with that, let's go back to our guest Mark. I apologize again for interrupting you, but it was a good cliffhanger, so please continue on with what you were discussing. Yeah, I think people need to understand the nature of lobbying. Lobbying isn't just a one time thing. It's a relationship. So the lobbyists are here on Capitol Hill, they spend a lot of time going to lunches and dinners and events, and they build relationships over the long haul with these politicians. They know them, they know their families, they know what's important to them. So if you rotate people in office, if people have to leave Washington, DC, by the way, including staff and bureaucrats, I think if you rotate only the politicians, the staffers and the bureaucrats become more powerful. So I'm actually opposed to terminal limits alone if you don't have termal limits on the staffers and bureaucrats. But if you do that, it breaks that relationship cycle. They have to start over again with a new crop of people, and I think that's healthier. Again, does it fix the problem? The answer know, Does it help with the problem. The answer is yes, substantially. You know, I can appreciate that. I was a city council member for a while, and the staffers really ran it, and if they didn't like a councilman, they just waited them out, and ultimately they'd end up going forward on their goals, their agendas, and so I appreciate what you're saying there. Now, let's go to that balanced budget amendment, because I think we've already discussed getting rid of some of these alphabet agencies, which I'm fully on board with. But the balance budget amendment, I love the idea. You know, I'm a Ron Paul type of guy. I hate the federal Reserve, and we clearly have way too much debt. Everybody will talk about this. You don't operate your household like this, obviously, you can't run a government like this, and yet they continue to just spend, spend spend. If we have a balanced budget amendment and we have a cap, what assurances do we have that they'll actually, I don't know, abide by that. Well, I mean, I think the most important assurance we have is that I'm going to generalize on something, so don't smack me for generalizing. Here I'll explain the exceptions, but generally speaking, the federal government follows the Constitution. People hate when I say that, Conservatives, libertarians. Here's why they hate it, because they don't understand a fact. I live in the world of facts. We have two constitutions in America. Most people when they think of the Constitution, they think of the pocket constitution you can carry with you. It's short, it's beautiful, it's the sink. Yeah, you got one. So it's about four thousand words. Okay, you can order from the Government Publishing Office today, the United States Constitution. You'll pay about one hundred and thirty bucks for it, which seems outrageous for that little tiny thing. That's because it's not it's almost it's actually now over three thousand pages. It weighs over ten pounds. It contains every case ever issued by the Supreme Court interpreting that little constitution you just held up. That's the constitution under which we live, and the federal government, by and large lives according to that constitution. The way that you fix that, there are two methods to fixing that. One is that you go through the courts, and so in order to do that, as a lawyer, I can tell you it's hard, right, it's hard to get the Supreme Court to reverse itself. But you have to find the right plaintiff. You have to be in the right district, you have to have the right judges, you have to have the right appellate courts. You have to get all the way up to the Supreme Court with the right posture and the right case. This takes years and often millions of dollars. And when you get there, the good news is you'll be able to count on Chief Justice Roberts to do the right never mind right, yeah, no. And so my point is trying to reverse all that stuff by constitutional cases. I think we should do it. I think we should always be in that fight. The law fair really matters. But the Convention of States is the way to do it wholesale is to change a lot of things, get rid of a lot of the stuff that the Supreme Court and the lower courts have done in one fell swoop. And so that's why I think this is so important. Why do I think they'll follow it? Because history shows us that Congress and the government largely follows the amendments. Most of the amendments are following, and I would say historically it's about one hundred years of following them pretty strictly, and then we start to see the federal government drift away from those amendments. It's not because they're magic, it's not because there's pixie dust on an amendment. It's because getting an amendment done is the single most muscular political act in our entire system. I want you to think about it. In order to get it done, you have to get two thirds of Congress or two thirds of the states just to agree on something first. And when they agree on it, all that is is a suggestion. And then you have to get three quarters of the states to agree on something. That's a super super majority. And so Congress isn't the boldest institution in America. They're gutless pretty much. They look at that, they're like, well, this is a super super majority opinion. We're not going to mess with this. The court not to mess with it for a very long time. That's our history. Sure, and follow up question there, which you might have just actually already answered here, But I want to ask it anyway, is you have kids. I have kids. We have rules in our house. This has been established, this is how we act. We have to have a clean bedroom, you have chores that you got to do. And my kids push back all the time. I'm sure yours did as well. Your kids are probably a little bit older than mine, but they push back right now when we look at that, when my wife and I are examining the rules of the house, is the solution to just abide by the rules that we've already established, or to add new rules to change it? And I think you get where I'm going with this. Yeah, I would say it's both, actually, And I did raise two kids, I'm happy to say successfully. They're both good, conservative, church going kids. And my daughter has a daughter already and another one on the way. And my son he and his wife are pregnant right now, so hopefully they learned a little bit from our parenting. But I would say in my parenting it was both. So sometimes I just said, no, that's it, We're going to enforce the rules the way they are. Sometimes I realized that the rules didn't make sense anymore for a particular circumstance, and so what I mean by that is, my kids grew and they change, just like yours are doing right now. And the rules around their room and keeping their room clean, or the particular chores I changed the chores. I changed the rules. I'll give you a very specific example. Some parents might not like this, but about the time my son was seventeen, we still had problems with him keeping a clean room, and it ended up being a very difficult situation between he and my wife. Now, my kid was a really good kid, no drugs, no sex, no crime, no troubles at school, but you can keep a clean room, and in our household, we decided, you know, it really doesn't matter that much anymore. This is not a good rule for him anymore. On virtually everything else, he follows the rules and he's a good kid. We had to change the rules a little bit in his case and create a different set of rules because we learned stuff over time, and we learned what was important and what wasn't important. He had changed, we had changed, and so we as human beings, always have the capacity to change. The framers of the Constitution actually told us theirselves in their own words, Hey, we expect that you will learn stuff over time. We've done. They literally said, we've done the best we can under the circumstances with what we know right now. But we're not perfect, and so that's why we're giving you the mechanism of change. We expect you're going to learn things over time. We've learned a lot over time about the Constitution. We've learned that the restraints placed on the federal government were not adequate. According to the original Constitution. It gave the federal government too much room to grow and become too powerful. And you or I, who are now anti federalists would agree with that. And so praise God that Mason, the leading anti federalists, stood up and said, hey, I'm going to give you guys a chance to fix it if we didn't do enough. And I can respect what you're saying there. You know, as long as there's not a strong odor coming from your son's or underneath your son's door, then okay, you know what, you got some clothes on the floor. I get it. Yeah, so I can. I can definitely understand that. All right, let me let me ask you something else, because you brought up this this third Great Revival and it's a little bit perhaps off topic, but It's one that really interests me because I've heard a lot of people say that that we are living in this this third Great Revival, We're going to see this uptick of Christianity. And yet when I look at Christianity in the West or America specifically, I see a lot of divisions that have been occurring. I see a lot of issues with and just for the or for yourself, the audience knows about me. I'm Lutheran. I hold to Covenant theology, and there does seem to be a pretty massive fight between the dispensational Zionists and the more covenant theology. And that's just one example. I mean, certainly, and I don't know if you're familiar with this, but I've talked about it on the show a lot. This rise in the new Apostolic Reformation which is occurring, which some Christians are seeing. I don't agree with this, you know, And this seems to be more of a man centric theology. So it's kind of a long question that I just asked you there. But do you do you see us being able to fight through that and come together or is this going to cause division within the church. No, I think we're going to fight through it, and I think even while fighting through it, I think we're together. It's so amazing, like our lives are so parallel, and I feel like we're living in a parallel universe. So glad we met my daughter, who is my youngest. Her and her husband recently about two years ago, confirmed Lutheran, and so we're deeply engaged in that world. It was really interesting. I would be more of a mainstream evangelical, though I have my problems with that movement in general as well. I feel like I'm a little bit I kind of straddle. As it sounds weird, I realize I don't mean to be wishy washy. I'm really serious about this subject, and so I'm super into investigating and trying to figure it out. I'm drawn into your camp, the Lutheran camp, because my daughter and my son in law, who I respect so much, are there and they're super serious about it. And I got to say, I've watched its effect on their lives. It's incredible. It's just beautiful. So I know the fight. Intimately, we're not fighting in my family, but every Sunday they go to church, We go to church. We come together around the family brunch table and we have theological discussions. When people come over to our house, I got to say, they'll leave them. They're like, is it always like this at your house? Like this is a pretty much an average sunday for us, And it's not combative. It's just interesting. If you go back to the Founding period, I think is the best model. They really disliked each other. The churches disliked each other a lot. In fact, it was worse than it is today. In fact, if you looked at the way that churches referred to each other, they would refer to each other across the boundaries of the faith, of the various faith traditions as blasphemers, which was about as horrible a thing as you could say. Back then. It was the ultimate an insult. They all sat together in that convention and drafted that constitution and worked together. You know, there's a famous story from the convention I think plays straight into this question. They came to a pointing convention where they were fighting so much, and Ben Franklin stood up and he said, you know what, I think we have a problem that we don't pray like we come in here every day and we do not start in prayer, and he says, when we came right to this exact place during the war, and every day we opened and pray, And he said, basically, or have we decided we don't need providence anymore, We don't need God in our affairs anymore. We need to pray every day. It's a great story. It's an incredible story. The part most people don't know is they couldn't agree on it. They thought about it, and the reason they couldn't agree, and this is hilarious. You had to pay pastors or ministers or priests to give the invocation. Back then, that was part of how they made money for themselves and their churches. They had a rule you couldn't pay anybody at convention, and so they just couldn't do it. But what they all agreed is, okay, every day before we come to convention, we'll all go to our individual houses of worship and we'll pray. And I think that's an incredible model for where we're at today. My kids are Lutherans. Then we come to the breakfast table and we all hang out together and discuss theology. We all love the country. We're all in the fight for the country together. I think that's where the church is at today. And I think it's closer to the Revolutionary War time church and the Constitutional Convention time church than we've ever been in American history. Okay, and by the way, Mark, I thought the revisionist historians tell us that ben Benjamin Franklin wasn't a Christian, he was secular. Isn't that true? You know? We hear this so much about the framers. And by the way, if you hear any of these arguments, my best resource for this is Wall Builders. They have so many books on this. The Founder's Bible is one of my favorite bibles. I love it because it'll show you the number of references that were made to the Bible versus any other resource material. The Bible is the number one reference for the framers of the Constitution. I think there's only one that we know for sure was an atheist, and he wasn't there in convention. But that's Thomas Paine, one of the great writers of the American Revolution. He was definitely an atheist. None of the rest of them were atheists. People try to impugne Thomas Jefferson, like, oh, he wasn't a Christian. You know, he wrote a Bible that took out all the mystical stuff. He had purpose for doing that. He was trying to appeal to simpler people, to Native Americans who could not handle the whole Bible. It wasn't in their native language. So the fact that the framers look they were Christians, I'll just say it bluntly and by the way, I want to say this is really important. I'm Jewish. I'm a Jewish Christian, right, so I understand Old Testament theology. I'm pretty connected to it. I've given my heart in my life to Jesus Christ. I get the American history. It is a Christian history, no matter what the revisionists want to say about it. Yeah, I mean, our guest is absolutely right about that. There's no doubt about it. You read it. And I also have the Wall Builder's Bible. It's incredible. I highly recommend it. The only thing I would say about it is sometimes when I'm trying to get into the Word and then I come to this page about our history, is all, oh, that's interesting. Oh wait, I'm trying to read the Bible. Stop stop, man. It's not my best study Bible. If I'm just trying to study the Word. Yes, I would agree with that. All right, Well, I mean it's been a fascinating conversation. I said I'd hold you for forty five minutes, and we're right there right now. But I do want to give your website Convention of States dot com, so we'll bring that up for the audience. If you're interested in this, you can go there. There's a lot of resources here, and Mark, I want to give you any last words, and you know, I mean, honestly, if you want to pitch it, I have no problem with that whatsoever. Let me pitch it sort of in the negative. This is really important to me. I always want to know who somebody's enemies are and who their friends are, and oftentimes, to me, the enemy's list is the most important I want to know, Like, are you on my side? In the fox hole? You can go to Common Causes website. Not something I would normally refer people to, but Common Cause is the leading leftist policy organization in America. I call it communist Cause because that's what it is. They have a huge section on Convention of States and they are radically opposed to Convention of States. Two hundred and fifty organizations signed a press release for Common Cause saying that this is the worst thing that could possibly happen in America. Those groups can They include Planned PARENTHOODLRAASA, move on dot org, the Socialist Party of America. It's literally every horrible leftist group you could possibly think of at they're opposed to what we're doing. And so for people who might be opposed to this, you might want to ask yourself important question, why am I on the side of George Soro's Common Cause, Planned Parenthood, LRAZA, and move on dot org? And then look at our list of supporters. You won't like all of them because we're conservatives and we're independent, and they are people on the right that we don't necessarily agree with their like. But you'll find most of the people that you like on that list too, including by the way, Present and Trump recently posted about this. JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Caroline Levitt, Brooke Rowlins, who's our AG secretary. So what you'll see is mainstream conservatives mostly support this, and the radical left are all opposed. You know, Chris, can you stop on that map real quick? Because I just thought of another question, and I apologize for holding you a little bit longer. But is there a reason why the Southeast in particular is pro Convention of States. Yeah, I would say because it's the most conservative part of the United States of America. If you want to know where people revere the Constitution the most genuinely, where they love this country the most, I would as a guy that's traveled all over the country, and I mean no offense to other states, but that's the heart of patriotism in the United States of America. Those are the folks that like the federal government the least, they like the overreach the least, and so those are the states that went first. And I would add also some of the most Christian people that you're going to find in the country as well as the Southeast. Yeah, I agree. All right, well, sir, once again, it's been a pleasure having you on. I'd love to have you back at some point we can talk a little bit more about this. But as I said in the opening of the conversation, you know, I'm a guy who had questions about it, and we had a very respectful discussion ladies and gentlemen, and I just want to remind people that you can do that with people that you might even fundamentally disagree with I'm not even saying that about my guests, but you can do that. So Mark, thank you for just a really good conversation. Oh God, bless you for giving me the space to have it with you as a real honor. Absolutely well, I'm going to go ahead and close this out. If you hold on one more minute post production to sayah, goodbyes, I'd appreciate it. But again, thanks for your time. All Right, there you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Convention of State. It's an interesting idea, right and certainly, as we look around, we see a lot of problems in this country and there might be some solutions, and certainly the Constitution is that solution to I don't hold the federal government accountable. And if we have to amend it, you know, it might be one of the better options. Church Estate is brought to you in part by Colonial Life, Spokane, Independent Agents, Finders Insurance, and Mark three to seven dot Com. I'm Caleb Collier. I was born for a storm. Welcome to the fire. This is Caleb Callier with Church and State. Are you tired of your device spying on you? Ladies and gentlemen, We live in nineteen eighty four. Your phones, your tablets, your smart televisions, they all are spying on you. And this is why I heavily endorse Mark thirty seven dot com. 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