Title: My journey toward liberty Original CoS Document (slug): [[https://conventionofstates.com/my-journey-toward-liberty|my-journey-toward-liberty]] Login Required to view? No Created: 2021-02-02 13:29:22 Updated: 2021-02-16 03:00:00 Published: 2021-02-09 00:00:00 Converted: 2025-04-14T21:09:33.218705411 ---- Living in Richmond, Virginia, I find it impossible to avoid the significance that the Old Dominion played in the foundation of America. Walking into the capitol building designed by Jefferson and housing the longest continually serving legislative body in the western world still overwhelms me. Every time I visit St. John’s Church where Patrick Henry thundered his “Give me liberty or give me death” appeal, I sense the spirit that drove our forebears to contest British tyranny face to face.\\ \\ The indelible consciousness of how much others have paid so that I can be free moves me to join the Convention of States as a volunteer, based on three distinct and pointed questions.\\ \\ **Why is an Article V Convention of States required?** The Founders believed that the natural course of government tends toward tyranny. That belief was based on the knowledge that humans are imperfect beings and will always develop imperfect systems of governance. When an imperfect pattern is repeated, the error is multiplied.\\ \\ George Mason of Virginia ensured that the people could redirect their government when it strayed from its intended path. He insisted that Article V of the Constitution empower the states to correct the course of the Republic. Having the prescribed means before us, it is our duty to employ those means to redirect this ship of state.\\ \\ **Why do I have to be involved?** The short answer is: because I can. My faith teaches me that to know what is good and not do it is a sin. Failure to act rightly is equal to acting wrongly. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. That which I can do in a just cause, I must do.\\ \\ **Why now?** The need for corrective action to an overbearing government dates back to at least 1913 when our liberties were surrendered to the income tax and direct election of senators (Amendments 16 and 17, respectively). We have not rooted out these freedom-choking weeds and all those that have sprung from them in more than a century because of a reality acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote that humans are “more prone to suffer abuses as long as they are sufferable.”\\ \\ It has so far been easier to continue as we are than to endure uncomfortable and difficult changes. Just as the original colonies concluded that their endurance of tyranny had been exhausted, so now we reach that same reality. This republic must be turned toward liberty, or it will collapse under tyranny.\\ \\ Given that choice, I believe the remedy is at hand. I can be part of the solution, and it is now or never. [[https://conventionofstates.com/take_action|Join with me]] and millions of others who believe that a nation worth living in is also worth working to preserve. #|PETITION_WIDGET{petition_tag:;coalition_id:;anedot_url:}|#