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Title: Enlightened Reason Over Brute Force

Original CoS Document (slug): [[https://conventionofstates.com/enlightened-reason-over-brute-force|enlightened-reason-over-brute-force]]

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Created: 2022-10-10 11:38:47

Updated: 2022-10-17 03:00:00

Published: 2022-10-10 02:00:00

Converted: 2025-04-14T21:19:59.111247871


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This past weekend's Leadership Summit was an inspiring reminder not just of how much has been accomplished by the Convention of States movement and how much is yet to be accomplished, but //how //it has been and will be accomplished. 

As was often suggested over the weekend, it's not enough to "like" COS as if "liking" a post or a video on social media. Signing the COS petition is a good start, but it's not nearly enough.

Direct engagement with one another and our legislative representatives is the key to turning what so many say is impossible into the reality of activating Article V of the Constitution.

While it may seem presumptuous to assert, at least one Founder would agree that signing the COS petition without becoming actively involved is insufficient. 

As one of his biographers, Joseph J. Ellis, noted, prior to the American Revolution, George Washington was notably impatient and ill at ease with the many petitions and similar appeals to the British Parliament. Petitioning and complaining only goes so far. 

In a 1769 letter to none other than George Mason, Washington wrote:

//"At a time when our Lordly Masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprevation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something shou'd be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors."//

Something was done. Following the ratification of the Constitution, Washington described the document as "...a new phenomenon in the political and moral world, and an astonishing victory gained by enlightened reason over brute force."

The increasingly forceful nature of "our Lordly Masters" in the federal government demands a response. The Convention of States movement takes its cues from the men who devised, designed, and established a government borne of experience and reason. 

Of the Constitution Washington also wrote: 

//"...this Constitution is really in its formation a government of the people that is to say, a government in which all power is derived from, and, at stated periods, reverts to them; and that, in its operation, it is purely a government of laws, made and executed by the fair substitutes of the people alone."//

Our response to forceful federal tyranny is to engage and reason with our "fair substitutes" in the legislatures -- to explain the benefits of Article V and why it is to the good of every citizen of the Republic, and work //with //them to recover and retain the sovereignty and limited government prescribed by the Constitution. 

This past weekend's summit should serve as an invigorating rededication to our efforts, which employ the same enlightened reason and effort that guided our Founders, who knew from where power in this Republic is derived and where it ultimately rests.

In the end, that reason and effort will result in "an astonishing victory gained by enlightened reason over brute force." 

Let's get back to work.