CRISIS OVER THE CONSTITUTION
Crisis over the Constitution While most of the mass media slept, an efficient and powerful coalition of reactionaries brought the country to the brink of what could prove to be the most disastrous...
...We believe they will find that mixed motives produced these votes—the "rotten borough" ru-ralist state senator in a malappor-tioned legislature determined to cling to his seat, the Dixie racist legislator fearing increased Negro voting, and the conservative incumbents owing their seats to campaign funds provided by utilities and other powerful interests...
...These delegates, as the St...
...on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments...
...In Illinois, for example, leaders of the Republican-dominated legislature rushed it through both houses without a single public witness allowed to be heard...
...The Bill of Rights itself—the guardian of civil rights and civil liberties, and the wellspring of numerous enactments by Congress and hundreds of court decisions which have maintained and advanced democracy since the birth of the nation—is threatened by the proposed convention...
...It provides that "The Congress...
...But historians will find, too, that the Dirksen campaign carried on by his allies and agents around the country would not have become the threat it is today if it were not for the failure of the press...
...How thirty-two state legislatures could adopt resolutions calling for a Constitutional convention with such explosive possibilities and evoke so little state and national comment in the process is a subject historians are bound to explore...
...If the mass media had been alert, concerned, and conscientious about its duty to inform the public about the great stakes involved, the campaign would have foundered long ago...
...If the proposed Constitutional convention were ever assembled, it would be dominated by delegates chosen by state legislatures, many of which are not themselves representative of the population distribution in their states...
...All past amendments to the Constitution have been proposed in Congress—as Article V also provides—and adopted through approval by a two-thirds vote of both houses and subsequent ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states...
...Behind this drive led by Senator Dirksen and advanced by the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S...
...It was the League which, through its state chapters, urged legislators across the country to vote against the convention resolution, and called the attention of an often slumbering or indifferent press to what was happening...
...The need for action is now...
...Chamber of Commerce, the American Farm Bureau, and the white Citizens Councils of the South, are racist politicians like George Wallace, and a host of Birchites and other far-right extremists...
...One need not quarrel with the Constitutional provision for amendment by convention...
...Supreme Court's "one-man, one-vote" decisions by making mandatory the application of the population factor to only one house of the state legislatures, much more could be at stake...
...As we went to press in mid-April, thirty-two state legislatures had adopted resolutions requesting Congress to issue the call for a national convention to amend the Constitution of the United States...
...There are distinguished exceptions to this indictment among the press, but historians must give major credit to the League of Women Voters for making great efforts to sound the alarm in state after state...
...In Colorado the resolution was passed without being printed or screened by a committee...
...But with speed and stealth the forces behind the resolution repeatedly secured its adoption...
...Time is running out...
...It is the stealth, the antidemocratic techniques, the almost complete lack of open discussion and public hearings, and the very goal of subverting the "one-man, one-vote" principle that makes this campaign so objectionable and so dangerous...
...Louis-Post Dispatch warned, might "try to tear up half the Constitution...
...Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois would then arise in the Senate and demand the convening this summer of the first Constitutional convention since the original one in 1787...
...Article V of the Constitution offers the method—never brought so close to implementation before—by which the convention call may be compelled...
...The Progressive, which has repeatedly warned of the maneuvers of Dirksen's rotten-borough juggernaut, urges forward-looking lawmakers in the state legislatures which have adopted the convention resolution to mobilize the forces of democracy to vote to rescind it and thus prevent the thirty-four state goal from being-attained...
...The resolutions adopted by the thirty-two legislatures, and those pending in other states, petition Congress to call a national convention to consider an amendment to the Constitution which would permit one house of each legislature to be apportioned on factors other than population...
...Although the avowed purpose of the supporters of this campaign is to restrict the effect of the U.S...
...If two more state legislatures adopt such resolutions, the required endorsement total of thirty-four states, two-thirds of those in the Union, would be attained...
...The danger of a runaway Constitutional convention that would not only destroy the one-man, one-vote concept of democracy but could "tear the Constitution in half" will continue to menace the country unless the mass media, and through it the public, are aroused by the issue...
...This distinguished newspaper asked: "Will the reactionary supporters be satisfied merely with [maintaining or restoring] malapportionment, or will they also want to permit unlimited police interrogation and searches and other violations of liberties which the Supreme Court, to their anger, has rejected...
...Crisis over the Constitution While most of the mass media slept, an efficient and powerful coalition of reactionaries brought the country to the brink of what could prove to be the most disastrous Constitutional crisis since 1861...
...The value of publicity as a brake against the sneak tactics of the Dirksen crowd was demonstrated in mid-April when the Alaska senate rejected the resolution after news stories reported the affirmative action of the lower house...
Vol. 31 • May 1967 • No. 5
