The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Church & State w/ Mark Meckler Article V: Convention of States

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Mark wants to call an Article V Convention of States as a way to bring power back to the states and the people, where it belongs.  Could this actually work?   https://conventionofstates.com/Church and State is brought to you by,  YOU!  Visit us at: https://churchandstate.media where you can support us by donating directly and find links to shop with our affiliates.Get our merch at https://standupnowapparel.com/partner-church-and-state/   Learn how to Protect Your Wealth against inflation at: www.BH-PM.com and tell them Church and State sent you.Support Church and State today by shopping at www.MyPillow.com using our coupon code: “CHURCHANDSTATE”.Our links are on link tree: https://linktr.ee/churchandstate                    Subscribe to our Locals Community (churchandstate1.locals.com)   Follow us on Rumble (@ChurchandState1776) https://rumble.com/user/ChurchandState1776    X(twitter) (@1churchandstate) https://x.com/1churchandstatefacebook (churchandstate1776) https://www.facebook.com/ChurchandState1776   Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prepper-broadcasting-network--3295097/support.BECOME A SUPPORTER FOR AD FREE PODCASTS, EARLY ACCESS & TONS OF MEMBERS ONLY CONTENT!Get Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Red Beacon Ready OUR PREPAREDNESS SHOPThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilySupport PBN with a Donation Join the Prepper Broadcasting Network for expert insights on #Survival, #Prepping, #SelfReliance, #OffGridLiving, #Homesteading, #Homestead building, #SelfSufficiency, #Permaculture, #OffGrid solutions, and #SHTF preparedness. With diverse hosts and shows, get practical tips to thrive independently – subscribe now!

Fokane Valley could become a sanctuary city of a different kind. They name Councilman Caleb Collier says that this proposal... I'm proposing that the city of Spokane Valley issue of proclamation stating that our city is a Second Amendment sanctuary. 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 Collier, once again, your favorite far-right shock jock. And the show that talks about politics and religion, Jesus Christ, is our... our referee, so it's always nice and clean. Real quick, I'm going to point you to the website,

church and state.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 nrb tv 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 a hold of us church and state 1776 at proton dot me with that let's go to our guests now mark mackler should need no introduction i'm sure most of you've probably heard of him but he's a political activist he's an attorney a business executive known 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 20th state, so that's a huge threshold.

It takes 34 states to call a convention of states. So obviously, we're well past 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 24-9 vote.

And I'll be headed out to South Dakota next week because we're going to be in the House. I think that's going to become state number 21. So let me ask you this. You've traveled all over the country. This is just a personal question that I am enjoying. I've been traveling a lot for my work. well. I'm trying to hit all 50 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 50 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 50, 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 BDA. I've 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. And I was like, 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 5 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 27 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 38 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. 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 15th, 1787 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. What 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? oppose 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

it's 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 state. 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 34 matching resolutions. You do that by passing it in both houses of the state and no governor signature is necessary because it's not legislation, it's a resolution. So that's what we've done in 20 states so far. In our particular case, and again, that'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 or spending caps. We all agree. I think $38 trillion is enough. I think $1 trillion. less 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 17 enumerated powers. They now have something like 17,000, thanks to the federal judiciary. So we could say things like no more Department of Education, no more Department of Energy, no more health and 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 you an overview of what we're doing and what the process is. I got to tell you, you started talking about banning the Department of Education and so many of these other alphabet agencies. The 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. 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 5 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 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. We've certainly as their posterity. We've benefited from it. But with this, there would 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 going to love this as a guy who loves history. I know you love history. Here's a little buried piece of history that's probably going to 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, 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 preeminent people of the time, 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 state said. We're going to do whatever we want. It 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 weighed 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 gather in 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 Nadelson did the research about 13 years ago. And if you talk 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, if memory serves me correctly,

professor at a 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, Farris 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 Blackstone, 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 not 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, Blackstone's 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, 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, balance budget, yeah,

restricting the government, getting read as some of these alphabet agencies, maybe all of them. That's just the libertarian in me. That's my preference, too. Let's start 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 100 people in their delegations. 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. Can I more of an anti-federalist, to be honest? Well, I think that's a more accurate term. By the way, George Mason was an anti-federalist. You're reading a Mason. 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 going to have the Senate choose to. We're going to have the House choose to. We're going to 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 going to 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 100, they're each going to get one vote at convention. Interesting. Now, Donald Trump just came out and was talking about abolishing the 17th Amendment, which I'm all for, I'm sure you are as well. Yeah. And that's a number. that you were talking about, these states that have decided, hey, the Senate gets to, the House gets two, wouldn't the abolition of the 17th Amendment actually be better for you guys? Oh, I think it would be way, 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 17th Amendment. And I want to clarify this. A lot of people don't even know what the 17th 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 17th 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. 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 because if they came home and said, well, hey, Texas legislature, I just voted for something that you're going to 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 something they wouldn't. 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 D.C. 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 17th is actually worse than the 16th. I'd rather repeal the 17th and then tackle the 16th. But there was a lot of bad ones during the progressive era. Luckily, we got rid of one of them, at least. But anyway, it's an interesting, and I love what you said there. I love your breakdown of the states versus the people.

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 did they understand people can be fickle. 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 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 17th 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. You don't have to be gentle. I can handle it. It's okay. Not with you. I mean specifically with the audience. I know you can 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. No, 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.

in D.C., 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 grade awakening in America right now. Yeah, I think you often don't realize 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's 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 systems 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 38 states. I'll put out this offer to your listeners. I give out my personal email address, M. Mechler at COS Action. There's nothing that you or I could think of that we wouldn't like, that we wouldn't be comfortable with, that could be ratified by 38 states. I always ask people, send me the amendment, send me the 38 states. I've been making that offer for 13 years now. I've never gotten a single email. I mean, you do bring up a fair point there. Most of the states can't agree on anything. And 38 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.

If 38 states need to ratify that, how convinced are you that this could even occur? So the way that we structured this intentionally was to, one, 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 is 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 70, 80 percent support. So if you look at term limits, for example, there's 85 percent support across the board, across the parties. There have been for literally 35 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 bibliitarian i love that i might steal that from you i like it please do i'm a can i generally refer to myself as a

conservatarian. 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 a 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 I, 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're talking about specifically with the Department of Education was going back to the original intent of allowing the states to be competitive 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, 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's 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, 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. So let's break down the balanced budget amendment, the term limits. Term limits is a really interesting one. And 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 between 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 flow 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've got to understand the nature of lobbying. Lobbying requires relationships. And lobbyists work over the long haul to build relationships with the people who are in office, with the bureaucrats, with the staffers. And so if there 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 20 years 25 years 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 callyer with church and stay dot media ladies gentlemen if you're not sleeping on my pillow do you even patriot i got to 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 i need you to head on over to church and state dot media scroll over to shop because every single time that you purchase any of these products using the promo code church and state you ensure that we keep our message out on the air i thank everybody for your support and using a

promo code church and state you guys go to my pillow dot com forward slash church and state too and then you get your all-no platform right there everybody and we are back thank you for staying with us you're over at church and state.media and we're going to go back to our guest i cut them off and we're going to finish that conversation real quick though i got to plug one of our great affiliates and i'm thinking hey i was born for a storm you love the quote hey uh just to let you know i stole it from Andrew Jackson, who I think was a great president. But check out standup now apparel.com. Get the shirt.

I was born for a storm. 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 going to bend over. That's just going to say, yeah, you know what? The government's the government. They're going to do what they're going to do. No, I'm going to fight. I was born for the storm and I'm going to 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, D.C. 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 term limits alone if you don't have term 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 is no. 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 balanced 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 succinct. Yeah, you got one? Now, it's about 4,000 words, okay? You can order from the government publishing office today the United States Constitution.

You'll pay about 130 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 3,000 pages. It weighs over 10 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. No. 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 lawfare 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 100 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. 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 courts tend not to mess with it for a very long time. that's our history. Sure. And a 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 realize 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 changed, 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 chores. I changed the rules. I'll give you a very specific example. Some parents might not like this, but by about the time my son was 17, 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 themselves in their own words, hey, we expect that you will learn stuff over time. We've done, they literally said, we've done, 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 to 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 may the leading anti-federalist stood up and said, hey, I'm going to give you guys a chance to fix it if we didn't do enough. I can respect what you're saying there. You know, as long as there's not a strong odor coming from your sons or underneath your son's door, then, okay, you know what?

You got some clothes on the floor. That was it. I get it. Yeah. So I can definitely understand that. All right. Let me ask you something else because you brought up 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 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, a question that I just asked you there, but 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 is 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 along 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 and they're like, is it always like this at your house? We're like, yeah,

this is 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 various faith traditions as blasphemers, which was about as horrible a thing as you could say back then. It was the ultimate 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 appointing 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 were, we came right to this exact place during the war and every day we opened and pray. And he said, basically, 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 fought about it. And the reason, 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 in 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 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 Founders 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 Payne, 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 impugn Thomas Jefferson. They're 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 and 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 Builders Bible. It's incredible. I highly recommend it. The only thing I would say about it is sometimes when I'm trying to, you know, 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, stop. It's the only thing. 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 45 minutes, and we're right

there right now. But I do want to give your website, Conventionofstates.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, you know, 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 foxhole? You can go to Common Cause's 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. 250 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 Parenthood, Laraza, MoveOn.org, the Socialist Party of America. It's literally every horrible leftist group you could possibly think of. They're opposed to what we're doing. And so for people who might be opposed to this, you might want to ask yourself, an important question, why am I on the side of George Soros, Common Cause, Planned Parenthood, Laraza, and MoveOn.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're 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, President Trump recently posted about this, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Caroline Levitt, Brooke Rollins, 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. Agreed. 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 us out. If you hold on one more minute post-production to say her 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 know, hold the federal government account. and if we have to amend it, you know, it might be one of the better options. Church and State is brought to you in part by Colonial Life, Spokane Independent Agents, finders insurance, and mark37.com. I'm Caleb Collier. I was born for a storm. Welcome to the fire. This is Caleb Collier with Church and State. Are you tired of your device spying on you?

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in 1984. Your phones, your tablets, your smart televisions, they all are spying on you. And this is why I heavily endorse mark37.com. This is everything you need for your digital privacy. Phones, tablets, laptops, all of them are ghost protocol. So that means that you are in charge of your own data. Just go to church and state.media, scroll over to shop, and hit mark37.com for all of your privacy needs. Make sure to use that promo code, church and state.

Hey, this is Caleb Collier, and I know you're excited for the church and state podcast. Now, as a Christian patriot, I love precious metals. whether it's gold, silver, palladium, and of course, lead. And this is why I want you to go over to Ponderay Ballistics. Don't ask me how to spell it, for all of your ammunition needs. Remember, that's P-E-N-D-O-R-E-L-E-Ballistics.com for all of your ammunition needs. I want you to head on over to Church and State. Media forward slash shop. Go to Ponderay Ballistics and have a shooting good time.

Hey, this is Caleb Collier with the Church and State podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, I want all of you to go to Galileo.com. You need to stay connected no matter what comes our way. Whether it's government intrusion or a meteor falling from the sky, Galileo has you connected. As a Marine veteran, I can tell you that communications is essential. Galileo has you connected. Whether it's worldwide coverage, uncensored content, or real-time alerts, Galileo is going to make sure that you're connected with your friends, family, and neighbors.

Just head on over to church and state.media. Scroll over to shop and hit Galileo.com. Make sure to ask them for a free bibby stick. and make sure to use that promo code, church and state.