“A republic, if you can keep it” – Ben Franklin, upon adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1787
Imagine if we could change the US Constitution every two years with a simple majority vote of 50% +1 in the general election? And then imagine that there was a profit motive behind the creation of new amendments to the Constitution. Do you think just maybe there would be massive amounts of corruption involved in the pursuit of such efforts?
Let’s pretend that this is the reality in America at this very moment, and wargame out a somewhat plausible scenario. A random pharmaceutical company decides that it would be in the best interest of the overall long-term health of their bottom line, uhh no, wait…..they decide that it would be in the best interest of the long-term health of Americans to require seasonal injections of various preventative “medicines”, under the guise of achieving “herd immunity” from the trillions of viruses that live on our planet. And, with the cooperation of regional and national hospital groups, the WHO, the Journal of American Medicine Association, the American Society of Virology, The World Bank, The United Nations, Advertising associations, Pharmacy organizations, retailers, and several other influential pharmaceutical companies, Company A sets about securing the services of an organization that specializes in signature collection.
The reason this is necessary is because the only way to get a possible Amendment on the general ballot is to collect the required minimum amount of signatures from the citizens. Whatever that number is, it will require a significant initial investment of dollars to be able to pay people to stand in front of concerts, government buildings, shopping centers and basically any public space where the public gathers. The current rate of pay for signature gatherers is $30 an hour, so at a minimum the cost to pay people all over America to collect signatures would be in the millions of $.
Then comes the advertising dollars needed to convince 50% +1 of the voting public that it would definitely be a GREAT IDEA to force all citizens to get medical injections on a quarterly basis. This consortium already knows that roughly 40% of voters are completely against this proposal, and 40% of voters are already pre-conditioned to be compliant. That leaves the 20% of voters who smugly self-identify as “independents”. These are the fence-sitters, who don’t possess strong convictions in much of anything beyond their pride in not being part of any ideological group. Once the proposed new Amendment garners enough signatures to get on the ballot, it is these 20% that will be the cause of literally billions of dollar$ being spent in the six to twelve months leading up to the general election.
Now, the 40% who are in favor of this new amendment can just sit back and enjoy the show. The 40% who are against it are REALLY against it, because they see it as a massive violation of personal autonomy, dangerous to their health and outright UnAmerican. Living in a world where the State can force them to inject unknown substances into their bodies is horrifically unimaginable to them. They worry about the dystopian world their children will be forced to grow up in. They fantasize about moving to Costa Rico, or Mars. So, their only choice for now is to put their normal lives aside, and set about trying to rally as many of the 40% of their cohorts together as they can to fight this looming threat. They have no money, because, unlike their group of opponents, they aren’t a business with a cash flow income stream, and there is absolutely no promise of “future sales” if they are successful in defeating the measure. For them, victory will mean that everything….stays the same. They are only playing defense, against an opponent with an enormous money advantage; and who are effective liars to boot. As a quasi “health” organization, with all of the institutional muscle behind them, they can flavor all of their propaganda with the seasoning of credibility, while painting their opponents as uncredentialed crackpots.
It doesn’t take an overactive imagination to be able to comprehend the enormous amount of stress, angst, time, energy and money that a system like this would impose on the American people. In fact, we can look back to this past fall in our little great state of SD at the drama that played out for those of us – and there were THOUSANDS of us – who voluntarily engaged in the battle against two ballot measures that sought to change our state constitution: Proposed Amendments H (“Open Primaries”) and Amendment G (“Abortion till birth”).
As the (unpaid) Chair of the NO in NOvember campaign, I was actively involved in working with other groups of (unpaid) volunteers who were, like myself, motivated by the desire to keep South Dakota from turning into more liberal/Marxist states like California and our pitiful next door neighbor Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Cucks”. As I’ve mentioned before, this was my first foray into any kind of political position, and I found it to be a fascinating learning experience. I met many new friends, battled with new enemies, spoke with a ton of people who had no idea SD even has a Constitution; and in the end, tasted complete victory against long odds, thank the Lord.
But it really was a giant waste of time, money, resources and emotional energy; foisted on us by shadowy groups of people who were primarily – in my opinion – motivated by money. These were not grassroots efforts that emanated from the depths of South Dakota citizens. The most common response I got when visiting with Normie South Dakotans about these two Amendment initiatives was “WHAT?! How did this happen?”
The proponents of Amendment H spent an estimated $2 million to try to change the constitution, with the vast majority of that coming from outside groups.
For Amendment G, 89% of the funds to change the constitution came from outside the state, and 84% of the funds to prevent this came from inside the state.
So why did we have to go through all that? Just so some out-of-state special interests could fiddle with our state? Or some wealthy local trust fund guy could empty out his bucket list by turning SD into something that he thinks is a better version than the normal one we are used to? Mainly, I was left wondering if there is anything we can do to prevent this colossal fiasco from happening again to the good people of our state.
Good news!
Representative John Hughes & Sen. Sue Peterson are bringing a bill forward – HJR 5003- that will raise the threshold to change our state constitution from the current simple majority (50% +1) to the more widely-used 60% threshold. Friends, we simply must pass this bill into law.
Personally, I would like to see some more changes to the whole ballot initiative system here in South Dakota. I am not a fan of “direct democracy”, at all. It’s too easy to fool the low information voter into voting the way that these nefarious groups have become so adept at doing. Propaganda works! And no, I don’t buy the argument that “this has been done in South Dakota for 100 years!” or whatever. So what? If it’s dumb, then let’s stop doing it. It’s mob rule. Our government was founded on, like Ben Franklin said, a representative republic, not a direct democracy. Which means that those of us who care to pay attention to what’s going on in our communities can get involved in the process, and help our like-minded friends get elected to the legislative bodies that are supposed to, you know, make laws and stuff. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Also, we have to understand “what time it is”. We live in a particular time and place, and this era is nothing like it was 100 years ago, or 20 years ago for that matter. The internet has changed everything. Some good, and a lot that’s bad. Today, most people get the entirety of their news from internet sources, and up until a few weeks ago, our “news” sources were working in concert with various entities within our own government, curating what they believed was just the right kind of information that we citizens should be privy to, while filtering out the ungood bad thoughts that did not align with the approved narrative as “Mis/Mal/Dis information”. The internet has made it possible for a few people to control the flow of information to the rest of us. As with all political corruption, a tiny slice of “elite” benefit at the expense of the ignorant masses. Just this week, the efforts of the newly formed DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) have provided us with long-suspected but still shocking revelations of news agencies all over the planet being financed and influenced by various USG grants such as CIA cutout USAID. As AI technology advances, as it surely will, we freethinkers must be on our guard against outside influences using money, influence and technology to manipulate our choices for what kind of governments we choose to live under. Using the Slippery Slope argument, I could easily imagine a future where the ballot initiative system is morphed into – in the name of “efficiency” – one where everyone simply votes on their smartphones for whatever “current thing” is on the docket.
This isn’t scare mongering, it’s prognosticating.
Changing our laws and way of life should be methodical, strenuous and sober minded.
As I discovered over and over during the 2024 campaign, and what the polls proved out on Nov 5, most South Dakotans like our state just the way it is, and we are very suspicious of any attempt to make lasting changes to our state constitution.
Let’s pass HJR 5003. We need a break.
