MTM - Interview with Joe Wolverton..Whats Wrong with a Con-Con?

Want to change Washington by rewriting the rules? Not so fast. We sit down with constitutional lawyer Joe Wolverton to pull back the curtain on the modern push for an Article V constitutional convention—and why the promise of a “limited” convention is a myth with stakes too high to ignore. Joe walks us through the lean language of Article V, showing how it lacks guidance on delegate selection, voting rules, convention scope, and enforcement. That vacuum invites capture by big money and national organizations eager to shape the charter itself, putting core rights—from life to the Second Amendment—at real risk.

We go beyond procedure to the heart issue: paper doesn’t turn oath-breakers into oath-keepers. If leaders already ignore their oaths, extra lines in the Constitution won’t restore fidelity. The better path is the older path—virtue in candidates, informed citizens who know the Bill of Rights, and states that use the Tenth Amendment to enforce limits. Joe lays out concrete examples of state-level resistance working right now, from gun policy to raw milk and marijuana, proving federalism still has teeth when locals engage.

The conversation closes with a clear action step: build influence where it counts. Your state legislators know your name, answer your calls, and vote on measures that either open or block a convention. Use streamlined tools to email committees, attend hearings, and make your voice matter. And stay tuned—next week we tackle the two biggest selling points for a convention, the balanced budget amendment and term limits, and why enforcement often beats rewriting. If you value constitutional government grounded in real-world accountability, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review telling us how you’ll engage your statehouse this month.

Transcript

Welcome & Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:04

To more than medicine. Where Jesus is more than enough for the illness of the plague, our culture is hosted by author and physician, Dr. Robert Jackson. And it's my Carlotta and Dr. Annabella. So listen up because the doctor is dead.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. I'm privileged today to have with me Joe Wolverton, who's a good friend of mine and happens to be a constitutional lawyer. And I'm going to ask him today to answer a few questions for me and for you. So, Joe, welcome to More Than Medicine.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate it so much. I always look forward to being on with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

And why is that not such a good idea? I've talked a little bit about that on my podcast in the past, and it always concerns me when I hear rumors like that. And uh so that's why I wanted to invite you on the podcast, and I want you to talk about what is a constitutional convention and what are the dangers and why is it not such a good idea, if you don't mind sharing those concerns with my audience.

Goldwater’s Warning And Loss Of Control

The Marriage Vows Analogy

Oaths, Virtue, And The Tenth Amendment

Money, Influence, And Convention Backers

Why Article V Gives No Limits

Risks To Rights: Abortion And Guns

Grassroots Action Through State Legislatures

SPEAKER_02 2:06

No, sir, I look forward to it. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to start by reading a quotation from Senator Barry Goldwater. All right. Delivered to the floor of the Senate, February 26, 1979. He said, if we hold a constitutional convention, every group in the country, majority, minority, middle of the road, left, right, up, down, is going to get its two bits in. And we're going to wind up with a constitution that will be so far different from the one we've lived under for over 200 years that I doubt the Republic could continue. Now that's the first uh, you know, that's the first volley shot over the bow of the CON-CON crowd. Is they seem to think that they're going to control this process. They will not be able to control this process. History has shown they cannot control this process. And now I want to, if you'll indulge me, just a little, a little story here. Uh it's this is from I wrote a I wrote a big book called Article V for the legislator and citizen legislator. Uh pretty much for everybody explained. It's a thicker book going into the details of Article V. Well, then I wrote a brief, a 16-page summary, breaking it down into bullet points, breaking that book into bullet points, because I knew that lawmakers, state lawmakers who were required to vote on these bills calling for a constitutional convention, I knew they were going to sit down and read that 85, 90-page book. But as I went and testified at these different state houses, different states' uh debates on the subject, I went to Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, uh, Missouri, gosh, Oklahoma, Idaho, Washington. As I traveled around doing this, I would ask them, you know, would you read if I put this in like some bullet points, would you do it? And they said yes. So I created this with the blessing of John Birch. And uh you can get it at the John Birch Society for free. It's a PDF Article 5 convention brief by me, uh Joe Warton. Uh but I wanted to read to you from it because I started out in a way that I think captures people and tells them exactly what is the context that we're talking about. So let me just read this to you real quick. It is a true and tragic fact that divorce in the United States is common. With the enactment of no fault divorce statutes, marriages became much easier to dissolve, and the number of marriages ending in divorce began a steady increase. With those facts in mind, would any rational person suggest that the way to remedy the rise in divorce would be to add another line in the traditional marriage vows? Something that read like, remember, you're not supposed to get divorced because divorce is terrible. Another way of looking at it is consider the cause of so many divorces, infidelity. Despite making a sacred vow to be faithful to one's spouse, many spouses violate those vows and engage in extramarital affairs. Again, think through this logically. Would anyone sanely and seriously suggest that the best way to prevent people from cheating on their spouses is to include an additional line in the traditional wedding vows? Something that would be like, remember, you're making a vow to be faithful to your spouse, so you can't cheat. No, no one believes that either of those proposals would have the slightest effect on the rate of divorce or the committing of adultery. To even propose such solutions should be laughed at or pitied. Yet the groups pushing for a convention to propose amendments are doing that same thing when it comes to the limitations or powers enumerated in the Constitution. These groups are apparently earnestly suggesting that by adding some new lines to the Constitution, Congressmen, judges, and presidents will suddenly stop breaking their oaths of office, oaths they swear to God to be faithful to the Constitution, as if an extra paragraph or two telling them what they really shouldn't do, what they've already sworn not to do, would turn vow breakers into vow keepers. Yep. I understand that fully. I do. Put simply, just as wedding vows aren't to blame for cheating spouses, the Constitution isn't to blame for corrupt politicians. Changing the former would have no effect on the latter. Samuel Adams explained it this way Neither the wisest Constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of liberty, who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. And thus it is with politicians as well as spouses. Oaths, whether spoken at a wedding or a swearing-in ceremony, no matter how solemn and binding, are but empty words if the person speaking them is not wise and virtuous. I think that pretty much sums it up as far as the context of what we're talking about. They want to add amendments to the Constitution to enforce what's already in the Constitution. And it's like I tell these people, we already have that amendment. It's called the Tenth Amendment. We don't need another amendment to have the states have the power to enforce the Constitution. We already have that amendment, it's already been ratified, it's called the Tenth Amendment. But they don't want to talk about the Tenth Amendment. They simply, and it's because you know they want a return on their investment. They've had billionaires in Texas uh backing the these uh these moves to hold a constitutional convention, and he's been doing it for about 20 years, and and I'm sure he's you know wanting a return on his investment. And uh he's not getting that because we continue to beat them in state after state. Because when you explain it to people like this, I was adding another line in the Constitution saying, now seriously, we really mean it. That's not gonna change anything. That's not gonna change anything. Corrupt politician is a corrupt politician. If you have it in your heart to break that oath that you swore to God with your hand on a Bible, you're gonna break that oath just like the cheating spouse. If you have it in your heart to cheat on your sweetheart, you're gonna do it. Right? Regardless of how many words are in the oath, regardless, you're gonna do what you're you know, what you're inclined to do. And so we can't add words to the Constitution to enforce what's already in the Constitution. We need to, as Sam Adams said, we need to only vote for men who are wise and virtuous. And as a good book says, when the wicked rule, people mourn. And we're in that position right now. We we don't take wisdom and virtue as the filter through which we pass all candidates that we vote for. We just don't do it that way. And so as long as we have this corruption, uh we're not gonna be able to have a functioning constitution because none of them plan on doing. I mean, you've got presidents who put out 100-day plans, right? They have these, this is what I'm gonna do in my first hundred days. And they're already, before they take the oath of office, they're already promising to do things that constitutionally they don't have the power to do. So they're violating that oath before they ever take their hand off the Bible. And that's not their fault. Corrupt people are corrupt, it's our fault for electing corrupt people. And so what we need to do is, you know, we need to enforce the Constitution, right? Not change it. We don't need to change it, we don't need to put in there, well, the Congress has to balance every budget. They already don't have the power to do 80% of what they do. So we would have a balanced budget if they stayed with, but they don't keep their oath of office, they don't stay within the boundaries of their power, and it's up to the states to enforce that, to force the federal beast back inside its constitutional cage. We have, Doc, we have got to be involved in that. I don't know how much easier it could be made. You know, JBS.org sends out these legislative blasts. Every time there's a a bill up in one of the states talking about a constitutional convention, our team at JBS.org, they send out a blast. So if you don't get them, go to JBS.org and sign up. But we send out a blast saying, here's when they're meeting, here's the representatives or senators that are talking about it, here's their email address, push this button and we'll pre-populate an email for you. You just have to put your name and and whatever else. Each state requires different things. That's all you have to do. And I, if you if that's too much to ask, then we don't deserve a republic. That's right. As simple as that. You know, a republic, Matthew, if you can keep it, well, we're not showing that we're doing very well at that. We we can keep it, we can turn, and you know, you're doing and like I told you last time I was at your house, the you know, you're doing a remarkable job because you've got your your own family and now your your your posterity, your children's children, and y'all are being taught the truth, and we won't have to worry about that next generation because they have been taught the truth by their mothers and fathers, and they will carry that on. And you've got your own kids who likewise are doing the right thing, and so that's what it comes down to. It comes down to not trying to add lines to the Constitution or add uh you know add uh ways that we can make these things happen. We need to get rid of corrupt politicians, and then those things will take care of themselves. It's like uh Ezra Taff Benson was uh what uh he was uh what do you call it, Secretary of the Agriculture, and he said, you can't force people out of the ghetto. You take the ghetto out of their hearts, and the people will take themselves out of the ghetto. That's right. And I think that's true. And it's the same is true with the Constitution. We have got to have more people know it when you ask people to, you know, I saw a thing the other night. It was, you know, you're asking, they were asking people to name some of the uh protections afforded by the Bill of Rights. They couldn't name any of them. They they, you know, really couldn't name any of them. If they said, what does and these were politicians they were asking, you know, what what's the Fifth Amendment guarantee? These politicians are swearing an oath to a document they do not know. Yeah. I don't know how you can read a sealed book, as they say, right? Isaiah says that you can't read a sealed book. So I don't I don't know how these politicians expect to be faithful to their oaths of office, to be to you know preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution when they don't know the Constitution. Yeah, you're right. But alas and a lack, that's how they go on. So for our case, they're they're sitting here calling for this convention, which I'm gonna tell you. There is okay, let me just lay down. These are the the I call it in the brief, I call it 20 irrefutable facts about an Article V convention for proposing amendments. And these are all things claimed by them that are absolutely untrue. There is no constitutional authority for a limited convention. You read Article V, Doc, and you'll see it's about one line of direction. And that's it. Article 5 is very short and doesn't promise any of the things these people are promising, right? And you'll notice, you'll notice that on their website, if you go to any of the uh convention of the convention of states or its affiliated groups, they don't cite Article V on their website. Now you go to JBS.org and go to R, and if you click on action items, it'll say stop a constitutional convention. You'll notice right there, we got Article V right there, front and center. But they never cite it. The people pushing for this never cite Article V. They send out all kinds of salesmen with these illusory promises regarding the process and the rules and the likely outcome, but they are void. Doc, they have no verifiable history or citation of the black letter of the constitution that supports what they say. It they just don't have it. They make promises, they know they won't have to fulfill, just like politicians do, right? These salesmen come out and they appear at these uh at these legislative sessions the way I do, and their pitch is that this is gonna be a suddenly uh a silver bullet for all that ails us, right? And it isn't, and when you ask them where in history has that happened, they don't say. Where in Article V does it give you this authority, they don't say, because they can't. And so there's no constitutional authority for a limited convention. There's no guidance on how delegates would be selected, there's no guidance on who qualifies as a delegate. Just read Article V, Doc, and you'll see. There's no guidance on how many delegates each state could send. What if Tennessee wants to send a hundred delegates and South Carolina decides to send two? Is that gonna be are we are y'all gonna abide by whatever we say at the convention, even though you chose only to send two guys? No, you're not gonna abide by that. Right? And there's nothing in Article 5 telling how that process should go. And here, note here that the Founding Fathers made this very difficult on purpose. They did not want the Constitution being amended easily. They spent a long time working out the Constitution, working out the kinks, right, of all this that they wanted to put forward as a Constitution. And they didn't want you to be able to change it easily because the fear that you don't just change the Constitution, you change it according to the time, and maybe you have a time that isn't so virtuous, and you end up, you know, destroying the bedrock of the Constitution. Um there's no provision for how rules will be established. If you look in Article 5, it doesn't say how we'll have rules and how they'll be established or enforced. What role do the people play? They don't mention any of that. There's no power provided for the people to stop a convention once it starts. There's no description of the ratification conventions that Congress could choose to call, etc. etc. And I'll close I'll end with this part as far as these bullets are concerned. If 100%, now marinating this talk, if 100% of registered voters, 100% everybody, if 100% of registered voters opposed an amendment proposed by the convention, but the requisite number of state legislatures are ratifying conventions, ratified it, then that amendment would become part of the constitution regardless of the will of the people. And the same scenario is true if a proposed amendment was approved by 100% of registered voters, but rejected by the ratification conventions or state legislatures. Now you think about that.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Yeah.

Nullification Working In The States

Closing Plea: Enforce, Don’t Rewrite

SPEAKER_02 19:24

You think about how terrifying that is. What world do we live in when you've got conservatives, so-called conservatives, who would I unflinchingly would uh not I would not hesitate to guarantee that some of these so-called Republicans, so-called conservatives would agree to an amendment guaranteeing the so-called right of so-called abortion. If you think that the Constitution that was created in this convention would not uh contain a provision uh protecting uh, and I'm using this in giant air quotes, the right of abortion, you haven't been paying attention. It would. If you think that this constitution that they would propose wouldn't contain a provision curtailing the right to keep and bear arms, you haven't been paying attention. Even Donald Trump, the leader of the Republicans, what does he say? We seize the gun and worry about due process later. We can't have these people walking around with guns. He this guy had a permit. And Donald Trump said, We don't care. You can't carry, even if you have a permit, whatever, you can't carry your gun downtown at a at a yes, you can. That's the whole point of the Second Amendment. That's right. And so you've got, don't tell me, it's like Senator, like I started with Senator Goldwater. You would come out with a can a constitution you don't recognize, that I don't recognize, and that the constitution, our republic would not last under such a constitution. Because let's be frank, Doc, who's gonna have seats at this convention? If you've got your hands on the workings of the Constitution, I'm not gonna be there. You're not gonna be there. Why? Because we don't have the billions it takes to secure a seat at that convention. Bill Gates or one of his surrogates will be there, the Clintons or one of their surrogates will be there, George Soros, Peter Cheel, Elon Musk, these are the people that will be writing the amendments that would be in this new constitution. If you feel comfortable having that cast of characters rewrite your constitution, then by all means, please vote for a constitutional concern. But if you're smart enough to see that those usual suspects that they would send out a document we don't even recognize, then you've got to do all in your power. And it takes very little effort. I know some people don't like to get up and go out to the legislative hearings and stuff, but at JBS.org we made it so easy. You just go into your action items, go to JBS.org, click on action items, click on you know stop uh Article 5 Convention, and we've got the button right there to get you started. We've made videos, we made all kinds of videos explaining in depth all the things we're talking about today, and just serves to help everybody have the resources they need. Because I know that not everybody's read history the way I have or you have. I know that, and you know that. But we have the ability at JBS, thanks to you know, people that support us. We had no, we don't have billionaire oil money, but thankful to the people that support us, we have resources that the common man can tap into and instantly increase his knowledge and instantly increase his influence. You are not going to influence Washington, D.C. You do not have the money to do that. We've got the face facts. I don't have the money to do it. Maybe you do, I don't know. But most of us don't have the money to influence D.C. But we do have the ability to influence our state governments. And after all, any constitutional invention will have to be approved by the state legislatures. I can go down and visit my state senator at his place of business. Right? Yep. I can call him on the phone right now. He's, you know, just uh we have a a part-time legislature in Tennessee, so he's you know, he's at home now, I'm sure. I probably wouldn't want to call him right now, but you know what I mean. He knows my name, and and you instantly, when you access that stuff on jbs.org, uh get you know, stop a constitutional convention, you now have resources that the moment before you did that you didn't have. Yep. You know who your legislators are, you know how they voted before, you get their email address, you get all this stuff, and you can literally sit on the couch and it will pre-populate an email for you if you don't want to write your own.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

Yep. I use that resource myself all the time.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Yeah, it doesn't take five minutes to.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

No, and I appreciate the information because I know that John Burrett Society is a strict constitutionalist organization. They love the Constitution, they want to protect the Constitution, and I value the emails that they send to me, and I I take advantage of that information to um educate my legislators about these issues that pertain to the Constitution. And and I encourage my listeners to sign up for the JBS uh information that comes to your to your cell phone really, and and it keeps me educated, it keeps me motivated, and it keeps me involved in the political process. And uh just like you're saying, it it's a valuable resource for me. Now, Joe, our time's running out, and and I and I know that one of the things, two of the things really, that the folks that favor a constitutional convention are always promoting is a balanced budget and term limits. And if I can invite you to come back and talk about those two issues for us, I I think it would be a benefit to my listeners if you were to educate all of us about the balanced budget and the term limits issue, because I hear it talked about so much in regards to a constitutional convention and how a CONCON would help solve so many of our budgetary issues and issues with legislators that are not so good and how term limits would be a way to turn them out of office. Could you come back and talk to us about that another day?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

I would love to. I have two, you know, I have two presentations on those two very issues. Um I'd love to come back. I uh I wanted to close with a little something from this uh brief that I wrote. I encourage all y'all to get it. I don't I don't get paid if you they give it away for free, so it's not me trying to line my own pockets here. Uh there's another stubborn, so I say whether it's uh gun control or raw milk, states are practicing the timeless and timely principle of contract law known as nullification, and they are doing so successfully and safely. I lived in Arizona and I could go down, and next to Circle K there was a shop that sold marijuana. Now there were no troops marching on Arizona to enforce federal marijuana regulations. I my wife is from Idaho. When I was in Idaho visiting her family over a couple Christmases ago, we could go into the grocery store and buy raw milk. Again, Idaho and Arizona are both still in the Union, no troops marching on either state, and yet both states are nullifying federal regulations. So it works. We know, we don't know if a constitutional convention will work. It will most likely fail, but we know for a fact that nullification works because it's working right now in 36 to 50 states who have laws nullifying unconstitutional acts of the federal government, including gun control, including uh raw milk, including marijuana, including all of these things. Voter ID. So we know that sticks in their craw because they they they know that. They know it works, we know it works, and the people promoting this convention, they know it works. That's why they never talk about it. Yep. They never talk, and if they do talk about it, they say, oh, the the Civil War settled that question. That's ridiculous. Yep. That's ridiculous. If it did, then we wouldn't have I wouldn't have all these states. I wouldn't be able to go to the grocery store in Idaho and buy raw milk without you know some sort of federal intervention. But anyway, yeah uh this is what I have wanted to close with. For the love of the Constitution, the union it created, and the liberty it protects, let's not support a scheme that would unnecessarily, and there's the key word, Doc, unnecessarily allow corrupt and conspiring foxes into the hen house of the Constitution. Let's not call a convention to fix the Constitution without first insisting that our elected officials follow the Constitution. Lest we pursue a cure that is worse than a disease, let's take a healthy dose of the rightful remedy and use the Tenth Amendment, Federalism, and the wise counsel of James Madison provided in the Federalist to restore our liberty by forcing the federal beast back inside its constitutional cage. We can make America great again if we insist on making America states again. I hear you. I hear you.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

All right, thank you, Joe Wolverton.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

So next week we'll talk about balanced budget and term limits. Because you're right. I do hear them talking about that a lot.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

All right. Well, this is great. I can't thank you enough, Joe Wolverton. That was an excellent, excellent conversation. Well, thank you for being my guest. You're listening to More Than Medicine. My guest today is Joe Wolverton. He's a constitutional lawyer working with the John Burch Society, and I always appreciate his insight, his information, and his wisdom. That's it for today. Remember, your doctor loves you and Jesus loves you. We'll be back again next week. Until then, may the Lord bless you. Real good.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Thank you for listening to this edition of More than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to the Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Ministry.com. Don't forget to check out Jackson Jackson.