Cepiaclub’s Libertarian
Party Amendments Project
By
Tim Krenz
Director,
Cepiaclub
September
10, 2025
Copyright
©
2025 The CEPIA CLUB LLC
Executive
Summary
Proposed
Mission of the Libertarian Party in the United States: To set the
world free by, first, implementing the Libertarian Party platform and
its principles into the public and non-public affairs of the United
States.
Amendments
Project Objective: To unite the Libertarian Party, and all of its
affiliates and allies, with a focused, multi-year effort aiming to
significantly amend, change, and/or significantly revise the Federal
document known as the Constitution of the United States, in order to
achieve the proposed mission (see above).
Reasoning
for the Amendments Project
Among the reasons giving
plausible success to the project, we have the following:
First, despite the so-called
reserved powers of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, granting
states and the individual “people themselves” rights not
expressly prohibited to them, nor granted to the central Federal
Government, the shared powers, balance of interests, and the people’s
checks on the abuse of Federal power does not exist. By practice,
even when not expressly granted by the Constitution, Federal United
States Code and the courts of the United States enforcing them have
superseded, or have the tendency to supersede, all other shared
powers between the central government and the states and the people.
The United States, as a cooperative of shared powers between the
center and parts, as intended by the original 1787 document, does not
exist. Instead, the United States acts as a de facto
dictatorship, run by Federal authorities, no matter which faction or
person(s) hold the particular branches of the Federal government or
the several offices.
Second, amending the
Constitution, as provided by its Article V, allows current revision
of all but one part of the document (i.e. Senate representation; the
original second prohibition, dealing with the year 1808 no longer
applies). By amendments, while keeping to the sound simplicity of
most of the document, the process could help restore the true Federal
nature of shared powers, back into the governing of the United
States—the central government, the states, the people themselves,
and possibly additional entities under new arrangements. Such
amendments working to significantly accomplish the project objective
could include the following:
Term Limits; Balanced
Budgeting; War Powers Limitations; Prohibiting Income Taxes; Defined
Government Revenues; Campaign & Campaign Finance Rules (or no
rules); or Enumerated Powers.
More tailored or fewer
amendments could also qualify as ways to both reform the system of
government in the United States, which could revise the existing
document, or conduct major rewrites of parts, if deemed necessary in
the convention writing and ratification processes for each. Either
way, amendments can reclaim and restrict the abuses of the system as
they have evolved over 236 years, and as they exist now.
Third, if united behind the
effort, the Libertarian Party could find a great deal of popular
support for the concept of a 3-5 year amendment campaign.
Independents, non-voters, and other major party-members would most
likely support some measures of amending revisions, and others may
support different ones. Even so, a nation-wide campaign, under the
Libertarian National Committee, and conducted mainly in states by the
state and local affiliates, potentially could galvanize support,
growth, and mission success for the Libertarian Party. The
Libertarian Party desperately needs a catalyst to unite all factions,
grow in numbers and influence, and all in order to survive, let alone
succeed. At its core, the Amendments Project relies on a central
party support, but with the states and local affiliates doing the
work, and according to their own local conditions. The project
provides opportunities for all factions and interests in and new to
the party organization, and in the movement, scope for their
interests and freedom in their local pursuit toward the main project
objectives. Considering how the amendment process works, the
project would help many states with ballot access processes, a
significant consideration in its favor as a party-wide initiative.
Fourth, given the provisions
of Article V of the Constitution—which offers several optional ways
of amending the document, even without Congressional instigation, the
Libertarian Party could conceivably create enough support in an
amendment writing convention, as stipulated in Article V, to
completely revise the Constitution in its entirety, if desired. Of
course, it matters on who controls the conventions and influences the
greatest number of delegates, but a new or even slightly changed
document could implement a libertarian solution to all government in
the country. Those solutions could come from the party platform,
based on limited government and individual freedoms and
responsibilities—the proposed solutions which gave birth to the
Libertarian Party itself over fifty years ago.
Fifth, the project could
utilize leverage it could obtain through its own efforts and
campaigns to cooperate with others and build coalitions, to find
low-hanging fruit, and in viable state electorates, to implement
amendments. In terms of fruit, that comes in the form of existing
yet serviceable amendment proposals needing only a few state
legislature or convention ratifications to pass into the law of the
land. These possible amendments already in process would take more
research to discover their potential, but they could give easy
victories, and in states where a low number of votes might change
things greatly. For example, Amendment XXVII, first introduced in
1789, took 202 years, until 1991, before the last several
ratification approvals happened, and it became part of Constitution
at that latter date. The Libertarian Party could exploit two-party
vulnerability, which might only involve a hundred thousand votes in
some cases, or a few million votes between a dozen states, to tip
balances in the party’s favor on amendments. Either way, this
requires more research, but it has potentials easier to achieve than
a Presidential campaign victory.
Conclusion
With these main five arguments
to support the Amendments Project, opportunity exist to deserve
farther exploration in depth. Not only does an Amendment Project
provide the Libertarian Party with a focus and catalyst for all
action, it could provide a mission success. Changing the conditions
of the system under which the party has never successfully done much
opens the door to one thing needed most in the world: A peaceful and
non-violent way to revolutionize government in the United States of
America, on the road to setting the world free.
