Cepiaclub’s Libertarian Party Amendments Project

 

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granted by the Constitution, Federal United States Code and the courts of the United States enforcing them have superseded, or have the tendency to supersede, all other shared powers between the central government and the states and the people.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.