To the editor:

The question posed in an April 6 letter to the editor was whether the state of Minnesota should join in an effort to initiate a Convention of the States with the said purpose of amending the U.S. Constitution based upon said states rights to do so under Article V of the United States Constitution.

I believe such a move is ill-advised and should be opposed by all sensible citizens of the state of Minnesota, who because of our present national union happen to be, coincidentally, citizens of the still presently existing United States of America.

This movement is purely partisan in nature and as such only serves to divide our already overly fractured nation even further. Proverb 6:19 says that about the most abysmal abomination in the eyes of God are those who caused division.

Lincoln once said that a House divided cannot stand. He also posed the query as to whether a nation conceived and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long continue to exist upon the Earth. He seem to conclude that the only real hope to continue of one nation under God in this human realm was for us to seek always to have a government of, for and by the people. He never said government was the cause of all our problems. He never said there should be no federal taxes. In fact one was enacted in 1861 to finance the Civil War to pay the monetary costs of this Great Struggle fought to preserve our perpetual union that the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate to maintain.

Two tax-evasion motivated rebellions — Shay’s and the subsequent Whiskey Rebellion — convinced even the father of our country, George Washington, that a strong federal authority capable of raising sufficient tax revenues to pay for a military force capable of providing for the common defense of the nation was necessary.

It seems that to a people who profess love for their country that there might be wont to give heed to the words and deeds of both these great founders that lead our nation at times of genuine threats to the continuing existence of our country as a united people.

Keith VanOverbeke

Marshall