Preparing to wreck the constitution to save it What is the difference between armed “patriots” and armed Taliban? Choice of personal weapon, perhaps? Laura Jedeed attended the Patriot Academy’s “Constitutional Defense” training camp last summer in New Mexico and writes about it for The New Republic. “The handgun course is a loss leader,” she came to see. “The ideology is the product.” Founder Rick Green’s trainees are not preparing so much for armed insurrection as for getting 34 state legislatures to petition for an Article V convention of the states to rewrite the Constitution to better align with biblical principles. Many familiar conservative names and organizations back the efforts of Convention of States Action (COSA): the Mercer family, former Senator Jim DeMint, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), David Barton, and more. In 2016, COSA organized a mock convention of the states in Virginia. The results delivered “the libertarian goods“: After three days, the delegates emerged with six proposed amendments that abolished the federal income tax, imposed congressional term limits, and made it more difficult for the federal government to take on debt. They closed the commerce clause loophole and passed something Feingold described as the “John C. Calhoun amendment”: nullification of any federal law or regulation if 30 state legislatures vote to overturn it. Underlying the effort, for the foot soldiers, if not for the funders, is the belief that the country must return to an imagined 18th-century utopia. They believe they are engaged in an existential struggle against…