The Alabama Legislature has made the state the fourth to officially call for a convention to amend the Constitution. That’s the U.S. Constitution, the one that protects our freedoms, or purports to, the one that sets limits on the government of the United States. They’d better watch it, because they’re playing with fire.

Article 5 outlines the way the nation’s foundation can be reworked. Congress can pass an amendment by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate in Washington, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the country’s state legislatures, that’s 38 of them.

Or, and this is the dangerous one, two-thirds of those states can call for a constitutional national convention, and whatever revisions passed would need to be approved by the same 38 legislatures. In the Alabama resolution, the intent would be to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government and to mandate congressional term limits.

But here’s the rub: There is nothing in Article 5 that would limit a convention to just those items. Anything would be fair game. Freedom of religion? Edit it out, which would make the theocrats mighty happy. Then they could have an easier time imposing their version of fundamentalist Christian Sharia law.

How about freedom of the press? Nobody likes the media, so it should be easy to erase that one. Never mind that a democracy relies on an “informed electorate.” And then there’s free speech. Hillary Clinton is already talking about that one — an amendment that would reel back the powers of the wealthy to buy our elections, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

A convention also would be fiercely tempted to scale back those infuriating legal protections that critics say “coddle” criminals. On and on we could go, doing away with those pesky protections that make a democracy such a pain, but make it a democracy.

But Alabama and the other three states, Florida, Alaska and Georgia so far, with Texas and Kansas expected to follow, have politicians who don’t seem to have such piddling concerns. In fact, a total of 36 states have proposals in one stage or another.

Happily, the Founding Fathers made this very difficult. The 33 amendments that have survived all have gone the congressional route. None has made it through what is being called the “convention of the states” process.

But to resurrect a quote from H.L. Mencken, no one “has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” The various constitutional provisions often can make things complicated, and there is always someone, particularly someone in power, who would be delighted if some of those were simply blotted out.

They usually have access to tons of money that they can use to buy TV ads to twist people’s minds. That’s called propaganda, and sadly, it usually works. They can create a malevolent groundswell, and the pliant, craven politicians who would be part of the conventions would cave in a heartbeat.

So we need to be careful that the posturing doesn’t turn into a monstrous reality. If it did, there’s a good chance we could kiss the U. S. of A. goodbye.