Beginning with “We the People” the Constitution is a compact, an agreement among equals, the people of the American civil society. The events of 1787-1788 could have been scripted straight out of John Locke’s Second Treatise. A preexisting civil society came to the conclusion that its current form of government was inadequate to secure its unalienable rights, which, per the Declaration is the broad purpose of government.
Through state sponsored conventions special delegations of the sovereign people debated the pro/con of establishing a new government. Just as Locke described the steps that men emerging from the State of Nature naturally gather in society and subsequently set up forms of government, so too did our Framing generation.
Distinguishing our Constitution as a compact is relevant because it establishes the power relationship between the sovereign people and the government of their creation. By the compact of the Constitution, We The People are the principals and government is our agent, our servant. This phantasm, this artificial reality called government exists only by virtue of an agreement among the people. It is ours. It owes its very existence to us. We the People do not exist to serve. Government is to serve at our pleasure. At any time, we may adjust the bounds of the trust we temporarily grant to fellow citizens in government.
So, the agents of the sovereign people can never be superior to the sovereign people. It is a fact recognized in our Declaration of Independence, the 9th and 10th Amendments, and Article V.
In a vivid display of continuing violence against the public trust, of the inversion of the master/servant relationship of our governing compact, the White House issued a diktat yesterday concerning public school restrooms. Defying the Law of Nature, the Constitution, and our Declaration, Obama’s ministers determined that teenage boys and girls must share restroom facilities. From what power source does Obama command this outrage? Mystical? Divine? It certainly isn’t Constitutional. Perhaps muslim caliphs are permitted to treat infidels, the kafirs, this way.
An artificial entity called government usurped a compact to which it is not a party. Are we in possession of a free republic if our liberty depends on the person elected president? Are we to be ruled through the arbitrary will of the person in the White House, or shall we reform our institutions such that they serve their legitimate functions? We must realize that what we experience isn’t government. Government exerts legitimate force. Illegitimate compulsion is violence exercised by tyrants.
Stop the violence. We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder of the American Republic. Restore the compact. Join Convention of States. Sign our COS Petition.
Article V.