Comments Elsewhere

Holiday proclamation by the Ministry of Culture of a secessionist republic of one: http://radgeek.com/gt/2013/01/19/happy-lysander-spooner-day/ 1. No man can del­e­gate, or give to an­oth­er, any right of ar­bi­trary do­min­ion over him­self; for that would be giv­ing him­self away as a slave. And this no one can do. Any con­tract to do so is nec­es­sar­i­ly an ab­surd one, and has no va­lid­i­ty. To call such a con­tract a ‘Con­sti­tu­tion,’ or by any other high-sound­ing name, does not alter its char­ac­ter as an ab­surd and void con­tract. 2. No man can del­e­gate, or give to an­oth­er, any right of ar­bi­trary do­min­ion over a third per­son; for that would imply a right in the first per­son, not only to make the third per­son his slave, but also a right to dis­pose of him as a slave to still other per­sons. Any con­tract to do this is nec­es­sar­i­ly a crim­i­nal one and there­fore in­valid. To call such a con­tract a ‘Con­sti­tu­tion’ does not at all lessen its crim­i­nal­i­ty, or add to its va­lid­i­ty. These facts, that no man can del­e­gate, or give away, his own nat­ur­al right to lib­er­ty, nor any other man’s nat­ur­al right to lib­er­ty, prove that he can del­e­gate no right of ar­bi­trary do­min­ion what­ev­er—or, what is the same thing, no leg­isla­tive power what­ev­er—over him­self or any­body else, to any man, or body of men. . . . All this pre­tend­ed del­e­ga­tion of leg­isla­tive power—that is, of a power, on the part of the leg­is­la­tors, so-called, to make any laws of their own de­vice, dis­tinct from the law of na­ture—is there­fore an en­tire false­hood; a false­hood whose only pur­pose is to cover and hide a pure usurpa­tion, by one body of men, of ar­bi­trary do­min­ion over other men. . . . For all the rea­sons now given, and for still oth­ers that might be given, the leg­isla­tive power now ex­er­cised by Con­gress is, in both law and rea­son, pure­ly per­son­al, ar­bi­trary, ir­re­spon­si­ble, usurped do­min­ion on the part of the leg­is­la­tors them­selves, and not a power del­e­gat­ed to them by any­body. Yet under the pre­tense that this in­stru­ment gives them the right of an ar­bi­trary and ir­re­spon­si­ble do­min­ion over the whole peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, Con­gress has gone on, for nine­ty years and more, fill­ing great vol­umes with laws of their own de­vice, which the peo­ple at large have never read, nor even seen nor ever will read or see; and of whose legal mean­ings it is moral­ly im­pos­si­ble that they should ever know any­thing. Con­gress has never dared to re­quire the peo­ple even to read these laws. Had it done so, the op­pres­sion would have been an in­tol­er­a­ble one; and the peo­ple, rather than en­dure it, would have ei­ther re­belled, and over­thrown the gov­ern­ment, or would have fled the coun­try. Yet these laws, which Con­gress has not dared to re­quire the peo­ple even to read, it has com­pelled them, at the point of the bay­o­net, to obey. And this moral, and legal, and po­lit­i­cal mon­stros­i­ty is the kind of gov­ern­ment which Con­gress claims that the Con­sti­tu­tion au­tho­rizes it to im­pose upon the peo­ple. Sir, can you say that such an ar­bi­trary and ir­re­spon­si­ble do­min­ion as this, over the prop­er­ties, lib­er­ties, and lives of fifty mil­lions of peo­ple—or even over the prop­er­ty, lib­er­ty, or life of any one of those fifty mil­lions—can be jus­ti­fied on any rea­son what­ev­er? If not, with what color of truth can you say that you your­self, or any­body else, can act as a leg­is­la­tor, under the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States, and yet be an hon­est man? . . . I trust I need not sus­pect you, as a leg­is­la­tor under the Con­sti­tu­tion, and claim­ing to be an hon­est man, of any de­sire to evade the issue pre­sent­ed in this pam­phlet. If you shall see fit to meet it, I hope you will ex­cuse me for sug­gest­ing that — to avoid ver­biage, and every­thing in­def­i­nite — you give at least a sin­gle spec­i­men of a law that ei­ther hereto­fore has been made, or that you con­ceive it pos­si­ble for leg­is­la­tors to make—that is, some law of their own de­vice—that ei­ther has been, or shall be, re­al­ly and truly oblig­a­to­ry upon other per­sons, and which such other per­sons have been, or may be, right­ful­ly com­pelled to obey. If you can ei­ther find or de­vise any such law, I trust you will make it known, that it may be ex­am­ined, and the ques­tion of its oblig­a­tion be fair­ly set­tled in the pop­u­lar mind. But if it should hap­pen that you can nei­ther find such a law in the ex­ist­ing statute books of the Unit­ed States, nor, in your own mind, con­ceive of such a law as pos­si­ble under the Con­sti­tu­tion, I give you leave to find it, if that be pos­si­ble, in the con­sti­tu­tion or statute book of any other peo­ple that now exist, or ever have ex­ist­ed, on the earth. If, fi­nal­ly, you shall find no such law, any­where, nor be able to con­ceive of any such law your­self, I take the lib­er­ty to sug­gest that it is your im­per­a­tive duty to sub­mit the ques­tion to your as­so­ci­ate leg­is­la­tors; and, if they can give no light on the sub­ject, that you call upon them to burn all the ex­ist­ing statute books of the Unit­ed States, and then to go home and con­tent them­selves with the ex­er­cise of only such rights and pow­ers as na­ture has given to them in com­mon with the rest of mankind. —Lysander Spooner, A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard (Boston, May 22, 1882)