Comments Elsewhere

Ian, if you’re claiming that “We the People,” through the medium of the Constitution, authorize the government to act under the powers enumerated in the Constitution, and that the “We” in question is supposed to be each of us, and not just the royal “We” being pushed by some smaller group of people, then I offer myself as empirical evidence that your claim is false. I was never asked whether or not I consent to the terms of the Constitution, or authorize the United States government to act on my behalf under the powers enumerated in it. If I were asked, I would refuse to authorize it. The Constitution does not place effective limits on state power, and explicitly provides for moral crimes that I would not authorize anyone to commit on my behalf (e.g. at least some powers of taxation). So would-be governors aren’t authorized to exercise the powers enumerated in the Constitution by everyone subject to it. I (as well as many others) refuse to give my consent.

You could still claim that even if I refuse to give would-be governors my authorization, it’s still true that most people subject to the Constitution do authorize would-be governors to exercise Constitutional powers, either tacitly or explicitly. This seems to be what you suggest when you mention that not enough people disagree with it enough to sustain a popular revolution as a response to my question.

But that line of argument has two problems. The first is internal: it actually undermines strict Constitutionalism rather than justifying it. After all, most American subjects also tacitly and explicitly authorize the gov’t to exercise all kinds of unenumerated, extra-Constitutional powers. If your argument actually demonstrates the legitimacy of enforcing the written Constitution, then it leaves you with no defense against parallel arguments for enforcing any unwritten prerogative (for welfare, warfare, education, regulation, …) that can claim majoritarian backing.

The second problem has to do with the position of “individual dissenters” (in this case, me). It may be true that you can authorize the government to take authority over you, and in so doing you’ve agreed to the demands it places on you within a limited set of powers (e.g. that it has the rightful authority to take excise taxes from you if you authorize it to act under the terms of the Constitution). But it’s quite another thing to claim that you (or anybody else) can authorize the U.S. government to take authority over me, or to enforce its demands on me. I didn’t authorize it to do that, and your “authorization” means less than nothing when the authority in question is over other people: that’s not yours to give.

Ian C: “Individual dissenters must recognize the requirement for regulations of interpersonal behaviors. Where I draw the line is when the laws begin to regulate individual behaviors.”

I agree that’s where to draw the line; I deny that it has anything in particular to do with the Constitution. The Constitution explicitly enumerates powers that invade the individual behaviors of innocent people (e.g. forcibly extracting taxes on peaceful commerce). And even if the Constitution did strictly limit itself to recognizing people’s rights, and to authorizing the defense of those rights against the invasions of others, it still wouldn’t establish any new obligation of obedience or any special authority for its officers. The obligation to act according to justice already existed without the Constitution, and men in government uniforms have no unique power or authority to defend people’s rights that distinguishes them in prerogatives, status, or authority from us ordinary civilians.