fontor: “The Constitution is a document that has held this country together.”

I seem to recall some minor unpleasantness in which the Constitution failed to hold the country together. And the reasons that the country came to be “held together” again at the end of it had a lot more to do with bayonet-points, cannon, and warships than it had to do with the paper Constitution.

In any case, I do not see why it should be presumed that holding the country together is a valuable service to begin with. If the compromises necessary to maintain the union under the terms of the Constitution result in complicity with overt wickedness — as they certainly did for the eight decades before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, and as they arguably do now, given the federal government’s ever-growing ambition and abusiveness — then the Constitution and the union based on it are nothing more than a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell.

Well, yes, it is, actually.

Which is why George W. Bush has no legitimate authority over anyone.

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” — Lysander Spooner (1870)

And that’s why I celebrate every September 17th by ignoring the Constitution.