“A long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT.”
~Thomas Paine
I find it necessary to once again address the subject of the United States Constitution, as it is in my opinion completely misunderstood by scholars and the masses alike. I have no idea why it is worshiped instead of denigrated, other than the apparent lifelong indoctrination and propaganda spreading that has labeled it the source of our rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is first necessary to remember how and why the Constitution was drafted and forced on the people of this country. It was written by politicians with the agenda of creating a nation state controlled by a central government. When a group of politicians affect policy based on collective acceptance and compromise, the result will understandably be only as “good as its weakest member.” This was certainly the case, and worse, considering the so-called “rights granting” U.S. Constitution. These pieces of parchment that were made the law of the land were done in secret, behind closed doors and in the dark of night. As I have said in the past, this was a successful coup that created a powerful central government that has since the beginning harmed individual liberty and state’s rights.
Why would this have been necessary if liberty and freedom were truly the desired goals sought?
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the United States were bound by the Articles of Confederation, and while those Articles were far from perfect, and in fact were inadequate in many ways, they were extremely restrictive concerning any power at the federal level. I am not advocating here that the Articles of Confederation should have been the law of the land in the first place, or that they should be reinstated, I am only saying that they were far superior to the current Constitution. As I said in a previous article:
“Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no president. There was no Supreme Court. There was no federal taxation, and certainly no immoral income tax. This meant that there was no IRS. There was no federal control of interstate commerce. Congress could not raise an army or draft troops. What this meant, was that the states were sovereign, and no national government existed in any real sense”.
Those drafting the Constitution were supposed to amend and improve the Articles of Confederation, but instead scrapped them entirely in order to replace them with a new ruling document. The result of that coup was the creation of the U.S. Constitution, a political set of rules that authorized a powerful central government at the expense of the states and the individual. The powers clauses alone in Article 1, Section 8 bear this out.
Most argue, although without merit in my opinion, that the Constitution creates and defines our rights, and that provisions written into that document of compromise protect our rights. That is not possible because no men have the ability to grant rights in the first place.
I think it necessary to discuss the real essence of freedom and liberty, and the source of our rights. One would assume that this knowledge would be universal and embedded in the hearts of men, but sadly that seems not to be the case. Our natural rights are inherent because we are endowed with these rights due to our own humanity. All natural human rights predate men, and include the right to life, liberty and property, which encompass all our other rights. Therefore, real freedom relies on the premise that so long as one does not harm or aggress against another or his property, and does not infringe on another’s natural rights, then he should be left alone to do as he sees fit.
In order to be truly free, one has to have complete and total control of his life and property. That means of course that none have a right to aggress against or control any other. If freedom is evident, coercion and force are absent. That means that real freedom cannot exist if involuntary restrictions are imposed on the individual by any governing body.
This discussion begs the question, is there good in a constitutional government, limited or not? I believe not, but admittedly, a government that has less power of force than another would be more desired, but limited government implies that force is still evident. Can real freedom truly exist if one individual or a group of individuals have the power of force over any other individual or group of individuals? Absolutely not!
It is vitally important to remember that the United States Constitution was drafted, signed and put into effect over 225 years ago by a group of politicians dependent on compromise in order to create a powerful nation state, it was not drafted by men intent on protecting the freedom of the individual. Those who signed and accepted the Constitution in 1787 did so without the legal consent of most living at that time, and as no valid voluntary contract existed between individuals and government then, it should be understood that there certainly is no valid contract today. As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. Constitution is a dead letter.
Those who depend on a document sanctioned by the state to define their rights, those who believe that their natural rights are given and protected by a constitution, and those who worship such a system as it creates, will never be free and in fact will end up subservient to that same state. For to accept any constitutional system sanctioned by the state is to accept that government which it creates, and since government relies only on force, living under such a system is the antithesis of freedom, and is in fact a form of consensual enslavement.
The essence of freedom depends fully on the sovereignty of the individual. It is never given or secured by constitutions, nor is it dependent on what is considered to be in the best interest of the collective. If any doubt this truth, simply consider the history of the United States. What began as the freest country on earth has turned into a tyrannical fascist oligarchy, all under the so-called protection of the U.S. Constitution. This total failure is obvious, and as Lysander Spooner noted, the Constitution is “unfit to exist” because of this sorry record.
Those who drafted the Constitution used it to purposely create a powerful national government, a government with the power to tax without limit, to war with little restriction, to control trade and to provide for the general welfare, all under the deceitful and dishonest notion of “individual” representation in a republic. Is it any wonder that it has completely failed to secure liberty for the individual, when in fact it authorized exactly the opposite.
Those clamoring to go back to the Constitution are actually asking to remain under the thumb of a very strong and powerful national governing system, a system that virtually guarantees a totalitarian state. Under any representative government, the power remains in the hands of the state, and the state is the enemy of freedom. What good is there in continuing a system that relies on the hope of getting a better king and court to rule over the rest of us?
Any governing document granting powers to the ruling class at the expense of the people is not in the interest of liberty. If that is not obvious after more than two centuries of liberty destruction, one has to wonder where this experiment will end. The pursuit of our natural rights and defining of same have absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution, and in fact stand in stark contrast to that set of restrictive rules. If freedom is the goal sought, there must be a separation from the state, and the Constitution must be abolished!
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