[KrisKrinkle]

It looks like the underlying premise of your reasoning is that the people have no retained right to have their representatives act on their behalf to accomplish whatever the people themselves have the reserved power to accomplish. The opposite of that is an underlying premise of my reasoning and I did not see anything in your reasoning to cause me to accept your premise over mine.

If my premise is correct, and the people have the Constitutionally retained right I stated and exercise that right, then seems to me that amounts to Constitutional authorization.

And this is the (probably unintended) consequence of an amendment to the Constitution. But just because consequences are unintended doesn't mean they don't exist.

Note that lower down in the Declaration of Independence it says that Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, which relates to what I tried to lay out. Still further down are complaints about what the Government or the King did that the people did not want done, but there are also complaints about what the Government or the King did not do that the people did want done.

By the way, I don't very much like the implications of my reasoning, though that's irrelevant.

[Jeff Head]

It looks like the underlying premise of your reasoning is that the people have no retained right to have their representatives act on their behalf to accomplish whatever the people themselves have the reserved power to accomplish.

No, that is not the premise of my reasoning.

The people do have the right, and the people have already outlined at the Federal level, in law, how that right is to be exercised. That's what the US Constitution is all about.

If it is not done through the amendment process, it is illegal, by definition, and by the direction of the people themselves through the ratification process, meaning the consent of the people.

So, we have the right, and at the federal level we have already defined how that right is to be exercised.

Now, my other point was that if the federal officials themselves begin circumventing the process (which all three branches of government have been doing for decades), then ultimately, like with the revolution, the people can resort to their natural right as outlined in the DOI to throw off such usurpations.

IMHO, the premise you are setting forth is that the people have the power to usurp the ratified, legal amenement process through their federal legislators that they themselves (the people) have ratified and directed those legislators to use. That, unless I am reading this wrong, is the fault I find. It's like the people saying...do it this way (the legal, ratified amendment process) and then turning around and telling their legislators that it is okay to violate it and break their oath. That leads, by affirmation, to what we already have...them breaking their oaths and circumventing the constitution, thinking that "the people will approve". They are trying to call this democracy...when this Republic was never intended to be a pure democracy in the least.

That may be the defacto state...but it is wrong, illegal and unconstitutional altogether.

Jeff