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lentulusgracchus, may I add a postscript to my last?

I realized there is a sense in which the “We the People” of the Preamble refers to a substantial reality that historically preceded the institution of American government itself. For there was an American nation before there was a United States. And it was consolidated enough to fight and win the Revolutionary War and effect its separation from Great Britain. Indeed, the United States is the creature of this "We the People."

I have long considered the Declaration of Independence the “Preamble to the Preamble.” For it tells you who “We the People” are, and what they want:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security….

“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

What these lines say to me is this: The people described are not “creatures of the state,” to be ordered about by judges. This people is the creator of the state, its legitimizing authority, and its final arbiter or judge.

As such, these lines are absolute anathema to socially progressive, utopian schemes in which “people” are creatures, not of God, but of the state. In such schemes, the Will of the People -- in the dual senses of sovereign authority and consent to the continued existence of the government -- disappears, replaced by a complete abstraction called the General Will -- which is basically whatever intellectuals and the politicians and judges they have in their pockets say it is.

I think we Americans have an acute need to revive our understanding of who “We the People” are. But frankly I wonder whether contemporary America can summon a sufficient “people” in this sense with the will and the spirit to reassert their ancient rights which they, acting in concert, supposedly guaranteed and secured by the Constitution they created.

FWIW

Under normal circumstances a constitutional ammendment would not be necessary or even advisable. We are in the process of falling through the looking glass.

Laws are only necessary to keep free people from bumping into one another, and the more people are capable of ruling themselves, the less necessity for explicit law. Where only a few people commit an offense, sometimes it is better to simply look the other way, or find a non-judicial means of dealing with it than try to address it in law.

By the time something has become enough of a problem to require police intervention it is almost too late.

Nevertheless, this is our means of establishing a boundary and defending it. The law is our way of announcing the line we are prepared to fight over.

The problem comes when, having declared our legal lines, we decline to exercise them. When government officials make law without recourse to the people, and when officials decline to defend those laws that the people have established themselves, then the "republic" is a dead letter. And that is what we face now, a rebellion by appointed officials and judges against the people and the laws they have themselves enacted. If we leave these people in office we will have given up our right to self-government.

The fact that these officials have the backing of the press organs obscures the fact that they have taken on the power to rule by decree, with their own propagandists hard at work to convince the people to acquiesce. This is beyond the question that is the excuse for the rebellion. Even if you believe in rewriting the marriage laws you must oppose this effort by officials to overturn our laws at will, and we must oppose it by impeaching these people, and turning them out of office. If we lay down for this a line has been crossed and we will not be able to uncross it.

A constitutional ammendment may be necessary as a weapon in this fight but written laws are of no use once people have lost the will to defend the law. The precise means of establishing what the line is, is less important than our will to draw the line and defend it.

This is at its heart an artificial controversy, there is no reason at all that 5000 years of settled law must suddenly be a crisis that won't wait. To watch the press moving in lockstep on this issue is startling, and I see no evidence that they even question their own manipulation.