Good grief, RightWhale -- when was the last time you read the federal Constitution? The American state is formed by, for, and in the People. Our rule of law lives only in the People. The People created the "offices," and made them accountable to us -- the People of the United States of America. See the Preamble for our aims, purposes, and goals.
The Constitution says that the entire political power inheres in We the People. If the people is disordered, then the Constitution as given to us by the Framers will have no effect -- at least not the effect that the Framers clearly intended for us. And the very government itself consequently would be a ruin for the people, and a throne for the tyrant.
The Framers never regarded "the People" as an abstraction, but as real flesh-and-blood individual human beings united in the cause of life and liberty, acting together under a rule of law which we as a People approved, and approve.
On our constitutional model, Tyranny could be instantiated only by means of the people failing in their moral duty to preserve our constitutional rights. Tyranny cannot happen without our tacit approval -- or our disregard of the moral principles which lie at the very base of the Constitution's clear language and intent.
Have you gone and turned into a "Euro-weenie" on me?
Here we are probing the difference between the will of the people and the doctrine of the general will here -- the former is the American historical model, the latter, the European one. And, following its model, Europe is slowly committing suicide as a culture, right before our eyes, as we speak. Like so many lemmings inanely plunging over the cliff, into an unknown abyss....
Are you recommending that we follow them in this exercise of suicidal fatuity?
If I were a history teacher, and you my student, and your last were a test -- I'd give you an "F."
Can you guess who I have been reading? Remember, I do not post my own thought, but that of the authorities. I believe that Madison, Jay, and Hamilton would be trying to make sense of the modern State as it is evolving so rapidly under constitutional aegis and they would be in substantial agreement. Montesquieu would be disappointed to also have to agree.
Yes, the preamble begins "We the People ..." However, the Constitution establishes a republic of laws, not a whim-of-the-moment direct democracy. There is a definite lawful progression of procedural steps for amending the constitution according to the popular will and it is by design no easy matter. It requires "the People" to want what they want consistently for the period of time necessary not only to pass an amendment but to ratify it in enough states within a time limit. Otherwise, the law is the law even if the people are unhappy about it.
You've been getting the "F" lately in post after post, Betty. Cool down and start thinking about this stuff.
Good point. Rousseau's "general will" of the people did precisely view "the people" as an abstraction, almost like a force of nature. And while their "will" was supposed to reign supreme, he made it clear that it was entirely possible for individuals to be alienated from knowing their true will, in which case the ruler would have to act in their true interest, even against their will.
"The people", for Rousseau, was a philosophical concept, not any living person or collection of people necessarily.
This is very different from Locke and Jefferson, for whom the people were, as you say, flesh and blood individual people.