[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent post!

To be of any use, government must be able to command obedience, but at the same instance it is obliged to control itself. Society has no coercive means to enforce its distinctions. It must rely on persuasion and an appeal to societal affections to achieve its ends. Government knows no such restraints. Therefore Society must be extremely circumspect in the power to which it assigns Government, granting but little, reserving most for its citizens.

I've often mused that the framers intended legal compliance by the citizens to be more voluntary than coerced. Of a truth, I cannot imagine how the government at any level could force compliance if the overwhelming majority of citizens refused a particular law or authority.

Two features in our system support my musings: 1) the right to keep and bear arms can be seen as a built-in reset button for the Constitution, 2) that the jury of peers may acquit because they deplore the law itself (jury nullification).

No doubt both of these would cause many in government to have nightmares. But if the law is just and applied equitably - the government has nothing to fear from the citizens. OTOH, tyrants need not apply - and (IMHO) that was the point...

[YHAOS]

If government is to have any role in the affairs of men, it must command obedience. If it is not permitted to command obedience; if it may only say, “pretty please,” of what use is government, and why would any society have it. If government is so constructed that it may not provide protection for its citizens against either foreign or domestic aggression, then that is an injustice not to be tolerated. If government is itself the perpetrator of the injustice, then change it we must, or see it dissolved.

So it is that the authority of government must be curbed, and enumerated to those ends required, and its powers confined by whatever devices needed which will assure its compliance. But, just the same, it must be allowed to pursue those ends we (society) deem necessary.

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

. . . . . FEDERALIST No. 51, as published in the Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 6, 1788, James Madison, writing as Publius.

’Auxiliary precautions,’ being what? Might they be the Bill of Rights? Surely, that and more. A government of carefully enumerated powers, narrowly construed? It is to be hoped. A country governed by laws, not ruled by men? Yes, of course. To achieve this, the Founders of our Union opted for liberty, and the sovereign responsibility that goes with it. They constructed a government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. This means the state serves the electorate, and has no identity in itself other than to fulfill that function, as determined by those whom it attends. The people are sovereign and all wisdom resides in their will.

But, you protest, what if the people become capricious, willful, indifferent, unjust, decadent, careless, profligate, lazy, or neglectful? Well, if the people are sovereign, then they may do any, or all of these things. But, you might ask, if the people become these things, what will become of us? Why, very much the same thing that has happened to many a prince who became capricious, willful, indifferent, unjust, decadent, careless, profligate, lazy, and neglectful.