Government is a Fictional Construct
It is possible, even logical, to be an enemy of government and a lover of the Constitution at the same time.
Keep in mind that “government” is a fictional construct. It is merely people working within the framework defined by some set of boundaries, in the case of America, that would theoretically be the Constitution.
By “fictional construct”, I mean it is allowed to exist because people believe it exists. It exists because people believe it has both necessity and value. More specifically, it only exists when people alter their behaviors to accommodate its existence.
It is a fictional construct with power to be sure, and one that has forced people to participate as a means to assure its own survival, but like any organization dependent upon the membership and acquiescence of people, when enough people make a decision to stop participating, the construct dies.
That means it can be altered or dissolved when enough people stop obeying or believing in it.
It only has the power the people submitting to its control give it.
Look at what happened when mandatory union dues were abolished – the unions lost money and through that loss, their power was significantly reduced and, in some cases, totally eliminated. Religious organizations, especially televangelism (like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL Club and Jimmy Swaggart’s SonLife Broadcasting Network), have seen massive memberships evaporate after leadership scandals. Another example is found in the videogaming industry – my two boys grew up playing interactive games that once had massive online memberships but are completely gone today.
I write a goodly bit about eliminating government – allow me to clarify my point. I’m not calling for violent overthrow and I don’t think that is what Jefferson called for in the Declaration when he wrote:
“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.”
When you look at Jefferson’s admonition and consider the Constitution that followed a decade or so later, you can see that while Jefferson’s time required a violent confrontation to effect change, the constitution that resulted provided for a peaceful way to change government without the need for violent revolution.
If you study the Constitution of the United States of America, it not only establishes a system of governance, but it also immediately puts the individual citizen in an antagonistic relationship with the collective government. It makes every citizen an enemy of that government by setting forth what any government is forbidden to do as a recognition that government will always try to do those things.
Much as nature abhors a vacuum, any government abhors freedom.
That very antagonism has led to the bastardization and perversions vested upon our constitutional republic that have reduced and, in some cases, eliminated, the voluntary aspects of our governance and may have put us on a path where violence is necessary.
In 2013, Randy Barnett, noted originalist/strict interpretation Constitutional scholar, wrote:
“The reason for claiming that the Constitution alone among legal texts is inaccessible to lawyers is not that its original communicative content is unclear, but that some of its original meaning is all too clear and some people don’t like it, so it must be gotten rid of somehow. The Progressives were very candid about this, referring to the “Horse-and-Buggy” Constitution. They knew what it meant, but it got in their way. So, for better or worse, the written opinions of long dead New Deal and Warren Court Justices have replaced important parts of the written text of the Constitution.”
People will point out, and rightly so, that there is no constitutional branch of government called “bureaucracy “, that group of administrative resources that forms the cogs and sprockets necessary to make Leviathan run – and forms the basis for the Deep State.
Many note that the real power isn’t in elected office, rather it sits in the comfortable chairs of appointees and lifetime bureaucrats in the Deep State.
That may be true, but the bureaucracy only exists to serve the governmental construct, the maze of rules, regulations and programs authorized by the elected branches. It is just another part of the fictional construct of government – cut rules, regulations and programs and the need for the bureaucracy is also reduced.
Almost every candidate today runs on what government can do for you, their candidacy is almost always based on Bastiat’s definition of the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.
The true answer to changing in a constitutional republic is to elect candidates who never seek to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, rather to eliminate the programs that result in waste, fraud, and abuse.
We need to elect allies of our Constitution, who, by definition, will be enemies of the governmental construct as it exists today.
We need people who know the power of the word “no” and the phrase “shall not be infringed”.
It is possible, even logical, to be an enemy of government and a lover of the Constitution at the same time.
In that mutual exclusivity, we can find liberty.
“…it also immediately puts the individual citizen in an antagonistic relationship with the collective government.”
While this statement is wholly true in its conclusion, it was/is not the Constitution that established the antagonistic relationship of individual citizen with collective government, but is the tool that innumerates that existence. It is by the very nature of man’s creation as an individual, and not a collective, that established/s this truth.
The individual, at his core, strives to be an independent, and inherently will chafe at imposed control by any collective that attempts or accomplishes restriction upon his/her individuality.
Liberty is created within every human being; it is coded into our DNA.