Re-connecting the New Constitution to the Declaration of Independence

Laurie Thomas Vass, The Citizens Liberty Party

June 6, 2018

Introduction.

In the natural rights individualist society, the role of government is to reduce the chance situations that other individuals, or the deep state agents, will deploy the police power of the state to override the individual citizen’s freedoms of choice in pursuing their sovereign life mission.

The government serves this function by administering the rule of law provided by the constitutional framework of collective decision-making, whose goal is to secure just outcomes to the laws that individuals give to themselves.

“No one is born into moral subjugation to political power,” stated Jefferson.

Jefferson wrote that when citizens leave the state of nature to create their government, “all men are created equal… in nature all humans are equal…not subject to the rightful authority of any other human being…in a state of nature no rightful authority exists in nature. No man is subjected to the will or authority of any other man,” he wrote, over and over again, from 1776, to the very last letter he wrote in 1826.

Jefferson believed that individuals are rights-possessors, with equal inalienable rights to pursue their own happiness, manage their private lives, and be free of government coercion in their person and their property.

Jefferson’s natural rights principles were:

Equality among citizens to participate in government.
Privacy of citizens from the invasions of agents of government.
The right to vote in free and fair elections.
The protection of the natural and property rights of individuals as the supreme goal of government.
Equal access to the courts and equality before the law.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration as a compact between citizens in each state to establish a rightful centralized political power, dedicated to protecting the natural rights of citizens that are left incompletely protected within each state government.

The adoption of the Declaration, in 1776, and the subsequent adoption Articles, in 1781, moved the citizens of the United States toward a constitutional egalitarian individualism, with an appeal to natural rights.

Jefferson’s constitutional arrangement, as expressed in the Articles, was based upon the common moral values in the Declaration.

Madison’s constitution was not.

In translating Jefferson’s moral values into the Articles, Thomas Burke, the author of the Articles, aimed at resolving six issues.

Burke proposed:

that all sovereign power was in the states separately.
that the federal government held “expressly” enumerated powers…that each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence.
that any right which is not by this confederation “expressly” delegated to the United States in Congress assembled is retained by the states.
Congress is to be made up of two bodies of delegates, the General Council, and Council of State, with one delegate from each state.
All bills originate in the General Council, and are read 3 times and passed by a majority in the Council of State.
Every law must be demonstrated to be within the powers “expressly delegated to Congress.”

Thomas Paine wrote, in Common Sense, “let us hold out the hearty hand of friendship…an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of rights of mankind and of free and independent states of America,” in a non-coercive constitution, with the coercive police powers of the state.”

The phrase “mutual friendship” is lifted directly from Paine, and placed, by Thomas Burke, in the Preamble of the Articles, as the basis of the new government. Burke’s intent in his Articles, was “to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this union.”

The Articles declare the purpose of the confederation:

the “States hereby severally to enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.”

The Articles placed the new constitution within the context of the philosophy of the Declaration so that the words of the text could be interpreted from the historical context of a strict constructionist perspective.

The words of the Articles meant as the writers of the Articles used them, as they existed in 1776, as connected in time to the text of the Declaration.

In contrast to Burke’s constitution of 1776, Madison’s constitution of 1787, disconnected the constitution from the Declaration, and connected his constitution to the unwritten framework of civil government, and civil rights, in England.

Madison’s Preamble has no meaning and no significance to American citizens because it is based upon an alien political structure of the British 2-class social structure of the British mixed government, which formed the foundation of Madison’s system of checks and balances.

When Thomas Paine commented on Madison’s constitution, he said, “it is an ill-advised attempt to replicate the British form of mixed constitution…their basis for justice becomes the balancing of particular class interests….they make it difficult for citizens to participate…it deprives citizens of private manners and public principles, and is driven by power and not consent, by coercive force and not the choices of citizens.”

Natural rights patriots, in 1787, understood exactly the significance of Madison’s philosophically vacuous Preamble.

Thomas Paine explained that when Madison and Hamilton said in their Federalist Papers, that the central government needs more energy, “what they want is energy over the citizens.”

“A more perfect union,” said Paine, about Madison’s flawed Preamble, “meant a nominal nothing without principles.”

In re-imposing the British mixed government social class system, in 1787, Madison denied the possibility that America would ever have a common set of constitutional moral values, because he thought that the purpose of government was to balance the financial interests of one class against the other, not secure the rights of citizens from the state.

As Hamilton explained in the Federalist, “Every community divides itself into hostile interests of the few and the many, the rich and well-born against the mass of people If either of these interests possessed all the power it would oppress the other…we (the well born) need to be rescued from the democracy.”

Or, as James Dickson, one of the 51 self-selected elite “Framers” stated at the convention in 1787, the new constitution must protect “the worthy against the licentious.”

Dickson explained that Madison’s new Federal constitution placed the remedy in the hands (well born) which feel the disorder of democracy, whereas the antifederalists placed the remedy in the hands of citizens (the common people), who cause the disorder, by not paying their taxes and debts in gold and silver.

In other words, Madison’s flawed arrangement unleashed perpetual class warfare in America, exactly as citizens see today with the rhetoric of the socialists. Madison stacked the constitutional deck against the common class in favor of the natural aristocratic elites.

The socialists today adopt Madison’s two class system and apply the Marxist rhetoric of class hatred, which is a logical outcome of Madison’s vacuous Preamble. The socialists intend to use the constitutional framework to stack the deck against common citizens, in favor of the unelected and unaccountable, deep state elites, who promote a one-world globalism.

Madison’s constitution means one thing about the purpose of government to left-wing socialist judges, and an entirely different thing to conservative judges.

Both sides can claim legitimacy for their interpretation because Madison left out the purpose of his government in the Preamble.

The Preamble of the Articles connected the Articles to the Declaration, just like the Preamble of the constitution of the Liberty States of America re-connects the new constitution to the Declaration.

These same set of moral, constitutional values expressed in the Declaration, are expressed in the Preamble to the new constitution, which states:

We, the citizens of the Liberty States of America, establish this constitutional contract between our respective states and the National Government of the Liberty States of America.

We solemnly swear and affirm that we establish this contract to preserve and protect the natural and civil rights of citizens in each state, and to protect and defend the sovereignty of each state and the nation, from foreign and domestic threats.

Madison’s Flawed Preamble.

Madison’s Preamble is so vacuous that the U. S. Supreme Court has rejected the relevance of the Preamble in constitutional decisions.

In 1905, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled that laws cannot be challenged or declared unconstitutional based on the Preamble. The Court declared: “Although that Preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the United States or on any of its Departments.”

While the Federal judges do not rely on the Preamble for guidance on interpreting the text, the most significant decision by the American natural aristocracy, in history, used the fraudulent statement of “We, the people,” to cement the balance of power away from the states.

In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Federalist elite, Chief Justice John Marshall, stressed the importance of the government being created by “We, the people. The State of Maryland claimed that it was the state governments who formed the United States and that therefore it is the states who are sovereign.

Marshall rejected this, quoting the Preamble and declaring: “The government proceeds directly from the people; is ‘ordained and established,’ in the name of the people.”

If the strict construction of the text had been followed, Marshall would have cited the ending paragraph.

The 51 Federalist elites who met in secret in Philadelphia, signed their names under the text:

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.

It is a lie for Marshall to say that there was “unanimous consent of the states,” as well as a lie for Marshall to say that the constitution proceeded directly from the people. The constitution proceeded directly from 51 self-selected, financially self-interested elites, who created an enduring fantasy that they were in fact, “we, the people.”

There is no “people” in Madison’s Preamble, or in the text of his constitution. There is only 51 elites who masqueraded as “We, the people.”

Madison’s Preamble states:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Apologist academics that defend Madison’s Preamble attempt to hide the flaw of “We, the people,” under lofty scholarly sophistry.

For example, Michael Stokes Paulsen states that Madison’s Preamble may be so intellectually sophisticated that its plain text meaning is not accessible to ordinary citizens.

Paulsen writes, “The statement of purpose, in the Preamble, is at such a high level of generality as not to supply substantive rules of law – certainly not to supply substantive content in conflict with the substantive constitutional provisions that follow, which presumably instantiate the purposes stated in the Enactment Clause. Indeed, the statement of purposes is so general, vague, and ambiguous as not really to supply much of a rule of construction either. What is “justice”? What do the “blessings of liberty” require as a substantive matter? What is necessary to provide for the “common defense” or to assure “domestic tranquility”? What is the “general welfare”?

Paulsen suggests that the words and text are sufficient to interpret the text, in a method that Paulsen calls strict texturalism, also known as strict construction.

Without the benefit of an end goal of government in Madison’s Preamble, Paulsen can not apply his method of texturalism because it yields multiple results, depending on what political party is interpreting the text.

In economic theory, Paulsen’s dilemma is known as Arrow’s Paradox, where the welfare benefit of an economic policy cycles over and over again, in a philosophical do-loop.

Paulsen argues that Madison’s Preamble provisions “do not “stand for” abstract principles; they “stand for” what they say. But rules or standards may not properly be deduced from the text by first illegitimately inducing it to stand for some principle that its unspecific words do not in fact justify. A text does not contain a “principle” apart from its true range of meaning. With certain texts thought to be highly general or vague, the answer might simply be that the text in fact does not supply a rule or a standard.”

In other words, Paulsen argues that texturalism can proceed in the absence of the historical context of the text, in a type of ahistorical, socially-constructed reality

Strict Construction of the 3 Preambles.

In Paulsen’s method of strict construction, he suggests that treating any “thing” external to the text as authoritative is not allowed. In other words, the repeated use of the term “this constitution,” in Madison’s text limits any interpretation of the specific written text, including the historical context of the text itself.

His method employs the objective, reasonable-person stance to reading the words of the text, without application of the context of the text. His method is a form of texturalism, without the context. A reasonable person reads the text, but must not apply logic to the historical facts of the text, at the time it was written.

The reason for this subterfuge is that the citizens had just beaten the British, (the historical context), and Madison intended to re-create the British form of government in America.

As Paulsen noted, “strict construction is the opposite of liberal construction, which permits a term to be reasonably and fairly evaluated so as to implement the object and purpose of the document. An ongoing debate in U.S. law concerns how judges should interpret the law. Advocates of strict construction believe judges must exercise restraint by refusing to expand the law through implication. Critics of strict construction contend that this approach does not always produce a just or reasonable result.”

Paulsen continues, “constitutional supremacy implies strict textualism as a controlling method of constitutional interpretation, not free-wheeling judicial discretion. It is simply not consistent with the idea of the Constitution as binding law to adopt a hermeneutic of textualism that permits individuals to assign their own private, potentially idiosyncratic meanings to the words and phrases of the Constitution. The meaning of the words and phrases of the Constitution as law is necessarily fixed as against private assignments of meaning.”

In Paulsen’s method, “We, the people,” is a mythical party to the contract, which established the supremacy of the British form of government. Madison’s constitution is not the American form of government protecting individual freedom established in the Declaration and the first Preamble of the Articles.

For example, both the Preamble of the Articles, and the Preamble to the natural rights constitution describe the two parties to the contract as the citizens of the states and the new central, national government.

In Paulsen’s strict construction method, the lawgivers who wrote the text were not really the lawgivers who wrote the text. Paulsen argues, “The lawmakers of the Constitution were “We the People,” not the framers or ratifiers or anyone else.”

Paulsen admits that the humans who wrote the text were not the “framers,” or the “ratifiers” of the document.

He states that, “The Constitution dictates the perspective of an abstract hypothetical collective Person, “We the People,” who speak through the document itself. The text of the hypothetical “We, the people,” confirms an objective, reasonable-person stance to interpreting the words of the text. They also would seem to confirm a public stance toward constitutional interpretation. Whoever “We the People” is/are, these words plainly describe a public persona.”

Paulsen argues that the objective meaning of the words, in the absence of any context, must be interpreted by some hypothetical “objective observer” or “reasonable person” who interprets the text written by some other hypothetical person, called “We, the people.”

Interpreting the Purpose of Government Derived from the 3 Preambles.

In one part of his argument, where it suits his interpretation of Madison’s Preamble, Paulsen argues that Madison’s Preamble provisions “do not “stand for” abstract principles; they “stand for” what they say… A text does not contain a “principle” apart from its true range of meaning. With certain texts thought to be highly general or vague, the answer might simply be that the text in fact does not supply a rule or a standard.”

In another part of his argument he switches sides and asserts that the text of Madison’s constitution contains principles that allow an objective observer to apply strict construction.

Paulsen writes, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

Paulsen stakes his claim for interpreting the Preamble on the use of the text, “this Constitution.”

Paulsen states, “It is “this Constitution” – a specific written text – that all officers of government swear to support and be bound by, according to its written terms. It is “this Constitution” – a specific written text – that is amended, by the addition of new written text, when amendments are adopted pursuant to the procedures specified in Article V.”

The purpose of “this constitution,” for Paulsen, was to usurp the authority of the Articles, and replace the Articles with text that forever embedded the financial interests of the 51 natural aristocratic elite over the financial interests of the common citizens.

Paulsen explains 3 fundamental goals of the government of 1787 that established the 240 year unfair advantage of the wealthy over the common citizens.

First, the new constitution maintained the prior public and private debts owed to the elites, but modified by “the supreme law of the land” that the new central government could compel the repayment of debts in gold and sliver, not in paper money issued by the states.”

Second, the new constitution stated that, “Treaties made under the Confederation are carried forward as part of the binding legal obligations of the United States under the Constitution, just as debts and contractual obligations are.”

Third, the new constitution permanently eviscerated the authority of state courts in favor of establishing a superior judicial power in the central government. Paulsen makes special note of the force of this text: “Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

Federal judges served for life and were approved by the natural aristocratic elites in the Senate. The Federal judges serves the interests of whatever political party that appointed them.

Paulsen concludes his argument about the purpose of Madison’s constitution by noting, “This starting point yields the conclusion that discerning the lawgiver’s intention is the object in reading the text. It is, in a small way, an interpretive stance external to the text, and circular in its own way.”

It is circular in its own way because Madison deliberately obscured the fact that the intention of the lawgivers was to permanently establish British civil rules and procedures that benefited the elites, who wrote the text.

Just as the royalty in England derive unwarranted benefits from their unwritten constitutional text.

The circular logic of the text allows socialists to interpret the text as binding authoritative law, disconnected from the will of the citizens and not derived from the consent of the governed, to promote global socialism.

Paulsen complains that socialist judges “sever the interpretive premises and principles from the text being interpreted. The more that socialist judges use their own interpretive approach the more the text is disconnected from the text’s authority.”

If the text’s prescribed approach is textualism, following that approach connects interpretive method to the whims and vagaries of contemporary Marxist doctrine.

The deep state agents routinely deprive common citizens of due process of law, in “executive or judicial action taken without lawful authorization and/or not in accordance with traditional forms of justice.’

This type of left-wing judicial interpretation deprives the elite from obtaining their just rewards, under the heavily skewed rules of the Constitution, by interpreting the text to empower the agencies of government unchecked power against the power of the deep state elites.

Paulsen dismisses the prior authority of the Articles by noting that Madison’s constitution replaced the Articles. “The difference between constitutional interpretation and Articles-of-Confederation interpretation is that the Constitution is our governing document and the Articles of Confederation is not.”

In contrast to Paulsen’s ethereal method of strict construction, in the Articles, Burke wrote that “the authority of the congress rested on the prior acts of the several states, to which the states gave their voluntary consent, and until those obligations were fulfilled, neither nullification of the authority of congress, exercising its due powers, nor secession from the compact itself was consistent with the terms of their original pledges.”

The Articles were written by Burke to be a perpetual union of the states, which is the primary reason Madison conducted his cabal to eliminate the Articles, in secret.

Madison’s constitution is also intended to be perpetual.

In contrast to Madison, the new Constitution of the Liberty States of America embeds the set of Jefferson’s principles of government directly into the text of the Preamble, so that there can not be ambiguity about the meaning of the text.

The guiding principles of the new National Government are:

By freely and voluntarily joining our state government into the union of Liberty States, we affirm that the National Government will be guided by the following principles:

“…that all legitimate government authority is derived from the consent of the citizens governed…”
“…that as the consequence of the sovereign authority of citizens, citizens have an inalienable natural right to immediately remove an elected representative from office upon a referendum of 51% of registered voters in a state…”
“…that those governed by the laws and whose individual freedom is restricted by the laws should have the greatest say and consent in making of the laws…”
“…that those who make the laws and give consent to the laws, acting as representatives of the citizens, bind themselves and their constituents to following the laws…”
“…that the National Government is instituted to allow individual citizens to pursue individual happiness and to limit the arbitrary application of government power over the lives of individuals…”
“…that individual citizens who freely give their consent to form a government through constitutional conventions are bound by the original contract until the operation of the government becomes destructive to the original intent of obtaining individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness…”
“…that the citizens of each state have mechanisms in place in the constitutional contract to modify or abolish the governments that have been created that have become destructive to the ideals and goals under which the National Government is instituted, including the right to vote on remaining a member of the national government in a referendum to be held every 20 years from the date of admittance…”
“…that the parties to the constitutional contract are individual citizens acting through their elected representatives at the state and national levels of government…”
“…that the National Government is created by this union of states and the National Government shall never usurp the sovereign power or authority of the individual states or the sovereignty of the citizens in each state and that states have an inalienable right to call a convention of the states, without Congressional approval, to modify, amend, or abolish this Constitutional Contract.”
“…that an individual’s private property obtained through legal contract and title transfer, their rights to appropriate income and profits from the use of their private property, and their rights to dispose and transfer their private property are inviolate and derived from natural rights granted to them by God, and that no government or constitutional contract may ever abrogate or subordinate these natural individual rights, unless by free and voluntary consent of the citizen…”
“…that a citizens Grand Jury of 18 citizens is impaneled, for a term of 12 months, to protect and preserve the rights of citizens against the arbitrary application of government power against citizens…”
“…that a citizens Grand Jury of 18 citizens must inspect all national penal facilities within its district every 6 months, and report their findings to the Chief District Judge, who shall act to remedy the deficiencies found by the Grand Jury…”
“…that the 1776 American experiment of representative democracy was ordained by God to pursue individual human freedoms and liberty from oppression and is an exceptional model in human history to be preserved, protected, and cherished by the citizens and deployed by them and their elected representatives as the guiding principles in the Liberty States of America in its relationships with other nations and other people…”

The text of the new constitution follows the framework and text of many of the state governments, that Madison’s constitution eviscerated with his centralized government that had power over states.

The set of principles in the new constitution is the single arrangement of constitutional authority that leads the nation to the highest rates of economic growth and prosperity because it allows citizens maximum freedom to “pursue their own happiness,” an outcome that Madison and Hamilton intended to avoid at all costs.