by Gary Griffin
Such ideas were consistent with ideas we might call political philosophy or political theory, and such ideas were mediated by not only individual philosophical beliefs and views but also by their economic interest. Such early ideological formulations of political and economic structures as a basis of modern day United States of America were consistent with the particular time period in which they were born, planted, took root, and grew. We must realize, however, that the Declaration of Independence and the ideas represented by the declaration did not form a sovereign nation state. The declaration itself simply set free the residents of the thirteen colonies from the monarchial power of England. Once free, according to Locke’s social contract theory, they reverted to their original State of Nature.79
Once the Revolutionary War was fought and the independence of the colonists was firmly established, there remained the task of forming sovereignty—a civil society that would operate based on the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, one of which was the consent of the governed. But what form would this new government take that would embody those principles? Clearly, John Locke’s political philosophy articulated a social contract theory that favored the idea of classical liberalism that was popular during that time period. We would not know the form that the new government would take until eleven years later, when on September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States of America was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What emerged was not a true form of classical liberalism but a form of republicanism.80
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT
The ideas that were used to form America based on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were heavily influenced by classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is a set of ideas that arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries out of conflicts between a growing, wealthy, propertied class and the established aristocratic and religious orders that dominated Europe. Liberalism cast humans as beings with inalienable natural rights (including the right to retain the wealth generated by one’s own work), and sought out means to balance rights across society. Broadly speaking, it considers individual liberty to be the most important goal because only through ensured liberty are the other inherent rights protected.
There are many forms and derivations of liberalism, but the central conceptions trace back to three main ideas. Early thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith saw humankind beginning in the state of nature, then finding meaning for existence through labor and property, and using social contracts to create an environment that supports those efforts.
The U. S. Constitution is such a social contract. The formation of the United States of America was not possible without the Constitution. As a social contract is serves a number of functions. First, it serves as a foundation of American civil society that enables the formation of the major social structures of America— philosophical, social, political, and economic. Second, it establishes an agreement between the governing and the governed. Because this arrangement is based on the consent of the governed, governance is based on the general will or public opinion of the citizens.81 Like all contracts, it’s an agreement between two parties. The party of the first part is the government, and the party of the second part is the governed. When the party of the first part violates the provisions of the contract, the contract is rendered null and void. In strict legal terms, such language is easy to understand and interpret. As a contract, it is a binding agreement formed as a basis of a civil society in which all members agree to do certain things. When one party to this contract fails to abide by it and perform his part of the agreement, then the other party has become aggrieved. Such grievances are grounds for a renegotiation of the contract.
Certain political forces in the country would be happy to separate and destroy the country. They spend their time criticizing and sidestepping the U.S. Constitution by arguing that it is only a document and that it has no meaning for twenty-first century America. This type of thinking puts America on a very dangerous, slippery slope. I submit that if there is no such thing as the U.S. Constitution, then there is no such thing as the United States of America. We’re just a geographical location with a mass of people at around 300 million who reside in North America. We are no longer a sovereign nation state. Why is this important to understand?
No power in heaven or on planet Earth can undermine the sovereign will of God.82 All of his creation, including human beings, must comply with the universal laws he has established. Remember, when human beings are not bound by a social contract, they revert to their natural state and live under the laws of nature established by God. All power that is under each individual’s domain of control must conform to the laws of nature and the sovereign will of God. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power and constrained by God. When a social contract is formed, the power that resides with each individual is delegated or transferred to the governing body that is formed on the basis of the social contract. The U.S. Constitution, from this perspective, is an operating agreement on how government is supposed to conduct itself; it’s a covenant with the Creator of the universe that establishes how a body of people will conduct themselves as a nation. It also serves as an agreement between two parties—the government and the governed.
A social contract only establishes a body of government; it doesn’t specify the particular form the government takes such as a constitutional monarchy, a democracy, or a republic. In the United States, the Constitution created a republic. Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often by election. Remember, the point of the Revolutionary War was to throw off the chains that placed extreme tax burdens on the colonists by the king of England. To replace one monarch with another was not an option.
Although conceptually separate from democracy, republicanism included the key principles of rule by the consent of the governed and sovereignty of the people. In effect republicanism meant that the kings and aristocracies were not the real rulers but rather the people as a whole were. Exactly how the people were to rule was an issue of democracy since republicanism itself did not specify how. In the United States, the solution was the creation of political parties that were popularly based on the votes of the people and which controlled the governments of republicanism. Founding Fathers such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were strong promoters of representative democracy. However, other supporters of republicanism, such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, were more distrustful of majority rule and sought a government with more power for elites.
Almost as soon America was formed as a nation, political parties were also formed that represented both philosophical ideals and economic interests.83 In late-nineteenth-century terms, this would be described as a political economy.84 In the latter part of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, this would be articulated as conservatism. Such an intellectual interpretation, however, is merely a reformulation “of classical liberalism in an entirely unclassical age of the twentieth [and twenty-first] century; it is the image of a society in which authority is at a minimum because it is guided by the autonomous forces of the magic market. The ‘providence’ of classic conservatism becomes liberalism’s generalization of the ‘unseen hand’ of the market, for, in secular guise, Providence refers to a faith that the unintended consequences of many wills form a pattern, and that this pattern ought to be allowed to work itself out. Accordingly, it can be said that there is no elite, that there is no ruling class, that there are no powerful centers which need defense.”85
Oddly, what passes for liberalism in today’s terms is diametrically opposed to the classical liberal tradition. Articulated it would be called collectivism in which government uses social policies to establish positive rights whereby the many are made to pay for the few. It is government interference in the natural operations of econo
mics in which control is sought through centralized planning to establish a fair and equitable distribution of wealth even when such wealth isn’t earned through the application of the Protestant work ethic. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it would have been called socialism or communism.
As both parties—Democrats and Republicans—set about to articulate their political philosophies, they are intent on garnering votes during elections, while protecting the special interests that represent their power bases. This divides the nation and prevents agreement when it comes time to formulate and pass social policies that serve the interests of the people. As Machiavelli wrote in the early sixteenth century, when there is no agreement, in order to exercise power, the prince who holds the reins of power must resort to force in order to ensure that his will is done.86 In The Prince, Machiavelli examines the acquisition, perpetuation, and use of political power in the Western world. Machiavelli wrote The Prince to prove his proficiency in the art of the state, offering advice on how a prince might gain and keep power. He justified rule by force rather than by law. Accordingly, his work seems to justify a number of actions intended solely to perpetuate power. In twenty-first-century America, the furthering of power results in one party controlling the presidency, the House, and the Senate, which translates into a loss of the checks and balances originally established to protect citizens from government abuses of power.
When checks and balances in government cease to exist, corruption abounds and the interests of the people are forgotten and their voices are unheard. Persuasion versus coercion: this is the difference between dictatorships and other sole-control government systems in comparison to democratically elected republics. This force of will translates into a government exercise of power on the people. In this scenario, government becomes the master, and the citizens of the state become slaves. In such a situation, the people are no longer able to enjoy liberty, and, therefore, their freedom of choice is restricted. Such an exercise of power violates the inalienable rights established by the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution.
When liberty and freedom are taken away, or even greatly restricted, it’s hard to say that you’re free. One of the oddities of the twenty-first century is that liberalism, liberty, and liberation all have the root Latin word of liber [free], but when the term liberalism is used, many people run in the opposite direction. It is a fundamental rejection of their freedom.
Perhaps a more accurate analogy of this condition in America is the term serf.87 What is a serf? Serfdom is the socioeconomic status of unfree peasants under feudalism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery that developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe. Serfdom was the enforced labor of serfs on the fields of landowners for protection and the right to work their leased fields. We have been reduced to serfs in America.
Do you think we are not serfs in America? Try not paying your taxes. Try not making your house payment. Try not paying your tax bill on your house even though you’ve paid for the property and own it outright with no mortgage. Watch how fast the government shows up at your door and confiscates your “property.”
Political pundits who are busy espousing political philosophies often do nothing but harm by spewing poison onto the American population. These folks seem to have no shame, and the fact is that they are only dividing the population, often for their own gain, and essentially usurping the power of the people. In twenty-first-century America, the last thing we need is division among the population. There is nothing wrong with diversity. When we celebrate our diversity and pull together as one nation under God, the American spirit is unstoppable. If there has ever been a time where we need to work together, it is now. We have to stand together united on the document that created the nation of America—the U.S. Constitution. It’s the tie that binds, and without it, there is no United States of America.
What are we to do when our leaders no longer listen to the voice of the people? It’s sad to say it, but it’s obvious that politicians no longer listen to the citizens of this country. If they did, they would hear a very angry middle class that is tired of working to support the 5 percent of the upper class and the 15 percent of the lower class that do not work. They rely on government programs and social policies to meet their every need. They rely on government programs and social policies to give them their every advantage. Neither group pays any taxes, albeit for different reasons. If politicians began to listen to America’s middle class, they would hear that they’re tired of working just to make ends meet, raise their children while being taxed to death just to support the lower and upper classes. The poor don’t pay taxes. The rich don’t pay taxes. The burdens are pushed onto the backs of the hard-working middle class families. It’s enough already.
If our government were truly listening, they would quickly realize that Americans are angry. They’re tired of it. They say they’re helping by printing up a trillion here and a trillion there, but no one ever comes to the door to pass out all the money that magically appears and then just as magically disappears. It’s just debt that future generations have to pay. Perhaps such thinking doesn’t penetrate the thinking of Washington, but it’s on the mind of every American.
The other side of the coin is that these actions literally put our children and grandchildren into debt. It’s not freedom or economic prosperity—it’s debt that must be paid at some time in the future. Perhaps that statement is not politically correct, but it’s completely accurate. With trillions in debt and trillions more likely to be added as baby boomers retire over the next decade, it is a mathematical impossibility that the next generation will ever be able to work enough, produce enough to pay even the interest on that debt. How can prosperity flow from that situation? It can’t. We need a new social contract; one for an information society and a knowledge-based economy that can represent the interests of the people in the twenty-first century.
A SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY
The purpose of this book is not to place blame on the backs of those whose ideas have become our prison. The purpose is to challenge existing beliefs and, by extension, alter those beliefs. This will provide a way to escape the bondage that robs us of American liberty and is maintained though the use of established interests that serve to enforce and reinforce the very structure of American society. To accomplish this task is to throw off the chains of imprisonment and regain freedom through the reinstatement of inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the true American ideal created by our Founding Fathers because it guarantees the rights of all American citizens while clearly defining the powers of government. Toonce again free citizens of America and restore them to that constitutional status of free human beings is true liberty, and it is liberating.
The social contract establishes the state, which derives its power from individuals. This is accomplished in the United States through the Constitution. As our Founding Fathers knew, this was necessary to maintain a civil society that could progress forward for the well-being of all citizens. This has changed dramatically in the twenty-first century. It almost appears that no one in our government even recognizes the limitations of power established to control government.
The twenty-first century calls for a new social contract by which liberty is no longer taken away from American citizens, but its citizens are granted liberty to the fullest extent so that they might pursue happiness in whatever form that may take. Such actions on the part of the U.S. government will establish social policies that support the economic engine of the twenty-first century in a knowledge-based economy. What does that mean? In a nutshell, control over resources must be put into the hands of the people to direct and use those resources as they see fit. This idea of a paternalistic government who knows what is best and should therefore control your resources, especially financial resources through taxation, is a holdover from a bygone era. American citizens are not children who need guidanc
e of government parents. As discussed in chapters 6 and 7, this will require a new political system and a new economic system.
If knowledge is power, then we must establish the means by which that power can be harnessed to accomplish the work that is ahead for America as we sit at this crossroads in our history as a nation. To accomplish this task, we must recognize three important macro-level trends. First, production processes are now decentralized. Second, we no longer need to control time and space of people resources. Production must now be managed by performance outcomes. Third, individuals are now the new owners of the means of production because knowledge itself resides with individuals. In order for America to bring back prosperity, we must align social policy to reflect these trends. This can only happen by establishing a social contract that is based on the U.S. Constitution and clearly defines the government’s role and powers that don’t interfere with individual rights and personal liberty. Such an effort will require a major overhaul of the current political and economic systems.
It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.
Thomas Jefferson