What is Allegiance to the "United States"

     Allegiance to the government of the United States is not the same as allegiance to the State of which one is a legal resident. Article XIV, adopted in 1868, states that everyone who is born a citizen or is naturalized and who is subject to the jurisdiction of United States "are citizens of the United States."

     "The citizen was not, under the theory of States' rights, in contact with the National Government. He owed allegiance to his State, and the State dealt with the Nation. That theory was definitely set aside by [the Fourteenth] Amendment." *

     Americans now owed allegiance to both authorities. Congressman John Bingham was the principal author of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, the part with the words "citizen of the United States". "The phrase 'citizen of the United States' had been used for nearly 8 decades before the Civil War, but always to speak of persons within federal territories." Original Intent.org 

"It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation." John C. Calhoun

     We unintentionally created what would become a behemoth national government, and it was entirely within the purview of the original Constitution because we had amended the original Constitution. But did creating 'national powers' within the 'federal' government automatically give it the broad powers it has today, with hundreds of federal agencies allowed to make law, and the President allowed to make legally binding executive orders, when the first sentence in the Constitution states: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives"?
     Federal powers began to expand, says Doug Fiedor, in 1825 (Wayman v. Southard) when Congress unconstitutionally delegated the power to the federal court to establish its own rules of practice." In that case, Chief Justice Marshall therefore denied that the delegation [of those powers] was impermissible," and "In 1940, that power was even written into law."
     In future blogs, I will continue to explain how federal expansionism became unlawfully practiced.
     For now it is enough to say that when I pledge allegiance to the United States, it is not the nation that James Madison and the other signers of the Constitution conceived, nor the same federal government that Calhoun described. It is a nation in which both parties conceive of positive rights as an extension of their Fourteenth Amendment duty to protect (and further define) the 'citizen of the United States'. 
     The defining of such a citizen' should have been severely limited, by by then it was too late to stop the national train.

* All asterisks in this post refer to my favorite pre-WWII reference on the Constitution: Constitution of the United States; Its Sources and Application; Thomas J. Norton, copyright 1943

What is "Individual Sovereignty"?

A couple of times I have been verbally assaulted in emails by people who claimed that only nations had "sovereignty". Apparently they have never heard of "popular sovereignty", a concept dating back to the middle of the 17th century, formulated as part of social contracts. "Popular" sovereignty is no more of a nation than "individual" sovereignty is.

John Locke, as Hobbes before him, claimed that social contracts were unbreakable. He stipulated however that if the legislatures did not work for the good of the citizens, they could replace the legislature.

"Popular sovereignty," therefore, becomes "the notion that no law or rule is legitimate unless it rests directly or indirectly on the consent of the individuals concerned."
http://www.basiclaw.net/Principles/Popular%20sovereignty.htm

Thomas Jefferson and others wondered how individuals could consent to give to a social contract powers they themselves did not have to begin with. We cannot give bread to a food bank if we don't have bread; how can we give consent to others to make rules for us if we don't have the original power to make rules for ourselves? They therefore concluded that individuals did, indeed, have such natural rights that only individual sovereignty could morally defend.

""Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 1791

But, "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis

"And thus, [ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity,] every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property--a character of which no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or his own consent. -John Trenchard, January 20,1721 The Freeman 

"The relationships between federalist political structure and the sovereignty of the individual must be carefully examined..." James M. Buchanan

In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, in which the sovereignty of the States, not all of which followed the rule of "natural rights", formed the United States, it was the sovereign people who created the United States under the Constitution. And the people were sovereign in their individual, not collective, capacities. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments saw to that.

"Legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals," Hamilton wrote with Madison in Federalist No. 20, "is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity."

It even comes to us from the Czeck Republic's first President, Václav Havel: ""The sovereignty of the community, the region, the nation, the state--any higher sovereignty, in fact--makes sense only if it is derived from the one genuine sovereignty, that is, from human sovereignty, which finds its political expression in civic sovereignty." Cato Journal

Elizabeth Price Foley, wrote that the U.S. was created on two “foundational principles”, limited government and individual sovereignty.

No individual can willingly give to the "common sovereignty" what he himself does not already possess. This brings many questions to mind concerning taxation, the use of military and police force, etc. But those belong in another debate, and they can be rectified where they are wrong, to respect common or popular sovereignty, and often individual sovereignty.

© FAMN LLC (MI)