Consent of the Governed

by Crispin Sartwell

to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Declaration of Independence

"The consent of the governed."

It's a sweet phrase, though a bit worn from overuse, like "the dictatorship of the proletariat." And like "the dictatorship of the proletariat," it's one of those things that live only on paper.

The basis of the state, the source of its possibility, is taxation. No money: no guns, no bureaucrats, no missiles, no marble edifices. Perhaps you paid your income taxes last week. I wonder whether you paid them voluntarily.

The answer is "no," even if you paid them with tremendous enthusiasm, because you are required to pay them by law, backed by force.

The Feds recently arrested the notorious Las Vegas tax protestor Irwin Schiff, who has argued for years that no law requires him to pay income tax. Schiff's arguments, though popular in a certain set, have been dismissed as ridiculous over the years by various courts. And though I am no tax attorney, it would surprise me if no law requires Schiff to pay taxes. To neglect such laws would be to neglect the sole actual foundation of the United States government.

It is a widely-held intuition that a government based on sheer force is illegitimate, indistinguishable from a good street gang or organized crime syndicate. Thus in the history of attempts to justify state power, almost the only idea has been to reach toward a concept of the "social contract": an agreement we enter into, for the sake of our safety or our prosperity, to give up certain freedoms in order to acquire certain securities.

Plato put forward a version of this view, as did Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, the founders of the American republic (who referred to themselves as "we, the people"), and contemporary political philosophers such as John Rawls. It is the only principled defense of state power, because it is the only defense that makes the power of the state rest on the consent of the governed rather than sheer force or fraud.

The view is admirable. But sadly, it is fictional, a kind of just-so story about how the lion got his teeth, or the hyena his attitude.

The closest thing we've got to a social contract is making schoolchildren recite - in unison, by rote - a pledge of allegiance to John Ashcroft's state and John Ashcroft's god. In the same way, Mao legitimized his government by having schoolchildren bow before his portrait, reciting slogans from the Little Red Book.

This consent of the governed thing refers to democracy. And to whatever extent George Bush won the last election, to that extent "the people" have endorsed his stewardship. However, though there was a vote on Bush, there was no vote on the massive machinery over which he presides.

That stuff neither asks for nor needs your consent: it has guns, prisons, and a thousand ways to make your life impossible, such as confiscating your stuff and garnishing your wages. You "consent" because you must. Or let's try this again: you must consent, so consent is conceptually impossible. I'm not saying that we don't acquiesce; I'm saying we don't consent.

You are right now paying for the war in Iraq, abstinence education, military bases in the districts of congressional committee chairs, government surveillance of yourself. Or, on the other hand, you are paying for welfare, politically correct education, affirmative action.

Fortunately, you have an absolutely convincing excuse. Your payment is involuntary.

Crispin Sartwell's most recent book is "Extreme Virtue: Leadership and Truth in Five Great American Lives."