Two Theories of Consent

The law is a mixture of men’s reasons, touted by those who will it to be law, and the natural moral authority of men to live.

A man must decide whether to obey the laws prior men make, to make his own laws, or to bring his law to bear when he is called to make an answer and appearance.  A man should be judged by his laws.

When men who ordered laws are dead, their laws cease to find a moral origin in their consent or obligations. Their laws should change with the lives of the living, who bear the law with their heart, order the world with their minds, and are subject to the law with their bodies.

Laws in America are the fruits of many individual, familial, and cultural threads, tied together with the written laws, common values, and actions of the men and women who live or make a living here. Even the greatest law of the land, the Constitution will bend and bow before it breaks, and against the hearts, minds and will of men and women it is no obstacle to truth.

The written word, signed and promulgated in 1789 is only the basis of what American law is today. It’s authority may be shattered, strewn about, or broken and torn down, but some form of government must remain intact.

Each written rule of law in the Constitution states a principle, tied to the rest of the document through the words used and the actions performed by the society it was designed to serve. The words are written by the founding fathers in the late eighteenth century. That original meaning is lost to us, because the men who wrote it are dead. Certainly the founding fathers were aware that they are mortal. The empires and kingdoms of prior societies and civilizations found continuity of moral rule in the family unit. The authority of the Constitutional form of government remains continuous by a respect for the integrity of words. The rule of law, made of up of documents, composed of articles, sections, paragraphs, clauses, sentences, and, or words, is authoritative only when the true meaning of that language is based on moral truth. Words have never before served such a central role in the government of human action. (See ancient and past civilizations….i.e. Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Russian, Aztec, Mayan, African, the world at large). Ancient civilizations often guarded the language of laws against corruption of thought and the rush of judgment. Societies who failed to properly guard their languages failed, because the language changed, but the truth of the moral rule of a society, which promulgates laws, is that it creates valid moral authority.

Modern American legal authority is based on the principle of consent to law. When language changes as it does in a society which promulgates its laws, men have the inherent liberty to adjust the language of law to fit the moral justification upon which it is based. Jurisdictional standing, which is now known by the modern jurisprudence that men must avail themselves of some law to be subject to any law, is a rational basis for the authority of law.

Natural authority to govern is valid on a living planet. Soil, plants, animals, water, air, and all things living engender an inherent moral authority to rule in those who care for them, and those who keep them for the general welfare, because those things provide life. Trees may live many thousands of years, but mostly, these living things do not depend on us for life. We depend on them. Trees provide oxygen, shelter for animals, homes for animals, and much more. Trees are important to human life. Animals provide food and materials. Plants provide food and materials. These living things are a primary source of our living. They have been a primary source of our living for as long as men have written words, laws, or held offices of authority, and longer. Our lives depend on the rationing of these resources. Our consent to be governed is our will to live, a recognition of the value of living things to our lives, and the importance of rationally regulating their use to ensure we may all continue to live.

The current American legal system has authority to govern only to the extent that it rationally regulates the use of living resources. A large number of laws whose authority is based on contractual consent to the original Constitutional document may or may not be morally valid authority. These laws may be revoked or replaced by men, in offices established under the Constitution. The Constitution of the United States of America has the natural authority to morally rule, but the contractual authority to rule by consent remains within the authority of living men and women. Living men and women can choose whether to consent to laws regulating human activity when the rational regulation of living resources is not the concern, because the natural consent by a will to live does not extend to contractual agreements between people, unless those agreements affect the rational regulation of natural resources. Our consent to a specific form of government is contractual, but the natural consent to some form of government is undeniable. Therefore the continuity of government must remain intact in order to protect lives depending on the resources of the planet, but we may still live as we will.

Slavery is the one textual element of the Constitution that remains to this day subject to the moral authority of living men (see Abraham Lincoln Speech). Although it was part of the original government, it does not conform to the authority naturally established by limited resources. In hindsight, it is still difficult to say whether all men are created equal, but it is not fundamental true that men should be treated unequally by the moral authority. In truth all men are created un-equal, but a moral authority should, in order to retain contractual consent to the entire government, because it must, to secure the natural rights, establish equality among all men and women in the eyes of the law. Otherwise men would not contractually consent to that form of government. It is established then, that the natural consent to be governed creates the continuous authority in some form of government to morally rule the rational use of the resources of the living planet.

The laws that protect these resources of life remain authoritative despite a lack of contractual consent by living men. This is true because men can live without any other laws. Although their lives may be threatened by other men, their consent to the authority of government is founded when they avail themselves of governmental protection from other men. This is the basis of the founding fathers authority to adopt the Constitution and found a new government, so long as they do so without interrupting the continuity of authority by some form of government which rationally regulates the use of the natural resources.

The laws that protect men from one another may change with the common practices of men and women. Men and women may change their common practices. Men and women have changed their common practices, from the time before civilization, to the modern era of this dawning global civilization.