Opting in to the Constitution
My thoughts posted on a thread in the LDS Liberty Google group:
I think that the closest thing that our system USED to have that resembles a periodic covenant is through the mechanism of voting as it used to take place.
when a voter filled a ballot, it was NOT a secret ballot, so therefore it was a legal instrument transferring representative authority from the voter to the candidate, that is assuming that the candidate won.
Since secret ballots came in at the turn of last century or so, there is no paper trail of these legal instruments proving the authority of representation by the representative of the voters who elected him.
In the old way of doing it, voters who felt that their rights were violated had the theoretical ability to sue the people who elected the representative. So, if you elected a bad person, you may get a bill in the mail which is your share of the damages owed to the people who won the suit.
Now, does this bring EVERYONE into the system, if they voted? I dunno. It’s the only mechanism that I can think of.
I don’t think that citizenship should be given, and that taxation should be levied on every person in the nation.
If voting and assigning representative authority involves on in the system and *IF* taxes should exist, they should only be paid by those who participate in the voting system…IMO.
IMO, if you don’t pay taxes you shouldn’t vote and if you don’t vote, you shouldn’t pay taxes and if you don’t do either, then you aren’t a citizen. However, that does not mean that a-non citizen, or denizen can be trodden upon and have rights violated, for RIGHTS are universal to ALL people. The difference between a citizen and denizen consists of privileges afforded to the one that are not given to the other because the other doesn’t participate or pay the price.
The world in which citizenship privileges and obligations aren’t forced upon everyone universally is one in which people are free to play in the system or be out of it and still have peace reign.
That it this world:
D&C 134:5 “We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments . . . . “
So once everyone’s rights are protected, people are free to live like a bunch of Mormons building the city of Zion, or a bunch or anarcho-capitalists, lone hillbillies, communists, etc.
I think that if inalienable rights ARE protected, then rebellion is unbecoming, but since they aren’t, many of us are involved in a peaceful rebellion of ideas, to wake up as many people as possible.
I think that if all rights were protected by this constitutional system, then there wouldn’t be people agitating for NO government at all, because all that is in response to a mindset that NO government can, by the fact that it exists and is, protect rights unless they are taken away. It’s a theoretical non-starter to cause the usurpation of rights in the name of protecting them.
Government usurps rights in the name of protecting them and in the name of welfare by taxing EVERYONE by assuming that they are all in this system by virtue of their birth (or presence) and calling them citizens thereby….letting government employees (who don’t pay taxes) to vote, letting those who receive welfare (which they shouldn’t from the govt) to vote, and erasing the instrument of authority and hence accountability that ties the voter to the representative.
When/IF, government returns to it original moorings and people discard the mechanisms that cause evil in this society, all people who have complaints about it, will have cause to admit that the constitution was inspired, I think.
I think that the mandate of those who believe this, is to call for such a paring down of government that all others who eschew the whole institution in and of itself …and eschew the constitution, will not call for it’s complete dissolution.
Of course, in my mind, the reason for doing this is not a big “i-told-you-so”. I want to see and be a part of building Zion. I don’t think that Zion would/could/will be built under current circumstances.
The other reason that I defer my reasoning as a latter-day saint skeptic of government, is the presence of prophecies that have been oft-repeated by modern prophets. Latter-day Saints will be pivotal in bearing this constitution away from oblivion. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding this nor the state of this country as it happens. As a latter-day saint I have to believe it when a seer says that something will happen. If they say that it will happen and that the members of the church shall be part of it, then I want to do what I can to get other LDS people to hasten this to come about.
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