Tennessee’s highest court and Hamilton County’s highest official agree on points major and points minor that the people’s covenant with government is rightly overturned.
By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7 FM
That covenant is the constitution, and it might fairly be called a trust-indenture.
The trust is that “all power is inherent in the people” who agree to yield some of their authority and power to the state so that the government may be “instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness.”
The violation in view is the closure of the courts under the CV-19 panic. Michelle Hatcher, for example, a hair stylist at Hamilton Place mall, was denied entry to the courts. He had entered the building to handle a traffic charge in Hamilton County sessions court.
Closure of the courts to her and people like me — an investigative reporter at NoogaRadio 92.7 FM — defies the trust-indenture commitment in the bill of rights that “all courts shall be open; and every man, for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial, or delay” (section 17).
State derives authority from people
The institution of state of Tennessee is the indenture. The document of the constitution describes the terms of service. ‡
The people are the authority; they enact a trust, with the state the trustee, and the people themselves the beneficiaries.
Section 1. That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of those ends they have at all times, an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
We don’t have rulers or leaders in the United States. We have representative government intended to serve the people and protect their interests.
The second provision in the Tennessee bill of rights describing this ideal and intended result of republican government is in the same vein — a stark and bold claim of a free people.
Section 2. That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
The forefathers said no bosses, no ruler, no chiefs.
The people have sole and exclusive rights to govern themselves, as it says in the New Mexico constitution (that “all government of right originates with the people, is founded upon their will and is instituted solely for their good.”)
Forgetful, and entrapped
But the people don’t remember they are to be self-governing, and so have fallen into wearying traps — they travel under the trucking law and subject themselves to cops and troopers and administrative courts. They marry under state license, and child protective services kidnaps their children under the doctrine of parens patrie.
They get business licenses when not required to. They enter into commerce and under regulation when they can choose to operate privately, under private membership associations and personally. They enjoy leisure and work while giving their children to ward in the state factory school.
In liberty, there is no paterfamilia, no patriarch, no provider, no fatherland, no in loco parentis — no parens patrie.
Rather, our project in government is self-government under free government, with all our personal liberties and rights secured by the constitution. No rulemaking can abograte them. State government is a trustee, and the arrangements are under God, whose blessings we intend to secure through the oath of office.
Privileges operate under contract
Outside contracts such as driver licenses agencies operate under supervision of private tribunals. People are tricked into making themselves drivers and operators (commercial), putting themselves and their property under an agency and under other police agencies in loose legal arrangements enforce the shipping laws. (Note, in Tennessee, only the THP has authority to enforce the safety regulations under state and federal transportation law.)
Driver licenses, among other connections with the state, make you a subject and presumptively under state authority in your travels. The agreement makes you a person, under a bill of attainder, which is an outlawing of people by category (strictly forbidden under constitutional government).
‡ Developed elsewhere is the claim of God, the third party to such arrangements, usually ignored in discussions of political economy and justice. Because the people have turned from God, rebelled against His holy law, He has turned His back on them, and yielded them to that idol they have raised for themselves, the Savior State.
