Politicians versus Sovereigns

Selected from a longer op-ed piece, January 2012.

To most politicians (those who make a career out of holding public office) ordinary Americans are not citizens but voters. If you were viewed as citizens under the U.S. Constitution, you would be recognized as Sovereigns: the source of all rights that are loaned to the State through elected officials, but only for the purpose of enacting laws that benefit the individual person who loans those rights. Sovereigns often lose some of their rights to the organizations in which they are employed, but the loss is contractual and "freely" given by the Sovereigns as a condition of employment, and this loss of rights is sanctioned by the State.

Sometimes Sovereigns give their rights to non-State organizations, like unions, for the purpose of limiting the power of the State or employing organizations, but this only perpetuates the problem of lost rights because organization members only have a weak voice in determining how their interests are served. When Sovereigns loan their rights to the State or an organization, it is very difficult to regain those rights. It is perhaps only in the case of elected officials that the Sovereigns have the legal means to take back their rights via elections, but that is a small victory as it just repeats the problem of the loss of sovereign rights while it renews the belief in elections and in citizens as voters and campaign contributors.

One way to minimize the negative effects of this endless cycle of lost rights is to support term limits for elected officials, which automatically limits the amount of time that the official can ignore the Sovereign. It should also reduce the amount of effort that officials have to expend worrying about raising money for re-election, and the amount of effort they must devote to pandering to the Sovereigns, i.e. promising them things that will never come to pass but may help the re-election campaign.

There is abundant evidence from polling data and from term limits referenda in 23 states that the average voting American (the Sovereigns) supports term limits. Anarchists and Libertarians are among the first to recognize the problem of loss of power by Sovereigns, but their voices are drowned out by believers in electoral democracy; besides they just want to get rid of most forms of government, and that is unrealistic and not helpful. The alternative is to expand opportunities to foster citizens as Sovereigns by promoting extensive public discussion of policy issues and permitting voting via compterized referenda to create binding decisions. This would be a form of direct democracy or participatory democracy that puts the Sovereign at center stage.