This is the ninth essay in my live-blog of Hologram of Liberty by Kenneth Royce. You can also read my summary of the Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7.
In this chapter Royce spends several pages discussing how Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority influenced his thinking on the Constitution and the US system of government. According to Royce, Spooner's argument devastated the notion that America is governed by lawful with a simple observation:
The Constitution is supposed to be a compact between "the people" and their agents, yet I never signed it. Well, if I never signed an agreement giving government agents power over me, then how can they allege my "consent" and lawfully act as my authorized "agents"? How can men (especially those long since dead) presume to bind my nonviolent actions via a document which I not only never signed, but was not even alive during its creation?
Royce cites Spooner to make this point:
Where would be the end of fraud and litigation, if one party could bring into court a written instrument, without any signature, and claim to have it enforced, upon the ground that it was written for another man to sign?...Yet that is the most that could even be said of the Constitution. The very judges, who profess to derive all their authority from the Constitution--from an instrument that nobody ever signed--would spurn any other instrument, not signed, that should be brought before them for adjudication...
Moreover, this supposed contract, which would not be received in any court of justice...is one by which...all men, women and children throughout the country, and through all time, surrender not only their property, but also their liberties, and even lives, into the hands of men who by this supposed contract, are expressly made wholly irresponsible for their disposal of them. And we are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract, which inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody,...
Spooner's point, says Royce, is that Spooner "merely demanded that consent of the governed be honest and open through individual signature of contract between the people and their agents." Royce cites Spooner's famous Highwayman passage which describes the payment of taxes as a robbery, but only worse because at least the highwayman leaves you alone after robbing you. The government, on the other hand, assumes to be your rightful "sovereign", on account of the "protection" he provides. He also quotes Spooner's attack on democracy at length.
Spooner's influence on Royce's thinking becomes apparent when Royce examines the myth of "the people". According to this myth under our democracy, "everybody ('the people') is the State, the State is nobody in particular." "Without individual political responsibility," comments Royce, "there is no incentive to diligently supervise political agents and their actions." Royce continues
"The people" are simultaneously everybody and, and nobody. That's why lecturing an uppity bureaucrat with the "I-pay-your-salary" speech achieves only a smirk. The bureaucrat understands: he's responsible only to "the people"--not you.
Royce also makes a trenchant observation about taxation I wish more people would also recognize:
The cold truth is this: There is no purpose of government so vital as to justify theft from, injury to or death to peaceable Americans for mere nonpayment of taxes or nonviolent civil disobedience. Nothing that our government does or claims to provide is so important that passive, hard-working folks should be evicted from their homes, have their businesses shut down, and imprisoned for mere nonpayment of taxes. It is that simple!
Royce is dead-on here. Every service for which there is a demand can be provided through the free exchange of goods and services. This includes the very services which the government monopolizes. And no one should have to worry about being imprisoned just because he wishes to opt out of government-provided services and seek similar services on the market. Peaceful people, says Royce, "should have nothing to fear from their government and its laws."