No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)
I didn&#x27;t read the whole thing (&#x27;tis long) but I think I got the gist from skimming it.<p>One main point is that the US government was meant to be a purely voluntary contract between men:<p>&quot;The Constitution not only binds nobody now, but it never did bind anybody. It never bound anybody, because it was never agreed to by anybody in such a manner as to make it, on general principles of law and reason, binding upon him.<p>It is a general principle of law and reason, that a written instrument binds no one until he has signed it. This principle is so inflexible a one, that even though a man is unable to write his name, he must still “make his mark,” before he is bound by a written contract.&quot;<p>The second main point is that government debt is the factor which has shifted the government from &quot;servant of the people&quot; to the more typical &quot;ruler of the people&quot;:<p>&quot;On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of the war were accomplished.<p>And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villainous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and the South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest—enormous as the latter was—are to be paid in full; but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further—and perhaps doubly, triply, or quadruply paid—by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m in favour of a minarchist state, and, not being American, I find the US from its founding to roughly WWI something close to my ideal of a government which acts more as a mutual protection agency, rather than as an entity with an eternal claim on its citizens labour. Some of the Greek city-states also came close to this ideal.<p>I don&#x27;t have time to give a detailed opinion on the argument in this article, but there&#x27;s merit to the idea of every citizen having to formally recognise their constitution. E.g., at age 21, to become an official citizen you voluntarily sign a contract agreeing to uphold the constitution. (Obviously this wouldn&#x27;t work in any current society, I&#x27;m talking a capitalist utopia with voluntary ~5% tax rates to pay for the police and army).