At this writing in the fall of 2013, conscious American adults know their nation is in trouble. Most are in denial, but they deny the facts at their own peril, and at the ruin of their nation and their offspring. So what does the conscious American do?

This book is an inventory of American law. It’s been written for conscious Americans as a tool to help navigate the turmoil. The purpose of this tool is to help turn American demise into American renewal, through an offscouring of massive legal deadwood. So conscious Americans should benefit from using this book for this purpose.

Before beginning the inventory, it’s important to survey the current state of things, so that it’s clear what kinds of problems conscious Americans are facing and what kinds of problems might be addressed by using this tool. As the nadir of social decay approaches, every conscious American will benefit from having a clear, holistic view of the problems that plague the entire socio-political superstructure, a holistic understanding of how to approach solving those problems, and a reasonable understanding of one’s role and calling regarding such problems. This holistic view is especially critical in regard to the legal system because the legal system is the backbone of the superstructure. — Although individual initiative is absolutely crucial, it’s also important for people to have a shared vision. Without a shared understanding of what’s good about the system, what’s bad about it, and what it might take to fix it, it’s extremely unlikely to ever be fixed. Only when significant numbers of people are knowledgeable enough, and willing enough to make the necessary sacrifices, can the decline be reversed, and the road to high-tech feudalism shunted.

It’s been claimed frequently that the American system is unique in the world, that the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights make America special. But numerous other countries now have comparable organic documents, while those same countries are criminal cesspits and police states. Such documents are ultimately only good to the extent that people are willing to enforce them. This is precisely why America is in decline, because Americans have generally neglected their duties to defend and enforce what’s good and righteous about their organic laws. With such neglect, it’s normal and easy for people hungry for power and status to gravitate into power centers. When the more well-adjusted people neglect their moral duties in regard to such power centers, such neglect leaves a vacuum that psychopaths love to fill, where they can use such power for their own psychopathic purposes. America has never been immune to this psychopathy. In spite of whatever good principles were enshrined in the organic documents, America has been vulnerable to psychopathic takeover almost since the day the Constitution was ratified. In fact, some of this psychopathy appears in the organic Constitution itself.

Some people still claim that what’s wrong with America is that it has always been a free-market capitalist country, and that the proper approach to solving its problems is for it to turn into a socialist country. In fact, America has never had a genuinely free market, because there have always been psychopaths trying to take control of power centers; because American laws have always been vulnerabe to such takeovers; and because American laziness, naivete, and lack of public conscience have generally magnified the structural vulnerabilities. At least three things have mitigated the propensity of psychopaths to take over, and these three things have allowed the country to prosper more than practically any country in history: (i)the basic morality of the people; (ii)the checks and balances built into the system; and (iii)a common belief in natural rights. These have each been eroding for a long time, until now, when the pace of erosion is exponentially worse than it ever has been. For numerous reasons, socialism and communism cannot reverse this erosion. One reason this is true is because every kind of socialism and communism ever proposed or tried has suffered the same-old vulnerability to psychopathic takeover. Another reason is because socialism and communism are so infested with logical fallacies that the economic systems that they engender are inherently dysfunctional. Only through esteem for natural rights, checks and balances, and the general ethical standards of the people, can this trend to decay be reversed.

Business as usual is incapable of reversing the decline. This is obvious if one thinks of business as usual as doing what one usually does in the work force and in one’s personal life. But it’s not so obvious when business as usual is understood to include politics. When business as usual is understood to include continuing to operate within the current political infrastructure as though doing so will suffice to reverse the vortex of decline, many people might think that might work. It won’t. The reason business as usual in the political arena won’t work to reverse the decline is evident by considering the nature of the current political environment. The current political environment is split between two seemingly opposite ideologies. Because most people are not political radicals, most people claim to eschew both political extremes. They operate on the assumption that by being more-or-less middle-of-the-road, they are taking the practical, pragmatic, efficacious, and peaceful approach to solving the problems manifesting as this monumental social decay. But the fact is that the entire political spectrum, both extremes and everything in between, is all prone to allowing and even facilitating psychopaths in their efforts to take over power centers. The so-called "right", which operates under labels like "republican", "conservative", "neo-conservative", "libertarian", "constitutionalist", etc., is vulnerable to allowing psychopaths to take over power centers in the same ways that they have been taking over power centers since the early days of the republic, through "crony capitalism" and collusion between government and business, in other words, through what Benito Mussolini exalted as "fascism". On the other hand, the so-called "left", which operates under labels like "democrat", "liberal", "social democrat", "progressive", "socialist", "egalitarian", etc., is at least as vulnerable to allowing psychopaths to take over power centers. Neither of these two political extremes, nor anything in between, will work to save this country. The whole spectrum is aptly called a "false left-right paradigm", because there is authoritarianism built into both extremes and everything in between. 2 Things are so far gone at this point that the country cannot be saved. But just because the country dies, that doesn’t mean the people do. As long as people live on, the ideas that made the country the best ever can also live on. If the ideas live on, then so does the country, in a sense. What made the country worthwhile is the relative liberty it allowed. The liberty is worth preserving. The authoritarianism from all quarters marks an unsustainable system.

Given that something extraordinary doesn’t happen soon, given that nuclear war or biological weapons don’t wipe out the human race, that collision with a massive meteor or eruption of a super-volcano doesn’t cause a mass extinction event, or that Christ doesn’t return and totally rearrange everything, in short, given that there is no globally catastrophic act of God or psychopathic humans, America will inevitably go through what could be a very traumatic disintegration and/or reorganization of society. This false left-right paradigm essentially acts as a major distraction to keep people from doing what they really need to do. The point of this book is absolutely NOT to commend disintegration, the wrong kind of reorganization, or continuing ineffective political activities. This book is dedicated to showing how people should operate so that the end result on the other side of this implosion is something better than existed before it. It is to show how to structure one’s agreements and contracts with other people so that psychopaths are not allowed to take control of power centers, and psychopathic systems are not allowed to harm people willy nilly.

In another book, Theodicy: Science, Bible & Law, this author devoted one of the three parts of the book to showing how people can structure their affairs so that they prohibit psychopaths from taking control of power centers. 3 This present book is also aimed at the same subject, but it is aimed more specifically at taking an inventory of existing American law, so that people can use what’s good about the existing system both during and after the implosion, and perhaps even to mitigate the implosion.

In the early 1990s, many Americans thought that after the fall of the Soviet Union, communism, Karl Marx, and all that, were officially dead. But now there are many things that indicate that that was not the case then, and it is not the case now. Numerous facts vitiate against the death of that ideology, including the following: (i)the fact that Barack Hussein Obama was a devotee of Saul Alinsky, 4 that he has never repudiated Alinsky’s collectivism, 5 and that this Alinsky-collectivist is now president; (ii)the fact that Marxism is still in control of China, in spite of whatever contrary claims may be made by propagandists and the naive; 6 (iii)the fact that, "Sales of Das Kapital, Marx’s masterpiece of political economy have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse (. . . Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy)"; 7 (iv)the fact that the "Cloward-Piven strategy" is having obvious on-going success; 8 (v)the fact that U.N. "Agenda 21" is having on-going success; 9 (vi)the fact that there is continuing degradation of the public school system; 10 and (vii)the fact that to a huge extent, the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto have already been implemented in this country. 11 Each of these is evidence that the so-called "left" continues working to prop up its end of the false left-right paradigm. By keeping up the facade, everyone who believes in that facade is making his/her self a dupe for puppet masters who are the enemies of humanity, the psychopaths running the power centers, thereby allowing them to get away with murder while everyone is victimized, including people on the "left", people on the "right", people in the middle, and people who reject the whole spectrum as bogus. On the other hand, some of these leaders of the "left" may be psychopathic henchmen for psychopaths higher in the psychopathic hierarchy. Such henchmen may include Obama, Alinsky, Mao, Cloward and Piven, and even Marx himself. This possibility points to authoritarians higher in a psychopathic hierarchy, whoever they may be.

To understand who is truly to blame for the current disintegration of America, it’s critical to understand that so-called "free-market capitalism" is divided into two distinct activities: (i)the activity arising out of the God-given right of every human being to trade goods and services with other people, in other words, the activity of trading, buying and selling, and entering into various kinds of contracts with one another; and (ii)the process of those with accumulated capital (meaning resources) lending to those who want or need such capital. Marxism and various breeds of socialism impugn both of these rights / activities. The first activity, entering into contracts and trading goods and services, is a natural phenomenon. Anyone who insists that it’s not, and who insists that third parties should interfere in these natural activities, as though such activities were inherently dangerous, is inherently paranoid, deluded, and/or psychopathic. The second activity, although it has the same prima facie innocence as the first, has proven itself to be far more hazardous than the first. That’s because fractional-reserve banking is inherently fraudulent, and when fractional-reserve banks team up with central banks and legal tender laws, as has been the case in America for a long time, it’s certain that psychopaths, or at least these psychopathic activities, have taken over the capital-lending process. Under such circumstances, it’s certain that the system has turned fascist, criminal, and rotten. The American system has suffered this disease to varying degrees ever since Alexander Hamilton pushed America’s first central bank into existence as George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury. 12 Even though this disease was built into the social superstructure from that early, it’s also a fact that individual liberty and the right to contract were also important aspects of that superstructure. So there’s been this tension between the commitment to freedom and the interests of organized crime / authoritarianism from the beginning.

Because trading and contracts are natural phenomena, and because the only kind of economic system ever devised that allows these natural phenomena without restraint is laissez faire, free-market capitalism, this latter kind of economic system is the only kind compatible with personal liberty. Even though this has been America’s nominal economic system from the beginning, the emphasis here needs to be on the word, "nominal". In fact, the system set up under Hamilton was essentially "mercantilism", not laissez faire, free-market capitalism. It’s essentially the same economic system that America has to the present day, except that it has evolved into something so corrupt, socialistic, and fascistic, that it’s now difficult to distinguish it from numerous other forms of authoritarianism. 13

The measure of every economic system is not merely whether it prospers all engaged in it, but also the extent to which force, fraud, damage, harm, and abuse exist in it. In fact, if the initiation of force and fraud, including in their subtle manifestations, is eliminated from a system, people are free to pursue their own prosperity in their own ways, through the natural rights of self-ownership and liberty to contract, which substantially increases the possibility for the system to succeed, along with all individuals in it. In spite of the mercantilism from the beginning, this country has prospered largely because of the three safeguards cited above, the morality of the people, checks and balances, and respect for natural rights. So from the beginning, America’s economic, political, and legal systems have been laissez faire and free-market, but with a serious and vicious authoritarian cancer.

While the so-called "left" extreme of the false left-right paradigm has been working overtime to blame all of free-market capitalism for society’s problems, fascists have been working overtime for a long time to prop up their end of the false left-right paradigm. Marx blamed the flaws in capitalism on the so-called "bourgeoisie", which was the class that opposed the "proletariat" in his two-class bifurcation of "capitalist society". As has been shown amply by Austrian School economists, his analysis of free-market capitalism is skewed, probably starting with his own personal neuroses. Marx’s biases show up in the claim that societies evolve through class struggle, and in logical fallacies that infect anyone who buys into his system. Within the bourgeoisie he included people who have resources to lend, small business owners, people who own the society’s means of production, bankers, and many employees. His analysis is not based on exposing the initiation of force and fraud, but on claiming that natural phenomena are inherently evil. Analyzing the social superstructure with the intention of exposing force and fraud actually divulges the root problems in this mercantilist system, as opposed to Marx’s imaginary problems. There is indeed a class of organized criminals, and there is indeed a class of people who are aiding and abetting these organized criminals. But these classes are not the same classes identified by Marx.

In many respects, it’s accurate to call the class of organized criminals "fascists", because they actively work with the conscious or unconscious goal of having all economic activity under the direct or indirect control of a centralized government. These days, because traditional government and mega-corporations are practically working in lock-step, it’s reasonable to wonder if this public-private collaboration now constitutes a fascistic centralized government. Given that it does, the definition of the state must necessarily expand to encompass both the traditional conception of government and the mega-corporations. Given that this modified definition of state includes this massive collusion between mega-businesses and government, it should be obvious to everyone that the present state is fascistic. On the other hand, socialists and communists advocate a similar centralization of economic processes. This is further evidence that the left-right split is largely mythological. The real split is between authoritarians and genuine libertarians.

Although this society’s real ideological bifurcation is between libertarians and authoritarians, the fact that the vast majority of the population is still operating within this false left-right paradigm is a decent reason to push analysis in left-right terms a little further. — Fascism has historically been characterized as having a single strongman at its head, a dictator like Hitler, Mussolini, and countless others. In spite of whatever alleged unconstitutional activities and crimes the present presidential puppet may have committed, there is still no common belief that he has descended into being a full-fledged dictator. So if he’s not a dictator, how can it be right to call the current American system "fascism"? How can fascism exist without a supreme leader? — For many decades, in fact, since the "administrative state" was legalized during the 1930s, administrative agencies have existed whose existence is inherently unconstitutional. They were established ostensibly to control the American economy through "regulations". These regulatory agencies are based on wrong assumptions about how markets operate. In other words, the statutes upon which these regulatory agencies are founded, are based on fallacies found in Marxism. Rather than fixing problems in the economy, these ill-conceived agencies are like pouring gasoline on a fire. They make things worse. In practically every case, what has happened is that a "revolving door" has been set up between the regulatory agency and the industry. Because the industry has experts on how the industry operates, the "public sector" regulatory agency hires people from the regulated "private sector". While working within the public sector, one of these government employees procures information about how the agency operates, where this public-sector information is valuable to the private sector. So the private sector hires the same person away from the public sector. This "revolving door" is simply a manifestation of collusion between the public and private sectors. This kind of collusion is one of the things that allows the mega-corporations and the government to operate in lock-step. Another kind of collusion exists in the fact that most of the boards of directors of most large corporations have interlocking memberships, and these interlocking memberships certainly extend into banking, stock exchanges, the privately owned Federal Reserve, and insurance companies. These two factors, the revolving doors and the interlocking boards of directors, are two among many factors that are evidence that the American system is run by an oligarchy. Because all parties to this oligarchy are statist, they have a shared vision of where they are going, and where they are dragging the rest of us. Some kind of shared vision must exist at the top of this oligarchy, even though the multitude of collaborators beneath the top may all be compartmentalized. This collusion has created a statist monster that is far worse than a mere dictator. After all, a dictator can be assassinated. But this monster is not so easily eliminated.

Due to the fact that Marxist fallacies are the premises upon which laws were created that formed the regulatory agencies, it’s reasonable to claim that the current system is more Marxist than fascist. But in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s Marxist or fascist, because both Marxism and fascism are authoritarian. The people who suffer under such authoritarianism, regardless of whether it comes from the "right" or from the "left", are people who insist on having their freedom. In fact, everyone suffers, but those who cooperate with the authoritarianism are essentially asking to suffer under it, while genuine freedom lovers refuse to cooperate. But refusing to cooperate with authoritarians can obviously be costly, so it’s important to count the cost, and to have a strategy that clearly outwits the authoritarians over the long haul.

Many people and their assets, including both knowledge, expertise, and "labor" capacity on one hand, and physical assets including real and personal property ("land") on the other, are presently under the control of authoritarians. By examining the plight of American entrepreneurs, this kind of control becomes obvious. There are many thousands of independent business owners in this country, who are collectively responsible for most of this country’s employment. If this country were Marxist, would they exist? No, they wouldn’t exist in the kind of Marxist system set up in the Soviet Union. That’s more evidence that the system is more fascist than Marxist. Under the present system, these entrepreneurs and business-owners are generally not directly affiliated with these giant corporations. They nevertheless find niches in the economy through which to prosper. These people are like Oscar Schindler, who learned to prosper under the Nazi regime. He may be harassed by the IRS, OSHA, or any number of other alphabet soup agencies, but he nevertheless finds a way to prosper. People like this may be pursuing the "American dream" in some respects, but they also work to uphold and facilitate the existing authoritarian system, even though they may be pursuing their own self-interest. This is evident via the fact that the combination of the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service makes it extremely difficult for people to prosper in America if they refuse to cooperate with these institutions. 14 This shows that wherever one finds entrepreneurs who are cooperating with the authoritarian agenda, one also finds numerous employees who are following them in such cooperation.

Even if entrepreneurs are cooperating with these agencies through their own self-interest, the fact that they are cooperating is proof that they are enabling, facilitating, and even aiding / abetting the authoritarian system. Genuine communists might claim that their system doesn’t allow entrepreneurs to exist, and such a claim may be true. But the fact is that all communist, socialist, and fascist systems facilitate psychopaths taking control of power centers, after which they lavish upon themselves whatever criminal benefits their psychopathy demands. All authoritarian systems eliminate "cowboys" whenever the cowboys stop serving the psychopaths’ purposes. To survive in such an authoritarian economic milieu, cowboys, nouveau riche, entrepreneurs, etc., must eventually comply entirely, or be crushed like all the rest of the psychopaths’ fodder. Within fascist systems, entrepreneurs are people who have some vested interest in pretending that they believe in free-market economics, but their actions say that they really believe in free-market economics only to the extent that it allows them to prosper, the way Oscar Schindler prospered in the face of murdered millions. This is all about the difference between genuine free-market capitalism and crony capitalism. Crony capitalism turns a blind eye to the crimes committed by the system, just as American entrepreneurs must do daily. On the other hand, genuine practitioners of free-market capitalism refuse to aid and abet the system’s crimes.

All these Oscar Schindlers in America face a dilemma every day. Every day, the question they face is, "Today, will I continue to cooperate with this authoritarian regime, or will I do what the founding generation of this country did, and take a stand against it?" In many respects it’s like the dilemma faced by the protagonists in Atlas Shrugged. But now, there is no Galt’s Gulch to escape to, and it’s more evident than ever that the general strike by entrepreneurs was merely a Randian fantasy. Instead of such general strike, there’s now only a vociferous and disaffected minority of freedom lovers whose country has been taken over by psychopaths, and who desperately need viable channels through which to express their displeasure. Many of the psychopaths have developed and taken over power centers by pretending to believe in free market capitalism. But rather than terminating their cooperation with the IRS, SSA, OSHA, etc., their cooperation has expanded as they have been offered more and more fiat money and other assets to deepen their collusion with the authoritarian government, and with the crony capitalist banking and monetary systems. They colluded with the regime beyond the time they should have gotten out. Oscar Schindler reached a point at which he could no longer operate from the place of no pity. He realized that he needed to switch his allegiance from the state to the state’s victims. Every day, America’s entrepreneurs face the same dilemma: "Can I operate another day from the place of no pity, or should I switch my allegiance so that I don’t sear my conscience forever? What do I do about all these people on my payroll who don’t seem to understand how broken the system is?" The average American entrepreneur may object to this characterization by saying he/she sees no victims like Schindler saw victims. In fact, as America has been taken over by psychopaths, the victimization process has been nowhere near as overt as Nazi victimization. Practically the entire American population is now being victimized by "soft-kill" technologies that are happening through mechanisms like, (i)water fluoridation, (ii)flu vaccines, (iii)genetically modified food, and (iv)aspartame in processed foods, to name only four among many soft-kill technologies. 15 In the American case, death may come much more slowly, and with a much less proximate connection between cause and effect, but the end result, meaning death, is the same. By using this strategy, psychopaths ensure that by the time entrepreneurs wake up, it will be too late to effect any kind of remedy. American victimization is far more deadly, and the entrepreneur’s stand-down is far more outrageous. Perhaps the entrepreneur’s duties to his/her employees lie first in educating the employees about the soft kill to which they are victims.

Entrepreneurs who are committed to being psychopathic insiders became psychopathic insiders by colluding with government for the sake of gaining unfair trade advantages that allow them to prosper while their actions damage other people, from local victims of bad municipal laws, to huge swaths of the global population. These people who started out well, who started out as believers in American ideals, who built up businesses largely through their own sweat, skill, and perseverance, somehow, along the way, became lost. They forgot the American ideals and became opportunists. Their ideological roots were not deep enough and strong enough to keep them from being swept up in the flood of psychopathic, statist ideology. They compromised too much along the way. It turned out, they were always more opportunists than ideologists. But to be consistent and rational in one’s principles and actions, being an ideologist is inevitable. Fascist opportunism has been going on in America for as long as America has existed, and has even been an accepted norm, parading itself under the banner of "pragmatism". It has resulted in the erosion of the three restraints / safeguards cited above, and the downside of it has never been so obvious as it is now.

At the core of this split between "left" and "right" is an underdeveloped aspect of free-market philosophy. It is a deficiency in free-market ideology that the so-called "left" would be correct to point out as being a deep-seated weakness. But regardless of how adept the so-called "left" may be at pointing out problems in the current system, their problem analysis is not accurate enough to identify the real causes of this society’s problems. They don’t generally point to real criminal activity, meaning the initiation of force or fraud. Instead, they tend to call evil "good" and good "evil". They criminalize natural phenomena. — Among the various schools of economics that people can use for analyzing the current social superstructure, the only one that’s really accurate on the whole is the Austrian School of free-market economics, whose most prominent exponents have been Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. This is the only school that systematically identifies and accurately describes the root problems in the mercantilist system gone hyper-authoritarian. Practically all of these problems track back to banking fraud and the state’s legitimized monopoly on the use of force. Scheming psychopaths take advantage of bad laws and thereby get cops and courts to enforce their schemes. The rottenness is now reaching the point of collapse, the same kind of collapse to which every civilization has succumbed. But this time is far worse than has ever existed historically, due to the potency and covertness of the weapons and technology available to the psychopaths. If things continue on the current psychopathic trajectory, the original American system will metamorphose into global, high-tech feudalism, in which the majority of the human population is nothing more than disposable livestock to their feudal masters. If awareness of this psychopathic trajectory doesn’t convince entrepreneurs, and all the people who are economically dependent upon them, that the cost of cooperation with authoritarians is far greater than refusal to cooperate, then these entrepreneurs and their followers are clearly asking for their own destruction.

In contradistinction to the psychopathic trajectory, there is a trajectory that has been at least partially outlined by Austrian economists, especially Murray Rothbard. Rothbard has identified what he calls "anarchocapitalism", which paints an alternative to the trajectory of high-tech feudalism. 16 Anarcho-capitalism proposes that the state has no inherent right to exist. This proposition prompts a serious objection. If the state, meaning all of what is normally understood to be government, doesn’t exist, then how does one protect oneself and one’s loved ones against marauders, murderers, thieves, rapists, fraud-mongers, etc.? — In addition to this serious objection to this fundamental claim of anarcho-capitalism, there is another objection against the author of this current volume. Specifically, if this current author agrees with anarcho-capitalism that the state has no inherent right to exist, which he does, then how does this author reconcile this anarcho-capitalist claim with claims he has made elsewhere? In the Theodicy, this author expounded the Bible to claim that it posits that the age that preceded the biblical flood was an anarchy epoch, and that because that age was such a dismal failure, God terminated the anarchy epoch not only with a flood, but also by creating a new covenant with humanity that entailed a new era, the law-enforcement epoch. The author makes it clear in the Theodicy that in his studied opinion, the human race still exists in what he calls the law-enforcement epoch. The author’s defense of anarcho-capitalism appears to contradict his emphasizing that the anarchy epoch is over, and the law-enforcement epoch is still in effect. How can the author simultaneously believe that the human race is now in the midst of the law-enforcement epoch, and believe with anarcho-capitalists that the state has no right to exist? Before ending this preface, the author will present at least quick-and-dirty answers to these questions.

While the anarcho-capitalist description of the current social superstructure is the best the field of economics has to offer, its prescription of a solution to this marauder problem does not reach the same high standard. The anarcho-capitalist answer to this marauder problem is that one uses one’s resources, i.e., one’s capital, to hire security guards and to build a security force capable of putting up the necessary defense against such marauders and perpetrators of damage; or one hires an existing free-market defense agency; or one enters into contracts with other people to procure mutual self-defense. This free-market solution to this marauder problem appears both implicitly and explicitly throughout Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. But it’s important to emphasize that while Rothbard builds a formidable argument against the existence of the state, and therefore in favor of anarchism, he also builds a formidable argument in favor of what he calls "libertarian natural law", 17 "libertarian justice", 18 "libertarian law", 19 "libertarian legal order", 20 "libertarian legal system", 21 "libertarian system", 22 etc. This is clearly not anarchy in the same sense as existed in the antediluvian era described in Genesis. Even so, the anarcho-capitalist’s approach to solving this problem relies entirely upon the individual’s right to self-defense in combination with the individual’s undeniable right to contract. Because self-ownership and the right to contract are natural phenomena, the anarcho-capitalist answer to the marauder problem certainly provides a good, solid foundation and ideological basis for resolving this problem. On the other hand, the anarcho-capitalist answer is inadequate because it doesn’t show people how to form viable contracts for solving this marauder problem. It may seem obvious to anarcho-capitalists that people should merely exercise self-defense, and merely enter into contracts with other people, to ensure their safety in an anarchistic society. But without articulating the particulars of what such contracts should look like, the anarcho-capitalist prescription is not viable over the long haul. History shows that due process of law is crucial to any just judicial system, and the anarcho-capitalist solution to the marauder problem doesn’t sufficiently engender due process. Even though this is true, as already indicated, there are certain concessions that need to be made to the anarcho-capitalist approach to solving the marauder problem: (i)It’s necessary to agree with the anarcho-capitalist’s fundamental principle of self-ownership, based on the fact that all people are created in the image of God, where such self-ownership can be understood to be one’s primary property. (ii)It’s necessary to agree with the anarcho-capitalist’s fundamental principle that through "original appropriation" and other mechanisms, every human has the capacity to extend self-ownership into ownership of other things that can be understood to be one’s secondary property. (iii)It’s necessary to affirm that no human being has an inherent right to violate the private property rights of another human. (iv)It’s necessary to concede that on the contrary, every human is prohibited, by natural law under a naturally existing duty, from perpetrating force or fraud against another human being. (v)It’s necessary to affirm that indeed, the state, meaning government as people have known it for millennia, has no inherent right to exist, because the state by definition, and by its very nature, systematically violates private property rights.

Now that these concessions to anarcho-capitalism have been made, it turns out that formation of viable contracts to solve the marauder problem is not as simple as anarcho-capitalists apparently imagine. Contracts aimed at executing justice against people who violate the property rights of other people are critical because such contracts are a prerequisite to establishing a reliable and just social superstructure. The anarcho-capitalist’s ad hoc contracts are not capable of carrying civilization’s judicial burden, even though the "libertarian legal system" outlined by Rothbard has much in common with the global prescription of human law that exists in the Bible. Without some solution to this marauder problem that genuinely works, the vacuum created by apathy will continue sucking psychopaths and psychopathic ideas into power centers. So it’s imperative to pursue a better solution to this marauder problem. It’s important to do so by focusing on law, rather than on economics. Towards that end, this author proposes focusing on law as the starting place for solving this marauder problem. By doing so, it’s possible to define the necessary contracts so that they are both rigorous and flexible. But because the field of jurisprudence has been such a morass for so long, largely because it was taken over by legal realism and legal positivism starting largely during the War Between the States, it’s necessary to start with biblical law. This is precisely the approach that has been taken in Part II of Theodicy: Science, Bible, and Law. 23

Because mention of biblical law tends to stir up fear of theocracy, visions of religious intolerance, recollection of ancient religious genocide, and memories of more recent pogroms and holocausts, it’s crucial to mitigate and vitiate such fears in the process of expounding these contracts. Such mitigation / vitiation appears scattered throughout Parts II and III of Theodicy. This preface to this inventory of American law will summarize what’s said in the theodicy about these subjects, but it should be understood that this is a quick-and-dirty summary of what appears in the theodicy, regarding both (i)the jurisprudential foundations of these basic contracts, and (ii)theocracy, intolerance, and genocide. Again, the following summary is quick-and-dirty, and if one wants to see the not-so-quick-and-dirty version, it’s available in the theodicy, beginning in Part II.

To recapitulate: Throughout human history, wherever statism has flourished, it has led to the demise of civilization and the decline of human society. This is because it’s inherent in the nature of statism to violate natural rights, while the preservation of natural rights is simultaneously the state’s most basic reason for existing. The threat of decline embodied in this cognitive dissonance is now presenting itself to America in the form of a false left-right paradigm. To avoid or mitigate the decline, it’s necessary to repudiate not only the false left-right paradigm, but also statism itself, and it’s necessary to simultaneously embrace whatever principles give rise to a non-statist social superstructure. The non-statist social superstructure recommended by anarcho-capitalists may appear to be viable to them. But anyone who understands how deeply depraved humans are at heart should also know that anarcho-capitalist principles, by themselves, are unlikely to generate a viable social superstructure. This is primarily because self defense, by itself, is incapable of supplying the justice necessary to sustain a society over the long haul. More principles than self-defense are necessary to keep marauders, murderers, thieves, rapists, fraud-mongers, etc., at bay. There must be some alternative to both statism and anarcho-capitalism. There is indeed an alternative. This alternative is a Bible-based system of ideas. For reasons made evident below, it’s reasonable to call this system of ideas a metaconstitution.

The Metaconstitution

a. Biblical Foundations:

Biblical law is split into two radically different jurisdictions, where such jurisdictions are defined by biblical covenants. The two radically different jurisdictions that exist in biblical law are global and local jurisdictions. In other words, according to this holistic understanding of biblical law, the Bible prescribes some human laws that apply to all people and all places, while it prescribes others that do not apply to all people and all places. But before speaking further about these two radically different jurisdictions, it’s important to clarify what a jurisdiction is.

The word jurisdiction, as used in this context, is largely the same as jurisdiction in its normal legal sense. It is essentially the authority of a governmental agent or instrument to exert its power. As used in this context, it should be understood that the word subsumes the same sub-types that the same word subsumes in current American law. Specifically, jurisdiction subsumes personal jurisdiction, subject matter jurisdiction, and territorial jurisdiction. Personal jurisdiction (also known as in personam jurisdiction) defines the people over whom a law, contract, covenant, court, etc., has jurisdiction. Subject matter jurisdiction defines the subject matter of the law, contract, or covenant. Territorial jurisdiction defines the territory over which the court, covenant, contract, law, etc., can be lawfully applied. All three of these jurisdictional sub-types must apply before genuine and lawful jurisdiction applies, i.e., before a governmental agent’s or instrument’s claim of authority to exert its power is genuinely lawful.

Human laws that this work calls global apply to all people and all places. The Bible’s globally prescribed human laws have specific subject matters. Biblical laws having other subject matters do not apply to all people and all places, but rather apply only to specific people in specific places. The latter therefore pertain to local jurisdictions. The distinction between global and local is a distinction that impacts all three jurisdictional sub-types. But it’s imperative to define the subject matter of biblical law so that the distinction between global and local jurisdictions is clear.

Going back at least to the works of Thomas Aquinas, legal scholars in Christendom have often categorized laws into four types: eternal law, natural law, divine law, and human law. 24 The concepts behind these four categories of law may have their roots in ancient Greek philosophy, but scholars acquainted with the literature generally claim that these four categories of law were

Christianized by Aquinas (Summa Theologia, Q90ff, "Treatise on Law"), who distinguished four levels of law: (1)eternal law, or the law of God; (2)natural law, or what humans by the light of reason can see of the eternal law; (3)divine law, or the law of God as revealed by Scripture; and (4)positive law [(a.k.a. human law)], or existing laws of society. The concept of natural law as the ultimate arbiter of justice was central also to Locke and other exponents of traditional social contract theory. 25

(i)Eternal law is law as seen and created by God. Much of it is beyond the human capacity to comprehend, because humans are by definition localized in space and time, and are never omniscient. Because humans are by nature finite, humans are inherently incapable of being omniscient. Omniscience is inherently necessary to knowing all of the eternal law, so humans are inherently incapable of it. (ii)Natural law is that subset of the eternal law that humans are capable of perceiving and understanding. If humans understood natural law adequately, they would not sin and they would not die. But under present circumstances, humans are born, live, and die with a severe disability with regard to natural law, specifically, that they cannot comprehend it and obey it sufficiently. Humans therefore presently sin, suffer, and die. (iii)Divine law is the subset of eternal law and natural law that is inscribed as law in the Christian Bible through special revelation. It is that aspect of eternal law communicated to humans through divine revelation, and recorded in what is now commonly accepted as the canon of Scripture. Such divine law defines global and local covenants, and those covenants contain terms that define the jurisdictions of such covenants. (iv)Human law is law that humans apply to other humans. So a subset of divine law is dedicated to prescribing human law. — Although this nomenclature – "eternal law", "natural law", "divine law", and "human law" – may have fallen into obscurity in recent years, it nevertheless has a long history in Anglo-American jurisprudence, and in Christian history in general.

There is an essential distinction between the biblical description of natural law and the biblical prescription of human law. An extremely serious flaw in the Judao-Christian application of biblical law, for millennia, has been the failure to rigorously distinguish the Bible’s description of natural law and its prescription of human law. If the Bible posits no prescription of a penalty to be exacted by humans against human-law breakers, then respect for jurisdictional boundaries demands that God is the enforcer of such natural law, and humans are not called upon to act as secondary causes in the enforcement of such law against other humans. This is so unless the defendant is party to a genuine extra-biblical contract that prescribes such a penalty and such local enforcement, because such a human contract is by definition promulgation of human law.

Throughout both biblical and secular history, humans have inadequately recognized the distinctions between these law types. This amounts to a failure to properly recognize the subject-matter jurisdictions of biblical covenants. But this failure in regard to subject matter has been accompanied by an equally grievous failure to adequately recognize the in personam jurisdiction of the biblical covenants. Both of these failures are accompanied by a failure to recognize how pre-existing biblical covenants interconnect with new covenants. For example, how does the Noachian Covenant in Genesis 9 interconnect with the Abrahamic Covenant that appears later in Genesis? And how do these two covenants interconnect with the Mosaic Covenant that appears later in the Pentateuch? And how does the Mosaic Covenant interconnect with the Christian covenant (hereinafter called the Messianic Covenant) that appears in the New Testament? These issues have been inadequately resolved throughout Judao-Christian history, and this inadequate recognition of jurisdictional boundaries has led to monumental grief for many people impacted by this misunderstanding of the Bible. But this inadequate recognition of jurisdictional boundaries is not the source of the Bible’s notorious genocide, although the genocide is certainly another source of monumental grief. The inadequate recognition of jurisdictional boundaries results in part from a failure to properly emphasize the distinction between law and fact. In the case of biblical exegesis and interpretation, law and fact necessarily assume the special conceptions of Biblical law from Biblical fact. 26

Rigorous reading of the Bible, with these and other jurisprudential concepts as necessarily given, and as necessarily arising out of a combination of general and special revelation, leads to the conclusion that according to the biblical prescription of human law, only one kind of human law is globally applicable. This prescription of global human law appears in the Noachian Covenant, in Genesis 9. The prescription appears in Genesis 9:6. When analyzed, it’s clear that this verse,

Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man. (NASB)

mandates two global duties, a negative duty and a positive duty. The rationale for these two duties appears in the motive clause, "For in the image of God He made man". The motive clause indicates that every human being is created in the image of God, and that this is the reason for God’s imposition of these two global duties. This biblical fact that all people are created in the image of God necessarily implies that every human being has natural rights, the most primitive and primary of which is self-ownership. Being created in the image of God implies not only innate self-ownership, which these works aptly call primary property, but it also implies an appending capacity for ownership of exogenous objects, aptly termed secondary property. This arrangement, by logical necessity, excludes any claim by one person to own another person. It also precludes any claim that there is anything inherently wrong with private, exclusively owned property. The most obvious of these two duties, the negative duty, is a prohibition to every human being against the violation of the primary and secondary property of any other human being.

This line of reasoning arises naturally out of the Bible itself, and is not dependent upon any secular philosophy or jurisprudence for its existence. In fact, parts of this line of reasoning became embedded in English common law, and in civil law in the rest of Christendom, going back to the early days of Christianity. Evidence that this is true appears in Black’s Law Dictionary:

This expression, ‘natural law,’ . . . was largely used in the philosophical speculations of the Roman jurists of the Antonine age [(after Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 2nd century A.D.)], and was intended to denote a system of rules and principles for the guidance of human conduct which . . . might be discovered by the rational intelligence of man, and would be found to grow out of . . . his whole mental, moral, and physical constitution. . . . In ethics, it consists in practical universal judgments . . . These express necessary and obligatory rules of human conduct which have been established by the author of human nature . . . 27

Although this line of reasoning appears in both ancient Stoic philosophies and Christian ethics, since the "Age of Reason" and the "enlightenment", it appears largely in secular philosophies. 28 The most prominent place that this line of reasoning appears in these latter days is in the Austrian school of economics, a prominent subset of which is anarcho-capitalism. Like most secular philosophies, anarcho-capitalism generally eschews theism. But it does not eschew either of these two duties. One of the two duties represented in this verse, the negative duty, is fleshed out with formidable arguments in works like The Ethics of Liberty. On the other hand, although anarcho-capitalism goes some distance in defining the positive duty, in the final analysis, it does not flesh out this second duty adequately enough to be on a par with what’s necessary in a global prescription of human law. This amounts to a serious weakness in anarcho-capitalism’s defense of free-market economics. In fact, neglect of this positive duty is the deep-seated weakness that leaves free-market philosophy vulnerable to socialist and communist critiques.

The negative duty embedded in Genesis 9:6 merely indicates that every human is proscribed and prohibited from violating every other human being’s natural rights. It’s called a negative duty because it is a prohibition, rather than a duty requiring positive action. Anarcho-capitalism implicitly agrees that this proscription / prohibition exists. Anarcho-capitalism generally describes this proscription as the "non-aggression principle", "the nonaggression axiom", or the universal prohibition of the "initiation of force and fraud". 29 Even though anarcho-capitalism and other secular libertarian philosophies may express themselves in different jargon, generally, they are conceptually in agreement with the rational comprehension of the Genesis 9:6 negative duty just presented, the implicit prohibition contained in the phrase, "Whoever sheds man’s blood".

Even though there is conceptual agreement between the metaconstitution and anarcho-capitalism, about the negative duty that’s embedded in Genesis 9:6, anarcho-capitalism and other libertarian philosophies do not adequately agree with the metaconstitution’s rational comprehension of this verse’s positive duty. The positive duty is embedded in the positive-duty clause, "By man his blood shall be shed". This clause essentially imposes upon every human being the duty of executing justice against anyone who violates the negative duty. Anarcho-capitalists may recognize this positive duty when it arises in cases of self defense, or in defense of one’s loved ones, but they generally do not recognize it as a duty that every human owes to every other human. 30 They certainly recognize the negative duty, the duty that every human owes to every other human to avoid damaging the other human. But anarcho-capitalists generally do not acknowledge the positive duty that every human owes to every other human, the duty to execute justice against those guilty of damaging other people. Because they don’t sufficiently acknowledge the global nature of the positive duty, anarcho-capitalists incapacitate themselves from developing the intellectual foundations necessary to define and describe the contracts necessary to keep psychopaths out of power centers. This failure, not just of anarcho-capitalism but of all economics and philosophies that genuinely attempt to advocate free markets, leaves free-market capitalism vulnerable to socialist arguments against laissez faire capitalism. These socialist arguments are routed by basing arguments for free markets on both the negative duty and the positive duty, rather than on the negative duty alone. The typical libertarian philosophy lacks viability largely because of the failure to define, describe, and delineate contracts based on the positive duty.

Contrary to what some people may claim, advocating the positive duty is not equivalent to advocating the state. The reason this is true arises indirectly out of the fact that the jurisdiction of the negative duty encompasses two and only two kinds of human law. The two kinds of human law are laws that enforce legal actions ex delicto and laws that enforce legal actions ex contractu. All other kinds of human law are either subsumed by these two kinds of human law, or they are inherently unlawful and immoral breeds of human law. In both of these paramount kinds of human law, an accuser alleges that a specified perpetrator has damaged the alleged victim through some form of aggression. The damage can either arise by way of a delict or by way of a contract. A delict is simply an act of damaging someone else outside of any contractual duty, other than the primordial negative duty that every human owes to every other human, meaning the duty to avoid damaging other people. Delicts include things like murder, theft, battery, rape, extortion, kidnapping, fraud, and most acts normally treated as torts in American law. 31 A legal action against a perpetrator of a delict has historically been called an action ex delicto. Actions ex delicto involve violation of universal duties that are inherently non-contractual. In contrast, a legal action ex contractu involves alleged damage that arises out of the breach of a contract. The reason the distinction between ex delicto and ex contractu is absolutely crucial is because they define and pertain to different jurisdictions. Damage that arises ex contractu is damage that is governed by the jurisdiction of the allegedly breached contract. Damage that arises ex delicto is damage that is governed by the jurisdiction of the negative duty itself. Ex contractu is an inherently local jurisdiction. Ex delicto is an inherently global jurisdiction. The fact that ex delicto and ex contractu involve different jurisdictions is crucial to recognizing how enforcement contracts arise out of the positive duty. This recognition is crucial to recognizing how the positive duty can exist without giving rise to statism.

Statism is commonly understood to be "the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree". 32 This definition of statism assumes a vernacular definition of "state", meaning that people can supply their own definition willy nilly, as long as state is assumed to be capable of having the explicitly specified characteristics of having control of "economic or social policy, or both". So the definition implicitly assumes that the state has a right to exist. But the definition of the state provided by Rothbard does not make this assumption.

Throughout history, groups of men calling themselves "the government" or "the State" have attempted-usually successfully-to gain a compulsory monopoly of the commanding heights of the economy and the society. In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land ("the public domain"), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail. Control of land and transportation has long been an excellent method of assuring overall control of a society; in many countries, highways began as a means of allowing the government to move its troops conveniently throughout its subject country. Control of the money supply is a way to assure the State an easy and rapid revenue, and the State makes sure that no private competitors are allowed to invade its self-arrogated monopoly of the power to counterfeit (i.e. create) new money. Monopoly of the postal service has long been a convenient method for the State to keep an eye on possibly unruly and subversive opposition to its rule. In most historical epochs, the State has also kept a tight control over religion, usually cementing a comfortable, mutually-supportive alliance with an Established Church with the State granting the priests power and wealth, and the Church in turn teaching the subject population their divinely proclaimed duty to obey Caesar. . . .  [T]he State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers. 33

Most of the things mentioned in this paragraph pertain to economic and/or social policy, and there is no apparent sign in it of any distinction between executing justice against damage versus all these extraneous economic and social policies. It’s not valid to assume that the state has a right to exist without first proving that it has a right to exist. Instead of presuming that the state has a right to exist, reasonable explanations need to be supplied for where the state comes from, and why anyone should presume that it has a right to exist. In fact, no one should presume that the state has a right to exist simply because it’s the state. This is as true from a biblical perspective as it is from a secular philosophical perspective. Contrary to the common belief among Christians that the state’s existence has been ordained by God, the state has not been ordained by God, at least not according to a reliable understanding of what such ordination means. But because there are numerous passages in the Bible that appear to conflict with this claim, it’s necessary to explain what is meant by the claim that God has not ordained the existence of the state.

Because God is God, God is sovereign; and because God is sovereign,

God from all eternity, did, . . .  freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. 34

Because God is God, God is sovereign over all of creation. Because God is both creator of all creation and sovereign over all creation, nothing exists over which God is not sovereign. Nothing exists which God did not decree and ordain. This is by the very definition of God. Theology has historically called decree and ordination God’s decretive will, as distinguished from God’s preceptive will. Because God decreed everything that exists, God decreed and ordained the existence of the state. But this line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that God decreed and ordained the existence of sin and Satan, as well as the state. But when the Westminster divines say that "God . . .  did . . .  ordain whatsoever comes to pass", it’s crucial to understand that they followed this claim with the following disclaimer:

yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. 35

So even though God ordained the state and sin through His decretive will, God is not the author of the state and sin because God did not ordain sin and state through His preceptive will. God is neither the author of sin nor the author of the state. Sin and state have come into existence through the secondary cause of humans’ wills. — It’s an unavoidable aspect of the human condition that every human faces the constant choice between taking full responsibility, as moral agent, over his/her circumstances, or not. Taking such responsibility is a crucial aspect of humanity’s development into miniature sovereigns who operate consistently with being created in the image of God. To clarify this, it’s necessary to offer a better explanation of the difference between God’s decretive will and God’s preceptive will, 36 and it’s probably also important to do a better job of describing what a "miniature sovereign" is.

Because the state exists, God certainly ordained its existence through His decretive will. But that begs the question, "For what purpose did God decree the existence of the state?" This is essentially a question about what God’s preceptive will is, regarding the state. Nowhere in the Bible does God, through His preceptive will, ordain or mandate the existence of the state for all humanity, meaning on a global basis. Among Christians, the belief that God has ordained the state arises out of a common misinterpretation of Romans 13:1-7, where this common misinterpretation arises largely out of a failure to distinguish God’s preceptive will from God’s decretive will in that passage. In addition to failing to interpret this passage within the context of reliable definitions of God’s decretive and preceptive wills, Christians also often misinterpret this passage by using error-prone interpretational policies. These two errors feed off each other, and they have led the visible Church in America into very serious statist bondage. 37

The belief that the state has been ordained by God, based on Romans 13:1-7, relies in part upon a presupposition that one can properly understand the passage simply by assuming vernacular definitions of all the terms in the passage. But this assumption violates an interpretational policy that has existed in Christendom since Saint Augustine. 38 By following "the analogy of faith" interpretational policy recommended by Augustine, it becomes clear that most of the terms used in Romans 13:1-7 are terms of art that have their conceptual origin in Genesis 9. The

analogy of faith is the rule that Scripture . . . is its own interpreter . . . [which] means . . . that no part of Scripture can be interpreted in such a way as to render it in conflict with what is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture. 39

Refusal to follow the analogy of faith causes one to neglect the possibility that Romans 13 should be interpreted through a conceptual filter established elsewhere in Scripture. On the other hand, interpretation of Genesis 9 induces terms of art, and recognition of these terms of art in Romans 13, and in all other relevant passages in the Bible, constructs a denial that the Bible is statist. In fact, through God’s preceptive will, the Bible clearly prescribes a natural-rights polity instead of the state. If it’s understood that God’s preceptive will is God’s definition of the precepts necessary to allow humans to abide by, and obey, the natural law, then it’s obvious to the Bible reader that nowhere in the Bible does God ordain the existence of the state through His preceptive will. But it should be obvious to everyone who reads Genesis 9 rationally that through His preceptive will, God certainly prescribes the natural-rights polity and the metaconstitution. Search though one may, nowhere in the Bible does God globally ordain / authorize human government / the state through His preceptive will. The only passage even remotely like such global ordination appears in Genesis 9:6. Genesis 9:6 clearly ordains the existence of something through God’s preceptive will. So the terms in Romans 13:1-7 should be understood to be terms of art, terms that must be defined by way of Genesis 9. 40

According to the Genesis 9:6 positive-duty clause, every human is authorized, even mandated, to execute justice against people who shed human blood. Understood within the overall context of Genesis 9, and also with the help of reason and general revelation as they have appeared in ancient jurisprudence in both the common law and the civil law, "blood" is here recognized to be equivalent to damage by one person of another person. Reason and general revelation show further that damage can only exist ex delicto or ex contractu. So according to the preceptive will of God, the authority of one human to govern another is limited to the subject matter of these two kinds of legal action. So if government / state are allowed to exist, with the proviso that government / state conform to and comply with the negative duty, then such government / state cannot be allowed to perpetrate delicts against anyone, or to violate contracts with anyone. Because all standard definitions of government and state allow such government / state to perpetrate delicts through takings, taxation, and numerous other kinds of prohibitions and positive mandates, vernacular definitions of government / state are de-authorized and made unlawful by the Genesis 9:6 positive duty clause. So according to biblical precepts, the state has a right to exist only to the extent that it complies with its ordained reason for existing, meaning to execute justice against people guilty of damaging other people; and if the state exists for any other reason, then it is inherently criminal; and it never has license to aggress against private property. But the state has practically never been defined with such rigorous constraints, so it’s reasonable to claim that through His preceptive will, God never ordained the existence of the state, although God certainly ordained "governing authorities" (Romans 13:1; NASB) as rigorously defined within the context of the positive duty clause.

With these things made clear about the biblical prescription of global human law, meaning human law applicable to all human beings, it’s necessary to recognize how such global human law relates to the human law prescribed in the remainder of the Bible, meaning in the Bible subsequent to Genesis 9. All subsequent human law either reiterates and refines articulation of the globally prescribed human law that appears in Genesis 9:6, or it prescribes local human law. When subsequent prescription of local human law exists in the Bible, subsequent to Genesis 9, such prescription must be understood to exist within the context of the jurisdiction of the biblical covenant for which such human laws are terms. For example, the ceremonial laws of the Mosaic Covenant apply to people who are party to the Mosaic Covenant, not to people who are not party. But when the Mosaic Covenant’s proscription of murder is understood to originate in the Noachian Covenant, it’s understood that the Mosaic proscription of murder is a global proscription, applicable to all people everywhere. This is because the proscription of murder in the Noachian Covenant is global, and the Mosaic Covenant inherits that global attribute.

In order for biblical covenants subsequent to the Noachian Covenant to generate "governing authorities" that conform to Genesis 9:6, such subsequent covenants must comply with the in personam, subject matter, and territorial jurisdiction of the Noachian Covenant’s Genesis 9:6 term. In other words, they must have a global in personam jurisdiction, a global territorial jurisdiction, and a subject matter jurisdiction that recognizes the ex delicto / ex contractu limitations on such authorities. Do subsequent biblical covenants recognize such limitations? — From a rational reading of biblical passages that pertain to the biblical prescription of human law, it’s clear that some covenants subsequent to the Noachian Covenant do not comply rationally with the interpretation of Genesis 9:6 that has been presented thus far in this preface. In other words, superficial reading of some subsequent covenants shows that such subsequent covenants do not comply with the natural-rights polity. But this problem doesn’t exist upon more penetrating consideration. The facial failure to comply with the natural-rights polity does not necessarily negate the interpretation of Genesis 9:6 that is being presented here. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that those subsequent covenants are wrong. The inconsistency here can be explained by way of another theological concept. In order to claim that biblical covenants subsequent to the Noachian Covenant conform to the legal constraints that implicitly exist in the three clauses in Genesis 9:6, it’s necessary to acknowledge that these subsequent covenants must be interpreted through the filter of a theological concept known as progressive revelation. This theological concept arises directly out of Deuteronomy 29:29:

The secret things belong to the lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law. (NASB)

This verse articulates natural law that marks a distinction between aspects of natural law that are "revealed", and aspects of natural law that are not "revealed".

It’s certainly plausible to claim that Deuteronomy 29:29 is speaking of the distinction between aspects of eternal law that are forever hidden, and the entirety of natural law that has been revealed through general revelation. But this plausibility doesn’t withstand close inspection. Although this claim that this verse is speaking of this distinction between eternal law and all of natural law is superficially plausible, it’s unavoidably obvious that all people are prone to suppress awareness of the natural law revealed in general revelation, in accordance with Romans 1:18-21. If this were not true, then some people would not sin or die. But there’s no reliable evidence that more than one person has ever met that standard. So the conclusion is that with the exception of this one rare person, all people are overwhelmed from conception or birth by the propensity to suppress the natural law revealed in general revelation. So contrary to concluding that Deuteronomy 29:29 is speaking of the distinction between the eternal law that is forever hidden and eternal law that is revealed as natural law through general revelation, the context of the verse makes it obvious that the verse is speaking of the distinction between natural law that has been revealed through biblical covenants, versus natural law that has not yet been revealed subject to biblical covenants. The latter distinction holds implicitly that natural law is revealed progressively through special revelation, each biblical covenant adding new revelation of natural law to the previously existing covenant. Under this kind of regimen, new light appears in later covenants that facilitates the proper interpretation of earlier covenants. In addition to this progressive revelation through special revelation, cross-checking natural law revealed through special revelation against natural law revealed through general revelation also contributes to the proper interpretation of earlier biblical covenants. So under this regimen, it’s perfectly understandable that the rigorous interpretation of Genesis 9:6 presented in the theodicy might be unavailable to the conscious minds of many of the actors described in the Bible. This is a major explanation for the Mosaic Covenant’s mandate to genocide.

The Mosaic Covenant’s mandate to genocide is undeniable, and is a massive violation of the negative-duty clause. On its face, it appears that the Mosaic Covenant establishes a global proscription of murder on one hand, and mandates mass murder of a specific group of people, on the other. If there is not some rational explanation for this mandate to genocide, then the mandate’s existence clearly constitutes such rational inconsistency that it casts a pall over the entire Bible. In fact, the sequence of events in biblical history shows that the Genesis 9:6 prescription of human law went dormant around the time the human race was divided into various nations, families, clans, and languages, each inhabiting different lands (Genesis 10). Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the metaconstitution / natural-rights polity that is so obvious under a rational understanding of the combination of special revelation and general revelation in the 21st century, was not so obvious during the period from Genesis 10 to the invasion of the "promised land" wrought through the Mosaic Covenant. The global nature of the proscription of murder was not so obvious because the Mosaic Covenant was so emphatically local. Also, Genesis 9 "blood" was not interpreted as general, other-inflicted damage then, and it has not generally been interpreted as such damage by rabbinical Judaism even up to the present day. This oversight by rabbinical Jews exists because they’ve rejected the progressive revelation available through the Messianic Covenant. Christians have generally failed to interpret Genesis 9 "blood" as equivalent to such damage for a similar reason, i.e., because of a failure to interpret their own covenant rationally and holistically, which necessarily includes reading Genesis 9 as the source of important terms of art. So failure to read Genesis 9 rationally, rigorously, and consistently within the light of both the entirety of special revelation, and general revelation available in Christendom’s ancient jurisprudence, has led Christendom into prolonged misinterpretation of Romans 13. Regardless of whether one claims that the revelation available in the Noachian Covenant went dormant during the period described in Genesis 10-11, or one claims that the proper interpretation of Genesis 9:6 has been unavailable because of a failure to properly recognize progressive revelation, the fact remains that the mediator of the Mosaic Covenant did not interpret Genesis 9:6 the way it’s interpreted in the theodicy. So it’s apt to simply say that the rigorous interpretation of Genesis 9:6 was dormant under the progressive revelation available under the Mosaic Covenant.

This dormancy is an at least partial explanation for how the genocide should be understood. But just because a prescription of human law goes dormant, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it ceases to be a biblical prescription of human law. It’s not reasonable for an earlier Divine prescription of human law to be repealed unless it is repealed explicitly by a later Divine prescription of human law. It’s not reasonable to assume that a Divine prescription of human law is repealed simply because human parties to a biblical covenant are failing to enforce it. It cannot go through cessation unless a subsequent Divine prescription of human law explicitly overturns and repeals it. In fact, the terms of the Mosaic Covenant that mandate and encourage the genocide are overturned by terms in the Messianic Covenant. But the global prescription of human law is nowhere overturned by prescription of human law that is subsequent to Genesis 9. The mandate to genocide can be further explained at least in part by the Genesis 9:6 positive duty to execute justice against child murderers, because the seven societies that were each targets of the genocide practiced child sacrifice. The mandate to genocide can also be further understood at least in part to be a concession God made to the frailty of the humans party to the Mosaic Covenant. 41 As the theodicy shows, the mandate to genocide had a local, special jurisdiction, and because Genesis 9:6 is global, it cannot be globally negated by this local mandate. 42

Given that Genesis 9:6 "blood" is equivalent to damage perpetrated by one human being or group of human beings against another human being or group of human beings, and given that such damage can only rationally exist in ex delicto and ex contractu forms, and given that the Messianic Covenant brings Genesis 9:6 entirely out of dormancy, it’s possible to see how this global prescription of human law impacts the need to set up defenses against marauders, murderers, thieves, rapists, fraud-mongers, in short, delict perpetrators, as well as against contract breakers. So it’s necessary to acknowledge that there are several propositions that need to be proven true before the theodicy’s exposition of the positive-duty clause can be acknowledged as genuinely positing a natural-rights polity, and as thereby strengthening the defense of free-market capitalism: (i)the proposition that the subject matter jurisdiction of the Genesis 9:6 term is what Theodicy claims it is, meaning that (a)the proposition that "blood" in the Genesis 9:6 negative-duty clause refers to damage perpetrated by one human party against another human party, and that (b)the proposition that the ex delicto and ex contractu forms of damage exhaust all the damage referenced in the negative-duty clause; (ii)the proposition that the in personam jurisdiction of the Noachian Covenant’s prescription of human law based on Genesis 9:6 is global; (iii)the proposition that the territorial jurisdiction of the Genesis 9:6 term is global; and (iv)the proposition that through progressive revelation, the Messianic Covenant brings the Genesis 9:6 prescription of global human law completely out of dormancy for all people who are genuinely committed to abiding by such covenant. 43 Given that these propositions are proven true in the theodicy, how does the theodicy’s construction of the positive-duty clause improve the defense of natural rights and free markets?

Proof that these several propositions are true leads to proof that the positive-duty clause is also true. The positive duty clearly indicates that all humans have this positive duty to execute justice against people who damage other people. Even so, it’s reasonable to expect many people to balk at this apparent multiplication of universal duties. Christians and Jews are prone to balk at this interpretation because it conflicts with their traditions, and many people are prone to esteem their traditions more highly than the truth. Anarcho-capitalists are prone to balk at this multiplication of universal duties because it might appear on its face to set up a new positive duty that could easily be converted into a foundation for statism. Regarding reservations by Christians and Jews, no matter how much reason one may pour forth, only God can break through a stubborn hold on tradition. Regarding the comprehension of the positive duty as a prescription of human law, it’s critical to notice that Genesis 9:6 posits no penalty for violating the positive duty. It certainly posits a penalty for violating the negative duty, but if one refuses to execute justice against someone who damages someone else, nowhere in the Bible is there a global prescription of a penalty to be exacted by someone against the refusenik. This means that in contrast to the negative duty, which is clearly a prescription of human law, the positive duty is a description of natural law, but is not a prescription of human law. This has huge implications for the understanding of biblical history, secular history, and the understanding of present world and American circumstances. Before it’s end, this preface will examine such implications in passing. But before that, it’s important to examine more closely the roots of both the negative and positive duties. Without such close inspection, it’s difficult to prove that either the negative duty or the positive duty exists. Without proving that both are rudimentary, it’s difficult if not impossible to show how enforcement contracts superior to those proposed by anarcho-capitalists arise out of these dual duties. The roots of both duties are in pre-cognitive consent.

b. Two Kinds of Consent:

It’s beyond rational dispute that mutual consent is the necessary ingredient in the construction of all contracts. There’s no good reason to presume that this claim doesn’t apply to the biblical covenants. On the contrary, biblical covenants are merely special kinds of contracts. So the negative duty and the positive duty are terms of a contract. Even though this is true, it’s also true that biblical covenants are different from ordinary contracts due to the fact that God is overtly party. Because God is by definition sovereign over all of creation, including over the human will, God, through His decretive will, has ultimate control over whether any given human consents to being party or not. But there is a basic assumption that is a prerequisite to understanding the nature of the biblical covenants. The assumption is that God takes a somewhat laissez faire, hands-off approach to the human will when it comes to these covenants. This assumption is implicit in the distinction between God’s decretive and preceptive wills.

Given that God is genuinely God, God can get whatever He wants, whenever He wants, by whatever means He wants. God’s decretive will is an expression of this fact. This being the case, why does God’s preceptive will exist? God’s preceptive will is God’s revelation, by whatever means He chooses, to humans, of the precepts humans need to live by in order for humans to live in harmony with the natural law. Given that God is God, why should He bother? What purpose does God’s preceptive will serve within the overall context of the eternal law? If God could just decree that every human behave in a certain way, then why doesn’t He just do that, and thereby skip messing with the human capacity to choose? The human capacity to choose things other than actions, speech, and behavior that harmonize with natural law is obviously a huge source of trouble and suffering for the humans, because humans incessantly make choices that violate the eternal law. By making every human an automaton programmed to operate in harmony with natural law, God could have saved humanity from all their grief and sorrow. So was God being sadistic by giving humans the capacity to choose actions, speech, and behavior inherently at odds with natural law? The biblical fact that God created human beings in His image, i.e., with the imago Dei, says "No!".

God’s laissez faire approach to dealing with humans makes sense within the context of the biblical fact of the imago Dei. Because God is sovereign, when God created humans in His image, He created them to be miniature sovereigns. In other words, God created every human to exercise a limited kind of sovereignty over a limited jurisdiction. Such limited sovereignty requires that God give free rein to every human within that human’s limited jurisdiction. It doesn’t make sense for God’s preceptive will to even exist unless this is true. God did not create humans as automatons because it was His good pleasure to give every human free will within the given human’s limited jurisdiction. The price for this capacity to choose was, and is, a protracted training program aimed at the development of miniature sovereigns who actually have the know-how, the capacity, and the desire to choose harmony with natural law. Such a training program inevitably involves the edification of humans in what natural law is. This is one of the primary purposes of the biblical covenants and of special revelation in general. Therefore, in the terms of these covenants, God’s will, as it appears in the terms, is always God’s preceptive will, rather than His decretive will. Nevertheless, both God’s decretive will and His preceptive will are involved in the creation and maintenance of each of the biblical covenants, both those that are global and those that are local. But in both kinds of biblical covenant, God’s decretive will appears most prominently in the determination of who the human parties are, and most of the rest of the terms are expressions of God’s preceptive will. Because of this interface between God’s decretive will and His preceptive will in the creation and maintenance of the biblical covenants, it’s necessary to acknowledge that there are two different kinds of human consent.

Because consent is an essential component to every lawful contract or covenant, in order for a contract to be valid, the consent of the parties is an essential prerequisite, regardless of whether the contract happens to be a biblical covenant or an ordinary contract. But to account for God’s decretive will, it’s necessary to admit that human consent when it exists as an immediate function of God’s decretive will is different from ordinary human consent. To understand the nature of this extraordinary human consent, consider the following: When a human being is conceived and is growing in its mother’s womb, does it consent to having two eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands, one head, etc.? The standard answer to this question from ancient jurisprudence is "No!". That’s because infants have generally been recognized as existing prior to the age of consent. The age of consent has been set differently in different cultures, but there’s one thing that all cultures have in common, among cultures that recognize an age of consent. The consent to which they refer is a cognitive process. In contrast, the consent that a given human being gives to God in regard to having two eyes, one head, etc., obviously pre-exists cognition, and can therefore be said to be pre-cognitive. Such pre-cognitive consent is obviously the product of God’s decretive will. Pre-cognitive consent clearly exists beyond the boundary of the miniature sovereign’s limited jurisdiction. Under such circumstances, the given human’s consent is tacit but real, even though it does not involve the human’s cognitive processes. Later, say, after the given human has reached the age of consent, he/she may decide to reject the way that God has made him/her. This human may decide that he/she wants a sex change, or would rather be an eagle than a human, or would rather have flippers than hands, or wants to undergo any number of other artificial modifications. Under such circumstances, it’s necessarily true that there is cognitive dissonance between this human’s pre-cognitive consent and his/her cognitive consent in regard to the given artificial modification. People who are not so prone to suffering such cognitive dissonance learn to allow their cognitive consent to agree with their pre-cognitive consent, because pre-cognitive consent is really beyond the human capacity to change, regardless of how advanced Frankensteinian technologies may get. This is a fact regarding the human condition regardless of how much erudite secular philosophers may claim otherwise. There are necessarily limitations on the miniature sovereign’s jurisdiction, and these limitations in many respects coincide with the boundary between God’s decretive will and God’s preceptive will.

This distinction between cognitive consent and pre-cognitive consent is extremely important to understanding how all the biblical covenants work. It’s especially important in understanding how the global covenants work. It’s also crucial as a foundation for building contracts aimed at solving the marauder problem. Because the Bible’s only global prescription of human law appears in one of the Bible’s global covenants, this distinction between pre-cognitive and cognitive consent is especially crucial to understanding such global prescription of human law. — It’s certainly true that no human gives cognitive consent to being constructed in the womb with unique human attributes. But does the lack of cognitive consent at that stage of development necessarily exclude the possible existence of tacit consent, consent that exists beyond cognition? The fact that the developmental path for a normal human embryo / fetus leads to capacity for cognition, which leads to the capacity for cognitive consent, necessarily leads one to acknowledge that cognition and capacity for cognitive consent were latent within the embryo / fetus. Given that capacity for cognitive consent is latent within the embryo / fetus, and given that embryonic / fetal development are necessarily determined by factors beyond the pre-natal human’s capacity to choose, there is nothing inherently wrong or illogical in claiming that such human has given tacit, pre-cognitive consent to develop in all these ways that are clearly beyond the capacity of cognitive consent. Humans are necessarily created by some one or some thing greater than they are, and so is their capacity to consent. From the instant of conception, humans start manifesting attributes to which they do not cognitively consent. At some point they develop cognitive abilities, the ability to make choices, the ability to say "yes" and "no", and the ability to consent or dissent. Cognitive consent is a function of this developmental process. Cognitive consent cannot exist without the pre-existing developmental process. If the human’s capacity to choose is something more sacrosanct than the animal’s capacity to choose, then this capacity to choose must go deep into the developmental process, even to the point of pre-existing any manifestation of a choice. This capacity of the miniature sovereign to choose, as opposed to the capacity of an animal to choose, is the reason pre-cognitive consent, as a pre-natal capacity, should be recognized by all people, regardless of religious or philosophical inclination. All humans have been created with the imago Dei, and this fact marks the difference between animal capacity to choose and human capacity to choose. This is a good reason to conclude that human pre-cognitive consent exists, and is sacrosanct.

This argument in favor of the existence of pre-cognitive consent is backed up by other objectively valid principles. Pre-cognitive consent is clearly necessary to the claim by both Bible-believing Christians and anarcho-capitalists that the negative duty / non-aggression principle is valid. If there is no pre-cognitive consent to obey the negative duty, then it’s simple for anyone to refute it based on an arbitrary choice to refute it. That’s a simple way for the psychopath to rationalize murdering whoever he/she wants. On the other hand, if the negative duty / non-aggression principle is based in natural law that is objectively valid and irrefutable, then anyone who refutes it, and then backs up such refutation with positive action, is simply violating nature, and indulging in neurotic, psychopathic cognitive dissonance. In fact, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s third law of motion); you reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7); what goes around comes around. Each of these says basically the same thing, and each implies an argument that in human social interactions, the basic moral principle embodied in the negative duty is not negotiable or negligible. Only an idiot, a moron, or an inveterate psychopath can’t see that a society that rejects the negative duty is so dysfunctional that it isn’t worth living in. Something very similar can be said about the positive duty.

To the Bible-believing Christian, every human has inherently given pre-cognitive consent to honor the negative duty. People who reject the negative duty, like social darwinists and ideological authoritarians, are engaging in the same kind of psychopathic cognitive dissonance between pre-cognitive and cognitive consent as people who demand a sex-change operation. Anarcho-capitalists don’t indulge in this kind of cognitive dissonance, at least not with regard to the negative duty. The anarcho-capitalist argument against ideological authoritarianism is valid, and the Bible-believing Christian’s argument against ideological authoritarianism should be at least as valid. But both groups have shortcomings with regard to the positive duty, but for different reasons.

The Bible-believing Christian who understands this exegesis of the natural-rights polity will argue in favor of the positive-duty clause in a manner similar to his/her argument in favor of the negative-duty clause. By pre-cognitive consent, every human has agreed to be bound by the duty to execute justice against anyone who violates the negative duty. The law of sowing and reaping still exists in this case. People who bring justice are rewarded with justice. People who treat justice like it’s negligible, or like it’s merely a commodity, will have their need for justice treated with the same neglect, indifference, and cheapness when their need arises. Justice in human relations is not cheap, and it needs to be treated like a "pearl of great price". This, by the way, means that merely throwing money at it will never suffice. Even though all these things are true, that doesn’t mean that the Bible prescribes a penalty for violating the positive duty the same way it prescribes a penalty for the negative duty. This means that the Bible doesn’t globally prescribe taxes and takings that are involuntary. Above all else, this is why the natural-rights polity that implicitly exists in rational biblical exegesis is not statist. Without a penalty for refusing to support the state, the state as it has always existed cannot exist. Nothing in the Bible contradicts Rothbard’s claim, quoted above, that the state exists by violating the negative duty, i.e., by violating its very reason for existing. This means that if people insist on cognitive dissonance in regard to the positive duty, like all other instances in the Bible in which people violate natural law without violating human law, punishment is reserved to God, because God has not prescribed that humans should act as secondary causes in such punishment. The fact that the positive duty is not inherently a prescription of human law appears to put a huge burden on anyone who claims that the natural-rights polity is viable. Before the end of this preface, the author will supply an at least quick-and-dirty solution to this viability problem.

These facts have huge implications for the concept of dormancy. The dormancy into which the two Genesis 9:6 duties fell shortly after the Noachian Covenant was cut, was in fact cognitive dissonance between humanity’s pre-cognitive consent to abide by those two duties, and humanity’s cognitive refusal to abide by those two duties. So it’s probably most accurate to view this dormancy as humanity’s collective cognitive dissonance. Starting immediately after the Noachian Covenant, the Bible makes it unavoidably obvious that this cognitive dissonance became global, and was the rule in all human societies from that time up to the cutting of the Messianic Covenant. From the Tower of Babel until Christ’s ascension, this cognitive dissonance has been the rule. Even so, there was a marked difference between the anarchy epoch and the law-enforcement epoch. While the natural human inclination to execute justice against people who perpetrate damage against other people was inhibited during the anarchy epoch, this inclination has not been subject to the same inhibitions during the law-enforcement epoch that the human race exists in even to the present day. Instead, up to the present, there has been a cyclical process that has revolved around the negative duty, the positive duty, and statism. Biblical history is full of descriptions of this cycle, and so is secular history. The cycle starts with some kind of violation or threat of violation of the negative duty. Rather than unite to work together to satisfy the positive duty, people allow a strongman or some group of strongmen to satisfy the positive duty by proxy. In the process of satisfying the positive duty, the strongman and his agents acquire inordinate power over the general population. Because of the general population’s lack of discernment, they give the strongman and his agents, i.e., the newly established state, power and responsibilities far beyond the positive duty. The strongman and his agents start operating without regard to the cognitive consent of the general population. They thereby start perpetrating delicts and violating contracts with apparent impunity. Because they’ve gained monopolistic power, they entrench themselves as the state and lord their monopolistic powers over the people as they please. Eventually, people get tired of the protection racket, and the jurisdictional dysfunction eventually leads to the state’s decline. After the collapse, the society goes through a protracted state of ruin until the cycle begins again with a new set of players. This cycle exists because of the people’s general cognitive dissonance, where this cognitive dissonance allowed the strongmen to exceed the bounds of their lawful jurisdiction in the first place. If the people had generally refused to allow the state to violate its reason for existing, and had refused to allow the state’s agents to operate ultra vires in the first place, then this cycle would have never progressed to ultimate ruination. The cognitive dissonance between humanity’s pre-cognitive consent to abide by both duties, and humanity’s cognitive refusal to abide by both duties, is what allows this cycle to begin, and to run its course, through countless historical iterations.

Even though this argument for pre-cognitive consent to the positive duty may be perceived as valid, that doesn’t mean that people will accept its validity, because accepting it implies that one is in contract not only with God, in regard to both duties. It also implies that one has entered into contract, through pre-cognitive consent, with every other human being. It means that all humans are subject to the same contract, and that they have all entered it through pre-cognitive consent. Acknowledgment of the pre-cognitive contract that exists between all humans, in regard to the positive duty, is a necessary prerequisite to accepting how enforcement contracts arise naturally out of the positive duty. It is prerequisite to recognizing how contracts built with cognitive consent arise out of such a global contract that has been formed through pre-cognitive consent.

Defenses against marauders, murderers, thieves, rapists, fraud-mongers, and other delict perpetrators, as well as against contract breakers, can either be set up by individuals working alone, or they can be set up by people working in voluntary association with other people. If such defenses are set up through voluntary association, then they are necessarily set up through cognitive consent. Voluntary association implies the existence of contracts, assuming the association consists of agreements that carry weight, meaning penalties for violation, where such penalties are at least implicit. If such contracts carry real weight in the physical world, then they must be extra-biblical contracts formed through cognitive consent, even if they are motivated by pre-cognitive consent.

c. The Four Metaconstitutional Contracts:

In American history, ad hoc vigilance committees have arisen, based on voluntary association, and based on a shared vision of a shared threat. In the same history, ad hoc vigilance committees have generally acquired a reputation for executing summary judgment. This reputation may be the product of statist propaganda, but it may also exist because ad hoc vigilance committees have little or no commitment to due process. Both self-defense and vigilantism are certainly allowable under the positive duty, and are certainly better than allowing people to get away with murder. But the fact that enforcers need to avoid delict perpetration means that due process is a critical concept, and a critical aspect of the enforcement process. Neither self-defense nor vigilance committees are capable of satisfying the need for due process. Self defense tends to stir up passions that can cause people to use excessive force. Ad hoc vigilance committees are inherently prone to ignore standards of due process, simply because they’re ad hoc. In contrast to self defense and vigilance committees, which are both allowable but inadequate enforcement vehicles, the state, as normally defined, is neither allowable nor adequate under the positive-duty clause because statism is inherently a license to violate the negative duty with impunity. The state may put up a show of following due process, but it tends to lull people into such moral slumber that they allow it to literally get away with murder. Twentieth century democide demonstrates this beyond dispute. Pile those millions on top of the millions killed in war, and it becomes obvious that statism is a disease, like slavery, that the human race needs to repudiate forever.

History shows clearly that jurisprudence evolves over time, and can easily follow psychopathic inclinations into cesspits. The jurisprudential principles that arise from the Noachian Covenant and that are sketched above, are crucial to the avoidance of such psychopathic cesspits. But to be viable, they must be extended into contracts that uphold due process better than self defense and vigilance committees do, better than a security force assembled by an anarcho-capitalist does, and better than the state has done historically. As already indicated, this doesn’t mean that the state should exist, just in some modified form. It means that contracts that have an indefinite duration need to exist, where such contracts arise directly out of the global prohibition of damage perpetrated by one party against another, and where such damage is always either ex delicto or ex contractu. These contracts need to be employed as an alternative to the state.

As mentioned, the distinction between ex delicto and ex contractu is critical because these two kinds of legal action have very different jurisdictions. Because legal actions that are ex delicto are based on the global prohibition of damage perpetrated by one party against another, and because the global prohibition of such damage marks a global in personam jurisdiction, the basic contract formed to prosecute actions ex delicto should be distinct from, and even separate from, the contract formed to prosecute actions ex contractu. Although both actions ex delicto and actions ex contractu exist to prosecute damagers, ex contractu damage arises out of violation of a local contract, not out of violation of a global covenant. Because of this radical difference in jurisdiction, and because historically, human government has been so jurisdictionally dysfunctional, it’s extremely important to keep these jurisdictions distinct. For that reason, two different contracts should exist, one to prosecute actions ex delicto and one to prosecute actions ex contractu. In the lingo of the metaconstitution, these two contracts are called the jural compact and the ecclesiastical compact, respectively. The people party to a jural compact are called a jural society, and the people party to the ecclesiastical compact are called an ecclesiastical society. A jural compact is a contract formed to prosecute actions ex delicto. An ecclesiastical compact is a contract formed to prosecute actions ex contractu. Both of these compacts are obviously formed through cognitive consent. But the way that pre-cognitive consent interfaces with their respective operations shows more about why it’s important to keep them distinct if not separate.

When someone perpetrates a delict against someone else, it’s not necessary for someone who intends to prosecute the perpetrator to ask permission from the perpetrator. For example, if person A murders person B, person C doesn’t need to get A’s permission before C prosecutes A. Person A’s cognitive consent to the prosecution is negligible. This is because, by violating B’s natural rights, A has surrendered his/her natural right to avoid prosecution, commensurate with the violation. Every human has given pre-cognitive consent to abide by the Noachian Covenant’s negative duty, and when A violated the negative duty by murdering B, A proportionally vacated his/her natural rights, and essentially gave unarticulated permission to every other human being, represented by C, to have A’s natural rights taken in a similar manner. If C happens to be a jural society member, a party to a jural compact, then C not only has authority to prosecute A through the positive duty clause. Person C also has resources available through the jural society to make sure A’s prosecution proceeds according to due process of law. — This case shows how pre-cognitive consent interfaces with the operation of a jural society. Every perpetrator gives pre-cognitive consent to abide by the negative duty, and the prosecution proceeds based on this pre-cognitive consent given by the perpetrator.

People form jural societies by reaching mutual agreement with one another to systematically prosecute delicts. The mutual agreement is the cognitive consent that is foundational to the jural compact. For practical reasons, it’s necessary for the people in the jural society to agree about the jurisdiction of their jural compact. This means that there must be unanimous cognitive consent to the subject matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and territorial jurisdiction of their jural compact. By definition, the subject matter jurisdiction of a jural compact is all kinds of delicts. The obvious personal jurisdiction is all the humans who give cognitive consent to participate in the jural compact. But the personal jurisdiction is also somewhat dependent upon the territorial jurisdiction. The territorial jurisdiction is whatever geographical area the parties unanimously agree to cover. For practical reasons, the jural society must establish and maintain a geographical jurisdiction that isn’t prone to overwhelming its manpower and resources. It’s necessary for the jural society to consider people outside the geographical jurisdiction as having no say about how the jural society operates, because they are not party to the contract. People who abide within the territorial jurisdiction, but who are not party to the jural compact, are essentially denizens, while those party are citizens. Because they are within the territorial jurisdiction but are not parties, denizens have a capacity for being encompassed by the in personam jurisdiction of the jural society that is by default unrealized. The jural society naturally assumes full personal jurisdiction over anyone who perpetrates a delict within its territorial jurisdiction, regardless of whether the alleged perpetrator is a citizen, a denizen, or an alien. The jural society exists to curb bloodshed, regardless of where that bloodshed may be, but especially, for practical reasons, bloodshed perpetrated within the jural society’s geographical jurisdiction. 44

The agreements that form a jural society pertain exclusively to determining the conventions that are followed to fulfill the mandate against perpetration of delicts. 45 These conventions exist exclusively to fulfill the positive duty, without violating the negative duty in the process. So cognitive consent, within the jural society, pertains exclusively to such agreements about such conventions and procedures. The jural society procures jurisdiction automatically over anyone who perpetrates a delict, regardless of the perpetrator’s cognitive consent.

Free-market capitalism obviously allows competition between jural societies. But the nature of the global covenant should be a damper on any claim that such competition is an inherently good thing. On its face, such competition looks like a prescription for tribal warfare, incessant feuding, and social balkanization. But it’s absolutely crucial to constantly bear in mind what a jural compact is. It is not about defending its territorial claims, because jurisdiction that is so limited by the subject matter jurisdiction of the jural compact makes squabbles over territory silly, unprofitable, and ultra vires. Under a subject matter jurisdiction that is limited to the enforcement against delicts, and only to enforcement against delicts, it behooves all competing jural societies to cooperate with one another to attain their shared goal, justice, and it behooves no one to enter into willy-nilly competition. As long as the limited subject matter is kept central, whether a jural society has a monopoly within a given territory, or not, doesn’t matter. Regardless of whether a monopoly exists, or not, all people in the territory should be vigilant. Competition for competition’s sake is silly, because competition is inherently a function of scarcity.

The jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical society is extremely different from that of a jural society. Like the jural society, an eccclesiastical society is also formed through the cognitive consent of people who choose to be party. But unlike the jural compact, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical society has no immediate interface with pre-cognitive consent. The purpose of the ecclesiastical society is the adjudication and enforcement of ordinary human contracts (not, emphatically, biblical covenants). Because ordinary human contracts are formed voluntarily, the adjudication of such a contract, when it is allegedly breached, should also be voluntary. At the time of adjudication, one of the parties might not want to go to court. But if, at the time the contract was created or amended, all parties specified in the terms that the contract would be adjudicated by a specific ecclesiastical society, then all parties gave prior consent. So the only way that an ecclesiastical society can procure jurisdiction over a specific human, is by that human’s prior consent, assent, or acquiescence. So the ecclesiastical society relies entirely upon cognitive consent in its formation and operation. The in personam jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical society is obviously composed primarily of whatever people voluntarily agree to participate. But whenever people specify in their contracts that a specific ecclesiastical society should adjudicate upon breach, the parties become candidates for such personal jurisdiction. The subject matter jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical society is by definition the adjudication and enforcement of contracts, and only the adjudication and enforcement of contracts, where each such contract has its own distinct subject matter jurisdiction. For practical reasons, the geographical jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical compact should be limited to a specific territory. For reasons that are made obvious in the Theodicy, it’s probably best for its territorial jurisdiction to be the same as the territorial jurisdiction of the jural compact.

Historically, social-contract philosophers have claimed that at the core of every society is a "social contract". Largely contemporaneous to the formative years of the American republic, the social contract was understood to be

The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times – Hooker, Hobbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. – individuals have united and formed the state. . . . This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies. 46

As is evident in the examination of any of these philosophies, conceptions of the social contract and their supporting systems have generally been rationalizations to explain the existence of the state, and rationalizations to support statism. This is essentially the reason Rothbard and friends threw social contract theory out with the statist bath water. 47 Nevertheless, people who are committed to honoring the positive duty clause, without succumbing to statist dysfunction, must necessarily admit that even if the jural compact and ecclesiastical compact are separate, some contractual mechanism needs to exist for them to function together within the same society.

In the verbiage employed by the metaconstitution, the umbrella contract that unites the jural compact and the ecclesiastical compact is called a social compact. It’s crucial to emphasize the distinction between the social compact and traditional conceptions of the social contract.

[F]or the philosophers of the social contract, like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, human beings, on their own – that is, without God’s help – reason out the necessity of instituting laws and punishment; human beings, on their own, contract to form societies on the basis of these laws. 48

It’s a huge mistake to relegate God to insignificance, and it’s also a huge mistake to abandon the system of contracts and covenants that is built into the Bible. Because the relationships between the Bible’s global and local covenants provides a template or model for understanding the relationships between secular governments (that are designed to govern all kinds of people within a given secular territory) and more parochial governments (that are designed to govern the activities of a given parochial community), it would be insane to discard the Bible without first understanding the template.

The way the united States have developed points to another crucial distinction. It’s crucial to distinguish two different kinds of social compacts. In this country, the general government and all the States claim to be religiously pluralistic, according to their constitutions and statutes. For example, the general government’s first amendment states,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . . 

This clearly limits the power government can lawfully exercise over religions. Implicitly if not explicitly, all county and city governments are also subject to similar limitations. But because "religion" has never been defined in American law in a way that doesn’t violate any number of different religions, this clause of the first amendment has never been sufficiently viable or believable. But this dysfunction is not beyond remedy, given the global nature of the negative and positive duties. If it’s assumed that every religion must comply with the negative duty, then this assumption provides a jurisdictionally functional basis upon which to allow religious pluralism, and at the same time allow every religion’s devotees to practice their religion freely without hindering other religions. This arrangement relies heavily upon the existence and recognition of lawful jurisdictions. When the supposedly pluralistic governments of the united States are pared back so that they are jurisdictionally valid and conform to the standard that implicitly exists in the positive duty clause, they can be recognized as secular social compacts. A secular social compact is a social compact that has the bare minimal terms necessary to coordinate a jural compact and an ecclesiastical compact, and nothing more. By having such bare minimal terms, every religion is allowed to exist under the umbrella of the secular social compact with impartiality, as long as every religion is committed to observing the negative duty. — In contrast to a secular social compact, a religious social compact is designed to serve the needs of one specific religion. Rather than being limited to the bare minimal terms necessary to the coexistence of the jural and ecclesiastical compacts, a religious social compact has terms that are designed to allow the given religion to operate according to the religion’s standards, within its territorial jurisdiction. Obviously, to comply with the negative duty, it’s necessary for all who are party to the religious social compact to be party through cognitive consent.

These four kinds of compacts / contracts, jural compact, ecclesiastical compact, secular social compact, and religious social compact, along with all the jurisprudential concepts necessary for their existence and implementation, form the crux of this metaconstitution. Within the current climate of legal positivism, fascism, socialism, confusion, and denial, the legal community generally disparages anyone who claims that this country’s laws should be interpreted through a metaconstitutional grid. The current legal community is biased against any metaconstitution. In contrast, John Adams said,

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. 49

Clearly, the current legal community’s bias against any metaconstitution did not exist in the legal community in the early days of the republic, at least according to Adams. The current bias favors social disintegration, because this rejection of any metaconstitution sweeps both the positive and negative duties into oblivion. This is an inherently psychopathic strategy. Whether this psychopathic social disintegration happens through fascism or socialism doesn’t really matter to these legal prostitutes, as long as they can get their psychopathic ends met. It should be obvious to all observers that a metaconstitution is a prerequisite to the proper interpretation of American law, from the grass roots to the operation of the general government.

d. Evidence of the Metaconstitution in the Organic Documents:

Further proof that the founders and framers of the organic documents intended for those documents to be interpreted through a specific kind of metaconstitutional grid is evident in an examination of the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.

When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

If there is a flaw in this statement, the flaw revolves around the failure to distinguish the two basic types of government, meaning the jural and ecclesiastical compacts. It’s a flaw of omission which is forgivable given that these people were ideological pioneers. Although the author of this inventory uses different words, the basic spirit of the natural-rights polity is evident in this passage from the Declaration. Even though the Declaration does not distinguish these four basic types of positive-duty contracts, it nevertheless reaches a conclusion that’s foundational to the global covenant’s human law. Specifically, the global covenant and the Declaration agree that consent, not coercion, is the only righteous foundation upon which humans can build their governments.

This flaw of omission that appears in the Declaration is shared by the Constitution. By examining the Constitution line-by-line, it’s clear that this distinction between jural and ecclesiastical compacts, and secular and religious social compacts, is missing. 50 Even worse than that, it’s obvious that the violation of natural rights is designed into the Constitution. It’s obvious that the framers of the Constitution, for the sake of compromise and expediency, 51 allowed serious abuse of natural rights to be built into the foundations and fabric of what is plausibly an American social compact. It’s true that if they had not allowed such errors to be built into the document, the document probably would have never been ratified in any meaningful manner. So it was a compromise with institutionalized bloodshed that is comparable to Abraham’s practice of slavery. 52 Given the limitations of the times, excessive idealism would have removed Abraham’s social compact from practical existence, and impaired his ability to operate in an extremely imperfect world. The framers of the Constitution were faced with similar limitations.

Even though the framers of the Declaration and Constitution did not rigorously apply principles from the global covenant, this doesn’t mean that their efforts at creating a viable legal framework didn’t produce improvements over the legal systems they inherited. According to any reasonable consideration of the issues, every legal system inevitably exists as a subset of an encompassing moral system. The success, viability, and tendency to produce happiness, of the legal system, depends to a huge extent upon the quality of the moral system. If the assumptions of the legal system’s moral system are, (i)that God doesn’t exist; (ii)that human beings are not created in the image of God, but are rather created in the image of animals; (iii)that it’s a dog-eat-dog world defined by the survival of the fittest, and you better get your neighbor before he gets you; (iv)that what you do today doesn’t really matter much, because humans are only here to eat, drink, and make money; (v)etc.; then the legal system will eventually manifest the same assumptions.

The moral system that encompassed the legal system that the framers implemented has much in common with the natural-rights polity. Even so, the legal system manifested in the Constitution is defective in some respects. As this examination of the Constitution and its legal system proceeds, this inventory will try to answer four questions:

This inventory of the American legal system and Constitution will compare original intent and subsequent implementation to the standard set by the natural-rights polity, rather than to the standard set by the entire Bible, because all of Scripture does not always apply to all people. From a natural-law perspective, all of Scripture certainly applies to all people. But when dealing with human law, the focus is on what’s physically verifiable. All people are physically party to the global covenant through pre-cognitive consent, but not all people are physically party to the local covenants. Since the original intent of the framers was apparently for the united States to be largely secular, it appears, at least from the Declaration’s perspective, that the global covenant applies to everyone within the geographical jurisdiction of the united States, but the local covenants might not apply. In contrast, strict construction of the Constitution, rather than of the Declaration, might maintain that the global covenant does not apply to everyone within the geographical jurisdiction, because State sovereignty might presume to preempt the global covenant.

Hijacking Stare Decisis

Although there is certainly evidence that the founding generation intended for people to interpret the Constitution through a metaconstitutional grid, there is no evidence that that generation had access to a clearly articulated metaconstitution. It’s certain that that generation of Americans was among the most biblically literate populations that has ever existed, and that they therefore had intuitive access to the natural-rights polity that arises naturally out of the Bible. But the natural-rights polity had not at that time been holistically articulated. So there was no consensus about the ideological content of the metaconstitution. In fact, at that time, the natural-rights polity had been better articulated in secular philosophies than it had been as immediate fruit of biblical exegesis. So the circumstances at the time of the ratification of the Constitution were that there was no consensus about how the Constitution should be interpreted. Insecurity on this front was one of the reasons the anti-federalists demanded the Bill of Rights, and generally made adoption of the Bill of Rights a condition of their approval of the Constitution. After the Constitution and Bill of Rights were adopted by the thirteen States, two schools arose which each expounded its own interpretational policies. One school was the strict constructionists, led by Thomas Jefferson. The strict constructionists proposed that the Constitution should be read very literally. What they proposed was essentially a face-value hermeneutic. The school that opposed the strict constructionists can be called the loose constructionists. The latter school was led primarily by Alexander Hamilton. Both approaches to constitutional hermeneutics had their problems. For example, by emphasizing State sovereignty, strict construction essentially gave blanket license to the States to practice slavery as though slavery was approved by the natural-rights polity. On the other hand, loose construction advocated that the general government grow in ways not generally envisioned by the framers, for example, to implement mercantilist taxation schemes and a central bank that legitimized fractional-reserve banking. Both of these schools of constitutional hermeneutics tended to generate serious violations of natural rights. Given a clearly articulated natural-rights polity, both schools were wrong.

Although it’s beyond dispute that the founding generation almost universally believed that some kind of metaconstitution was necessary to the proper interpretation of the u.S. Constitution, because they believed that every legal system is necessarily encompassed by a moral system, nowhere in their writings was a metaconstitution articulated with such specificity as appears in Theodicy. This shortcoming allowed weeds to take over the constitutional garden starting at the constitutional convention of 1787. As this inventory of American jurisprudence proceeds, the inventory should indicate how this is true. Although no one should doubt that the organic Constitution was faulty, even if it was the best constitution ever developed, the most serious problems, meaning the constitutional problems that plague the American system up to the present day, were not so much built into the original document as imposed later through gross misinterpretation. The misinterpretation arose from all quarters. In spite of this fact, one extremely important factor made the system more-or-less stable, the judicial branch’s adoption of the common-law doctrine of stare decisis. Before explaining this claim, it’s probably important to speak generally about the ideological content of the Constitution.

There are several permanent institutions that are named in the Constitution. As preface to examining the Constitution in detail, it should help to have a preliminary view of how the natural-rights polity interfaces with the Constitution. This can be done by examining the several permanent institutions from the perspective of the natural-rights polity. The following are the seven permanent institutions that are mentioned in the Constitution. They are listed in order of importance, meaning the order as determined according to the priorities of the natural-rights polity: 53

The reference to "We the People" appears in the preamble to the Constitution. There is some controversy about what the framers meant by this expression, as is evident in the inventory. But the issue here is how this expression is understood when examining it through the filter of the natural-rights polity.

1. "We the People": Given that all people have religions that are belief systems that are held dear by the given religion’s devotee, religion is the clearest expression of who the devotee is as a human being. It makes sense, then, that whatever the Constitution says about religion would be paramount to the Constitution’s interpretation. What the Constitution says about religion appears in the 1st Amendment religion clauses, quoted above. From this it should be understood that whatever the Constitution says about institutions should be interpreted as subject to what the Constitution says about the individual and the individual’s religion. Said another way, before "We the People" can exist, individual people must exist. — What religious belief do all people have in common, that is a proper expression of "We the People"? In other words, what institution-creating contract have all people from all religions entered? — Contrary to the common mantra that all religions are aimed at the same goal, religious variety in the world is immense. According to the natural-rights polity, the only thing that they all must have in common is a dual commitment to the "non-aggression principle" / negative duty and the positive duty. In other words, "We the People" is a reference to the people’s common belief in and adherence to the natural-rights polity. So whatever institution arises immediately out of the natural-rights polity is the institution of "We the People".

2. "A well regulated Militia": Through the filter of the natural-rights polity, "A well regulated Militia" is the enforcement arm of a jural society and an ecclesiastical society, and therefore of a social compact. Given that this is true, the existence of a jural society in each of its legislative, executive, and judicial functions, is a precursor to the existence of a jural society’s militia. Some people might argue that such an enforcement arm is a posse, and not a militia. But it’s probably more historically accurate to say that a militia can be called up as a posse whenever the need arises. Either way, within this context, the militia is primarily a sub-function of the jural society’s executive branch. Given that this is true, it seems on its face that it must also be true that all three branches of the jural society must exist as precursors to the jural society’s militia. To avoid confusion, it’s necessary to recognize that the jural society implied by the Constitution’s mention of the militia is local, and is not the jural society of the general government. In fact, according to the plain wording of the Constitution, the general government doesn’t have a militia. The militia mentioned in the Constitution comes from "the Militia of the several States", which can be called forth by the general government when the need arises. According to both the u.S. Constitution and the State constitutions, each State has a militia. From the perspective of the natural-rights polity, this means that the jural society that implicitly exists as a sub-function of the State has an enforcement arm called "the militia". But history shows that the militia was implicitly a local institution before it was a State institution. It implicitly points to the existence of local jural societies, which implies the existence of local social compacts as a precursor to the existence of the State, and as a precursor to the existence of the general government.

3. the States: Although the charters of the thirteen colonies varied, there’s one thing that at least several of them had in common. Several of them were formed as refuges for religious non-conformists. In other words, several of them existed for religious refugees who refused to conform to the Anglican Church. Through the ideological filter of the natural-rights polity, such colonies were essentially religious social compacts. But during the period between the charter’s formation and adoption of the Bill of Rights, many of these States became diversified so that they were more heterogeneous. After the adoption of the Bill of Rights, all the States became even more religiously diverse. This is essentially a transformation of these States from religious social compacts into secular social compacts. Even so, there is an obvious parallel between the global nature of the natural-rights polity and the local nature of every religion. This parallel certainly exists in the Bible, as is obvious in the structure of the jurisdictions of the biblical covenants. The parallel is also evident in the way this country’s original religious social compacts became confederated. If this biblical template is carried into 21st-century American circumstances, then it’s clear that no matter how varied religions and religious social compacts may be, as long as each is committed to the natural-rights polity, all these diverse religious social compacts are capable of working together, and being confederated together, into secular social compacts that maintain peace and unity in the midst of this diversity.

These permanent constitutional institutions are listed in this descending order of importance to show that the individual human being, the miniature sovereign, is more important in the natural-rights polity than the state. 54 Naturally, the individual adopts some religion that is uniquely his/her own, and that is shared with others to some extent, humans being the social creatures that they are. According to the natural-rights polity, this naturally leads to the formation of jural compacts, ecclesiastical compacts, and religious social compacts that are local relative to the individual. However, in the same way that local militias were understood, and should now still be understood, to aggregate into a State militia, religious social compacts should be understood to allow themselves to participate in a State secular social compact that subsumes multiple religious social compacts. This is a process of confederation. The States, like the counties and cities, are religiously varied, and are therefore secular social compacts.

4. the united States: Also known as the general government, the united States is far more religiously diverse than any of the States. This general government is therefore a secular social compact that subsumes confederated secular social compacts and religious social compacts. 55

5. "The Congress": Congress is clearly the legislative branch of the general government. It is listed before the other branches of the general government in this ordered list because it is more immediately under the control of "We the People". Of the two political branches, the legislative and executive, the legislative is more under the immediate control of the people.

6. the president: Even though the executive is clearly a political branch because the president is elected, the executive branch is less under the control of the people than the legislative branch, and more prone to turning into a dictatorship. — Although legislative, executive, and judicial branches are inherently functions of each of the four compacts / contracts that arise out of the natural-rights polity, the Constitution, as written and as usually interpreted, does not put anywhere near adequate restraints on the powers of any of the three branches of the general government. This is one of the reasons the executive branch, since the 1930s, has spawned a gargantuan fourth branch of government, the administrative branch, that collectively is far more dangerous than any mere dictator. The administrative branch may be officially a subset of the executive branch, but the fourth branch essentially has a life of its own that is out of the control of the political branch. According to strict construction, the administrative branch is inherently unconstitutional. This branch is a major reason for America’s ongoing demise.

7. the "supreme Court": Because the judicial branch is supposedly non-political, it is presumably least under the control of "We the People". On its face this means that supreme Court opinions should have the least influence over how the general government operates. However, the way that things have developed historically shows that this prioritized list of the Constitution’s permanent institutions has been inverted over time. The supreme Court’s opinions now dominate the way the general government is understood to function. A face-value reading of the Constitution clearly shows that the Constitution itself never gave this kind of power to the judicial branch. By default, the Constitution is clearly open to interpretation by anyone who wants to read it. But at the time of this writing, the true meaning of the Constitution has become the esoteric domain of "constitutional lawyers" who are willing to devote their lives to reading, understanding, and interpreting screeds of supreme Court opinions that date from the early days of the republic forward. How this inversion has happened is extremely important now, when this esoteric constitution is so much at odds with the plain, face-value meaning of the organic document.

Article VI clause 2 says that the Constitution is "the supreme Law of the Land". This means that outside the process of amendment, there is no law that can override the Constitution, because all other laws must "be made in Pursuance thereof". This means that no law, statute, supreme Court ruling, regulation, or treaty can take priority over the Constitution. On the contrary, all other such laws, rules, etc., must be genuinely made "in Pursuance thereof". This means that even according to supreme Court opinions,

an unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. (Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 442 (1886))

The overwhelming problem this situation poses to a huge number of Americans in the fall of 2013 is this: All public office holders, regardless of whether they are employed by the general government, a State government, a county government, or a municipal government, are required to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. This means that this huge number of people, which also includes veterans, retirees, and other former employees of American government, each face a dilemma every day. The dilemma is this: "Did I take an oath to support and defend the Constitution at its plain, face-value meaning, or at the esoteric meaning given it through screeds of supreme Court opinions?"

This inventory proposes a third way, to interpret the Constitution through the metaconstitution formed by the natural-rights polity. But this third way demands giving due diligence to both the plain meaning of the Constitution and the constitution produced by supreme Court opinions. The latter is necessary under this metaconstitution because not all supreme Court opinions have been wrong. Some have in fact been helpful in pushing the natural-rights polity into physical manifestation. Even so, in order to keep examination of judicial branch opinions in perspective, it’s necessary to start with a disclaimer. The disclaimer must consist of some reasonable explanation for how the Constitution’s seven permanent institutions became inverted in their prioritization.

In Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison (5 U.S. 137 (1803)), Marshall "established the authority of the federal courts to engage in judicial review". 56 Judicial review is a court’s power to critically inspect an act of another branch of government, and to find it invalid if contrary to the court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Nowhere in the plain text of the Constitution is this power allocated to the judicial branch, regarding acts of the general government’s legislative and executive branches. However, "Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist, no. 78, argued for the existence of this extraordinary power." 57 Although Hamilton’s proposal in the federalist papers was never officially adopted into the plain wording of the Constitution, it was in fact adopted by way of Marshall’s opinion. Through this mechanism, the general government became "the final judge of its own power". 58 This is an obvious and powerful mechanism by which to transform a relatively benign system of government into a statist nightmare, given that every federal employee, including every federal judge and justice, has a vested interest in growing the federal government. When judicial review is understood to piggyback stare decisis, this mechanism turns into a juggernaut aimed at totalitarian hell.

It’s one thing for the supreme Court to claim that it has the final word regarding the interpretation of the Constitution. When this claim is combined with stare decisis, the resulting mechanism is sure to eventually produce a statist nightmare. Stare decisis is the "Policy of courts to stand by precedent and not to disturb settled point". 59 Stare decisis has its roots in the common law. It becomes a problem whenever the point of law being followed is inherently wrong. There is a clear caution in the Bible against following stare decisis blindly:

You shall not follow a multitude in doing evil (Exodus 23:2a, NASB).

Stare decisis may be a source of stability for the state, but when the precedent is wrong, so is any decision to continue following it. This applies to the inversion of the seven permanent institutions like this: In the realm of human law, "We the People" are clearly the final judge of the meaning of the contract into which the people have entered. Through Marbury, the supreme Court subverted that fact and usurped that power, and essentially established statism, as opposed to the natural-rights polity, as the supreme law of the land. Stare decisis, meaning precedent, in the view of America’s demented majority, has a standing equal with or surpassing the organic document. Now, precedent has strayed so far away from the plain meaning of the organic document that most of it must be abandoned. Use of the natural-rights polity as a scalpel for separating the waste from the reliable is a primary focus of this inventory.

The Pincer Strategy
(To Abandon the De Facto Government or Not)

Although this author absolutely recommends abandonment of politics as usual, meaning abandonment of the false left-right paradigm, and even though the existing system is probably too broken to fix, that doesn’t mean that he recommends complete abandonment of the de facto system for everyone. This author recommends a two-pronged strategy in dealing with the system’s demise: (i)Those so called should continue operating within the existing ship of state on the side of the natural-rights polity, and against the controlling authoritarianism. They should continue operating on the inside until they’re convinced that they’re called to leave, even refusing to abandon ship up to the instant the ship goes down, if so called. (ii)Those called to abandon the de facto government should focus on building de jure government. Genuinely de jure government is by definition government that operates within the strict guidelines of the natural-rights polity, which entails recognition and acceptance that statism is not a viable option. — If it’s given that the current demise of American civilization is happening as a function of information warfare, then this two-pronged strategy can be understood to be to the infowar what a pincer strategy is to conventional warfare.

Because forced taxation, conscription, takings, etc., perpetrated by one group, calling itself "the state" and thereby operating under color of law, is inherently violation of the negative duty, and given that the positive duty, as it exists in the global covenant, is not accompanied by an express penalty (which means that the state’s existence is not a function of human law, and that implementation of the natural-rights polity is based entirely on voluntarism), lawful jural societies can only come into existence, and can only be maintained, voluntarily. This voluntarism, meaning the necessary existence of cognitive consent, precludes the lawful existence not only of the state in general, but also of what in recent decades has been called "minarchism", also known as "minimal statism". This is obvious from an absolutely rational perspective. On the other hand, the pattern in biblical history makes it unavoidably obvious that humanity has been too irrational and too corrupt from the time of the start of the law-enforcement epoch up to and including the last days of the Apostles, to make the natural-rights polity viable during that period. It’s unavoidably obvious from secular history that humanity has suffered the same frailty from the last days of the Apostles up to the present. — These facts provide the ideological basis for this pincer strategy.

For millennia, the human race has been dominated by a fatalistic attitude about government and the state. The attitude is expressed well by old sayings like, "[N]othing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes"; 60 and, "You can’t fight city hall". Even though the human race has been dominated by this fatalistic attitude, and even though this attitude has certainly had its formidable impact on Judao-Christianity, Judao-Christians who take their Bible seriously know that this kind of fatalism is not really an option, because The Book calls for its people to be much more involved in human law and human governance than passive fatalism allows. — The approach to government and state that Bible-believing Christians need to be taking in these days should be understood to be a function of the interaction between progressive revelation and this sludge-like fatalism. This interaction can be seen in microcosm in Romans 13:1-7. Paul essentially wrote this passage for two different audiences. One audience was too overwhelmed with life’s everyday problems to entertain any ideas about government and state other than its existence is fatalistic. The other audience is the audience of people awake to the fact that God is sovereign over death and state, and that He calls at least some of His people into action on the governmental front because His people are the head, and not the tail. Among other things, progressive revelation has existed, recorded in the Bible, to show people how to deal with statism. Since the canon has been closed, the emphasis on this front has necessarily shifted from recordation and interpretation of special revelation to strictly interpretation of special revelation. For American Christians who have not succumbed to statist fatalism, the way forward is to acknowledge the long-standing fatalism without succumbing to it. It is necessarily two-pronged: (i)to actively set up the natural-rights polity, a de jure system, now, outside the de facto system, regardless of what statists may say or do; and (ii)to work within the de facto statist system to whatever extent is necessary, for at least three purposes. The purposes for remaining within the de facto system are, (a)to move, as much as possible, that system away from the extreme authoritarianism that it now manifests, towards a minarchist system; (b)to subvert and mitigate the authoritarianism as much as possible; and (c)to move assets currently in Caesar’s grip out of his unrighteous hands and into the hands of those building the natural-rights polity. In many respects, these have been the priorities of God’s people who were conscious of the proper way to interpret Genesis 9:6, even from the time of the cutting of the Noachian Covenant, even into the 21st century. The priorities are not to roll over in fatalistic submission to every tyrant who claims authority in this world. The priorities are to understand that there is only one source of authority in the realm of human law, and that authority comes from God. There is only one king over the natural-rights polity, and that King is Jesus Christ. It’s not necessary for every human to give immediate cognitive consent to this king’s reign, in slavering obeisance. But it is absolutely necessary for every human to acknowledge that the non-aggression axiom is inescapable, and that it applies to government as much as it does to anyone else. Anyone who violates someone else’s lawful property is clearly not acting as a secondary cause in the implementation of the natural rights polity, and is clearly asking for intervention from someone who is in fact acting as such a secondary cause.

At this point in time, in the fall of 2013, there are vastly more people working in cooperation with the existing criminal state, than people who have opted out of that system. A sad fact about the prospects for this country are that most of the well-meaning people within the existing de facto system are oblivious to the natural-rights polity, and are therefore incapable of acting conscientiously for the natural-rights polity. Many of these people are probably victims of the line of thinking that says that the natural-rights polity is incapable of ever really existing on planet earth, because genuinely functional government can never exist except through force. This attitude cannot come out of a genuinely holistic view of the Bible. In the realm of global human law, only the natural-rights polity comes out of a genuinely holistic view of the Bible, not statism. This vast majority of people should watch carefully as the state’s actions become more evil by the minute. Eventually, they will be left with no alternative but to either admit that the government is evil and must be opposed, or to become damnably evil themselves. 61 So the state side of this two-pronged strategy will develop naturally as the state becomes increasingly psychopathic. But the other side of this two-pronged strategy has an even more nascent existence at present.

In the fall of 2013, there is virtually no sign that the de jure prong of this two-pronged strategy exists. How could it possibly come into existence in time to prevent descent into high-tech, eugenics-oriented feudalism? — Knowing that the de jure prong of this strategy will come into existence timely is like knowing the outcome of casting lots. Ultimately, it’s beyond the human capacity to know with certainty. But it’s absolutely certain that this evil must be opposed: "Let right be done, though the heavens should fall." 62 People who take this attitude towards present circumstances are the same people who will set up the de jure prong. Even though there may now be many people who have these convictions, there has been a long-standing shortage of awareness about how to approach setting up de jure government, and this shortage on knowledge relates directly to the long-standing shortage of reliable Bible-based theology. The proper approach relates directly to the finding cited above that militias are primarily local, not municipal, not county, not State, and certainly not federal.

During colonial times, militiamen would bear their arms to church with them on the sabbath. This collection of militiamen at a local church were in effect the enforcement arm of that church’s jural society. Assuming that the church community was a nascent religious social compact, this local militia was the enforcement arm of both that religious social compact’s jural compact and its ecclesiastical compact. This pattern is a pattern that should be followed in the development of the de jure prong of the two-pronged strategy.

Regardless of what religion one may follow, and regardless of what denomination one may follow, every conscious adult needs to participate in a religious social compact within one’s chosen religion. If one is currently a member of a 501(c)(3) "church", it’s extremely unlikely that the leadership at that church will support formation of such compacts and societies. Because this is a biblical pattern, and because the leadership is thereby putting itself in opposition to the biblical pattern, no one should be stopped by the leadership’s intransigence. Knowledgeable people should do what’s right regardless of what the hirelings may claim. If things get so nasty that a church split becomes imminent, then so be it. A church split is one good way to repudiate the 501(c)(3) status. If any of the church’s leadership is genuinely conscientious, then that leadership is sure to follow the natural-rights-compliant faction.

Because the natural-rights polity arises out of the global covenant, scenarios similar to this will probably arise in non-Christian congregations. For the same reason, people who view themselves as ardent secularists, but who nevertheless consider themselves committed to the natural-rights polity, should venture to form secular social compacts wherever they can. Likewise, people who are on the de facto prong of this two-pronged strategy should venture to convert whatever secular social compact they participate in from its jurisdictionally dysfunctional status to the jurisdictionally functional status that is called for by the natural-rights polity.

This is a very brief outline of the two-pronged strategy. The two-pronged strategy has been hinted at in the theodicy, has been expounded in the hermeneutical prologue, and should be fleshed out in more detail as this inventory proceeds.

Final Prefatory Words

The argumentation in the following inventory of American jurisprudence is heavily dependent upon two other books by the same author: Theodicy: Science, Bible & Law and Hermeneutical Prologue for Discovering Basic Jurisdictional Principles. These books are referenced respectively as the theodicy and the hermeneutical prologue. It’s important to know that the philosophical and theological foundations for this inventory are laid in essentially four places, each arising out of the Reformed approach to biblical interpretation with an emphasis on classical apologetics: (i)in the theodicy; (ii)in the hermeneutical prologue; (iii)in "A Memorandum of Law and Fact Regarding Natural Personhood"; 63 and (iv)in "A Memorandum of Law and Fact about Contracts". 64 Because some terminology in these works may be slightly obscure to some people, some such terminology has been accumulated into the "Theological and Custom Glossary". 65

As the reader reads past this preface into the inventory, per se, he/she will notice a change in voice. The author has written the inventory in first person plural. The reader deserves an explanation for this. — Even if the author is the only person on planet earth who believes the claims made in the inventory, he’s so convinced of the truth of it that he also believes that the host of heaven is in agreement. He therefore believes he is speaking as an agent of God’s Kingdom, even though an admittedly imperfect one. Whether he is in fact such an agent, or merely self-deluded, is a judgment the author leaves to the reader. Regardless of what the reader’s decision may be, he/she should know that the author is convinced that God’s Kingdom is ruled by it’s sovereign King, Jesus Christ, Yeshua HaMeshiach. The first person plural voice is not the "royal we", because the author is no more than a miniature sovereign, at best, like everyone else. By speaking in this voice, the author is also not presuming to speak for any earthling other than himself, although it should be obvious to all who care to think about it, that if the author is right in his claim to speak in agreement with all the humans who have died and gone to Christ’s Kingdom, then there are probably other earthlings who also agree in various respects. Some readers may assume that use of the first person plural voice is mild condescension. For example, if a first grade teacher finds one of her pupils scribbling on his/her desk, the teacher might confront the pupil by saying, "Look Janie / Johnny Doe, we don’t scribble on our desks." Even if the author’s tone appears patronizing, it’s not his intention. — The reader might be prone to assume that the author’s use of the first person plural voice is use of the "editorial we". This too would be a mistake. Regardless of how the reader may choose to view the author’s use of first person plural voice, whatever mistakes the author has made in the inventory are purely and only his own, and should never be blamed on anyone else, including some fictitious editorial staff. The author uses this voice, above all, to communicate that he’s convinced that he is not alone in believing whatever he posits in the inventory.

As the reader has read through this preface, he/she should have noticed abundant use of various typographical formats. These are not random, and the reader deserves an explanation. Many of the expressions used in this inventory have multiple meanings. For example, the expression, "jurisdiction", clearly has its roots in the field of jurisprudence. But the author has found that this word exists conceptually within the Bible, simply because seeing it there harmonizes the various parts of the Bible in a way that allows the Bible student to see rational integrity there that might otherwise be overlooked. To distinguish expressions like "jurisdiction" when used in this theological sense, from the same expression when used in a jurisprudential sense, for the sake of keeping the meanings distinct in the reader’s mind, the author distinguishes the meanings typographically. For example, if "jurisdiction" is used in its strictly jurisprudential sense, then the author marks it with underlined italics. If the same word is used in its theological sense, then the author marks it with underlined bold. When the word appears without any special typography, the author intends for the meaning to be understood from the context. The author also tends to italicize non-English expressions, like imago Dei. There are also expressions that appear in the inventory that are not necessarily theological and not necessarily jurisprudential, but which denote concepts that have special usage within the inventory. Such expressions are denoted with bold italics. Also, citations of legal cases and controversies are usually marked with underlined italics, and bibliographical citations are bold.

Bible quotations are of the New American Standard Bible, unless specifically indicated otherwise.

Footnotes

1Blessed Are You: A Comprehensive Guide to Jewish Prayer. In this quote from page 4, Rabbi Cohen is quoting Rashi on Genesis 6:9 (backnote 3).

2For a more realistic approach to categorizing political positions within the current political environment, see the following: — URL: http://www.theadvocates.org/​quiz/​quiz.php — Also see "Nolan Chart" at wikipedia.org.

3URL: ../../../​Theodicy/​pdf/ — See Part II.

4Regarding Obama being a disciple of Alinsky: (i)Ryan Lizza, "The Agitator", New Republic Magazine, March 19, 2007. — URL: http://www.newrepublic.com/​article/​the-agitator-barack-obamas-unlikely-political-education; (ii)Jim Geraghty, "The Alinsky Administration", National Review, May 14, 2009. — URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/​article/​227500/​alinsky-administration-jim-geraghty?​target=​author&​tid=814; (iii)Awr Hawkins, "How Saul Alinsky Taught Barack Obama Everything He Knows About Civic Upheaval", breitbart.com, March 14, 2012. — URL: http://www.breitbart.com/​Big-Government/​2012/​03/​14/​how saul alinsky taught barack obama everything he knows about civic upheaval.

5There is some controversy over whether Alinsky was a Marxist or not. For example, see Terry Krepel, "Bogeyman: Fox News Attacks Progressives With Fantasy Version of Saul Alinsky", mediamatters.org, January 31, 2012. — URL: http://mediamatters.org/​research/​2012/​01/​31/​bogeyman-fox-news-attacks-progressives-with-fan/​184235. — Alinsky did an interview with Playboy Magazine in March, 1972, in which he said this about the Communist Party that was working hard in America in the 1930s: "Their platform stood for all the right things, and unlike many liberals, they were willing to put their bodies on the line." From this it’s clear that Alinsky had basic ideological agreement with Marxism, even though it’s also clear that he had differences with the Communist Party regarding strategies and tactics. He would never join the party. It was far too important to him to be enigmatic and to follow no dogma other than his own. But the fact is that he wrote Rules for Radicals (1971) and created a school for such radicals. According to David Horowitz, "The Alinsky radical has a single principle – to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots. What this amounts to in practice is political nihilism – a destructive assault on the established order in the name of the ‘people’ . . .  This is the classic revolutionary formula . . . " (D. Horowitz, p. 6, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution The Alinsky Model (2009) — URL: http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/​wp-content/​uploads/​2009/​11/​Rules-for-Revolution.pdf. — In conclusion: Reading Rules for Radicals makes it obvious that Alinsky was mentored by a labor union organizer of the 20s and 30s, and comes out of that tradition. So even if it’s inappropriate to label Alinsky a "Marxist", it’s nevertheless clear that there are facets of his worldview that are undeniably marxian (like his translation of the Marxist class struggle into a struggle between "Haves" and "Have-Nots", and his assumption that there is a necessary split between capital and labor). So even if it’s inappropriate to label Alinsky a "Marxist", it’s nevertheless undeniable that Alinsky was a collectivist, a materialist, and a statist, like Marx.

6"The Communist Party of China (CPC) . . .  is the only party allowed to rule the country . . .  According to the party constitution the CPC adheres to Marxism-Leninism, MaoZedong Thought, socialism with Chinese characteristics, Deng Xiaoping Theory, Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development. The official explanation for China’s economic reforms is that the country is in the primary stage of socialism, a developmental state similar to the capitalist mode of production." (wikipedia.org, "Communist Party of China") — URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Communist_Party_of_China, retrieved 12 January 2014.

7Stuart Jeffries, "Why Marxism is on the rise again", The Guardian, Wednesday 4 July 2012. — URL: http://www.theguardian.com/​world/​2012/​jul/​04/​the-return-of-marxism.

8See Cloward and Piven’s original, 1966 article in The Nation. — URL: http://www.thenation.com/​article/​weight-poor-strategy-end-poverty. — Also see how this fits into Barack Obama’s support network. — URL: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/​Articles/​cloward-piven-chart.pdf.

9Rosa Koire; Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21, 2011, The Post Sustainability Institute Press. — URL: http://www.PostSustainabilityInstitute.org.

10Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail, 1999, Conscience Press, Rarsuma, Ohio. — URL: http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/ MomsPDFs/ DDDoA.sml.pdf.

11Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848. The ten planks appear in Chapter II, "Proletarians and Communists", pp. 26-27 in the following edition: — URL: http://www.marxists.org/​archive/​marx/​works/​download/​pdf/​Manifesto.pdf. — It should be understood that the people who have worked for the implementation of these planks over these many decades have rarely identified themselves as Marxists. Some may be understood to have been what Lenin called "useful idiots". But for the rest, they knew that it’s much easier to slit your enemy’s throat when your enemy thinks you’re a friend, than when he recognizes you as his enemy.

12G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, 4th ed., Chapter 16, "The Creature Comes to America", pp. 327-328, 2002, American Media.

13Evidence that Hamilton’s system was mercantilist, not laissez faire, is available in this article by Thomas DiLorenzo: "The Corrupt Origins of Central Banking". — URL: http://mises.org/​daily/​3167 — Evidence that the errors of mercantilism continue can be seen in this article by Murray Rothbard, from 1963: "Mercantilism: A Lesson for Our Times?" — URL: http://mises.org/​daily/​4304.

14For a long time there has been controversy in Christian circles about the meaning of Revelation 13:16b-17a. These verses say that a beast "causes all . . . to be given a mark on their hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell, except the one who has the mark". The controversy seems to revolve primarily around the nature of this "mark". This sadly shows how distracted people are. In fact, it’s extremely difficult "to buy or sell", i.e., to survive financially, in this country without cooperating with the IRS and SSA. As the country moves closer and closer to a cashless society, the difficulty is exacerbated. People who focus on the nature of the mark miss the point. They should try surviving in America for several years without a social security number, and without all the appendages thereto. Their conclusion after such an experiment would inevitably be that these institutions are agents of the "beast", regardless of what form the "mark" may take, simply because it’s nearly impossible to buy and sell without the respective marks. Realistically, things have probably deteriorated to the point that there is no time left for such experimentation. But the conclusion of such an experiment should be obvious without it.

15Anyone unaware of these claims would do well to start the self-education process with the following documentary: Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement. — URL: https://www.youtube.com/​watch?​v=x-CrNlilZho — bibliography — URL: http://www.endgamethemovie.com/​biblio01.html.

16"In For a New Liberty (1973), I was able for the first time to put forward at least the brief outlines of my theory of liberty, and also to expound and defend the ‘anarchocapitalist’ political creed . . . " — Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, "Preface", pp. xlvii-xlviii, 1998, New York University Press. — URL: http://www.mises.org/​rothbard/​ethics/​ethics.asp.

17The Ethics of Liberty, p. 45.

18The Ethics of Liberty, p. 75.

19The Ethics of Liberty, pp. 83, 85, 129, 135.

20The Ethics of Liberty, p. 83.

21The Ethics of Liberty, p. 90.

22The Ethics of Liberty, p. 133.

23See Theodicy, Part II. — URL: ../../../Theodicy/pdf/.

24See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part, "Treatise on Law", Question 91 – "Of the Various Kinds of Law". — URL: http://www.ccel.org/​ccel/​aquinas/​summa.FS_Q91.html.

25Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 173, "Justice", by Thomas P. Steindler. See Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part, Treatise on Law, Question #91, "Of the Various Kinds of Law". — URL: http://www.ccel.org/​a/​aquinas/​summa/​FS/​FS091.html.

26Anyone who wants to pigeonhole this theology in advance of studying it might find comfort in the following facts: (i)The author is convinced that the "five points of Calvinism" (also known as the "doctrines of sovereign grace" or TULIP) are true and reliable biblical doctrines. (ii)Even though the author appreciates the dispensationalist emphasis on taking every passage of Scripture at face-value, and comprehending it on its own terms before integrating it into a larger literary unit, the author eschews dispensationalism on the whole because its overemphasis on literalism leads to misconstruction. (iii)The author’s chronological exegesis is a type of covenant theology because he believes that "God has structured his relationship with humanity by covenants rather than dispensations."; even so, the author also believes that most covenant theologies are inadequate for the demands of these times due to their failure to delineate the necessary breadth of reliable interpretational policies. — Quotes here are of the "Desiring God" website. — URL: http://www.desiringgod.org/.

27Black’s 5th, p. 925.

28Especially see Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government, which was "one of the first systematic elaborations of . . .  natural-rights theory", quoting Rothbard ("Natural Law and Natural Rights", Chapter 4, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 21).

29Rothbard uses "nonaggression axiom" in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. — URL: http://mises.org/​rothbard/​newlibertywhole.asp.

30As indicated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his introduction to The Ethics of Liberty, and by Rothbard in the same book, "all rights of punishment derive from the victim’s right of self-defense". — (p. xx in "Introduction" and p. 90 in Chapter 13, "Punishment and Proportionality")

31It should be emphasized that not all damage by one person of another constitutes a violation of the negative duty. For example, Rothbard posits a case in which Brown is a mousetrap producer, and "Robinson comes out with a better one". Brown’s reputation as a mousetrap builder is thereby damaged by Robinson’s competition. This damage to Brown’s reputation absolutely does not fit within the ambit of aggression against private property, or within the ambit of the Genesis 9:6 negative duty. See Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 127, and Porter, Theodicy, "Subject Matter of the Negative-Duty Clause: Refining the Definition of Bloodshed".

32See "Statism" at Wikipedia. — URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Statism.

33The Ethics of Liberty, pp. 161-162.

34Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter III, "Of God’s Eternal Decree", I. — URL: http://www.reformed.org/​documents/​wcf_with_proofs/​index.html?​body=/​documents/​wcf_with_proofs/​ch_III.html.

35Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter III, "Of God’s Eternal Decree", I. — URL: http://www.reformed.org/​documents/​wcf_with_proofs/​index.html?​body=/​documents/​wcf_with_proofs/​ch_III.html.

36An introduction to this subject: — URL: http://www.ligonier.org/​blog/​decretive-preceptive-wills-god/.

37Such statist bondage manifests in the fact that most of the visible Church in America is in 26 USC section 501(c)(3) contracts with the IRS, which means that they have ceased being 1st Amendment free churches, and have agreed with the state to compromise their religion to whatever extent the state thinks they should, based on the state’s statist interpretation of that section of the Internal Revenue Code..

38See "On Christian Doctrine", in Four Books, by St. Augustine. — URL: http://www.ewtn.com/​library/​SOURCES/​DOCTRINE.TXT.

39R.C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture, Chapter 3, "Hermeneutics: The Science of Interpretation", p. 46, 1977, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Downers Grove, Illinois 60515.

40For a more thorough examination of Romans 13:1-7, see Theodicy, part II, "The Genesis 3:15 Prophecy — Law", chapter I, "The Motive Clause: Tower of Babel, Statism, & the Redemption of Human Law", Sub-Chapter 10, "New-Covenant Portals", Section g, "Portal — Ephraim’s Confusion about Polity". — URL: ../../../Theodicy/pdf/.

41Example: The Mosaic Covenant clearly allowed divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). But when some Pharisees asked the mediator of the Messianic Covenant, "He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.’" (Matthew 19:8; NASB) A comparable claim can be made about the genocide: Because of the hardness of the circumstances, Moses encouraged you to commit genocide against the seven nations. But from the Noachian Covenant, it has not been this way.

42For a more complete explanation of the Mosaic Covenant’s mandate to genocide, see Theodicy, The Genesis 3:15 Prophecy — Law, The Motive Clause, Genocide Portal. — URL: ../../../Theodicy/pdf/.

43That is, for all people who are committed to the level of mind renewal necessary to holistically understand the terms of the Messianic Covenant.

44See Maxims of the Global Covenant / #8.

45Examples of such conventions: Will the accused be tried by a jury? If so, how many people will be on the jury? What qualifications must a juror have? Who will decide how the law applies prior to the jury’s judgment of the facts?

46Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 310, "Social Contract", by Walter Eckstein.

47See Williamson Evers, "Social Contract: A Critique", Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 1, Number 3 (1977). — URL: https://mises.org/​library/​social-contract-critique.

48The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, by Leon R. Kass, p. 173.

49John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229. Adams made this statement on October 11, 1798, to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. — URL: http://oll.libertyfund.org/​index.php?​option=​com_staticxt&​staticfile=​show.php&​title=2098.

50It’s important to notice that secular here indicates nothing more than the fact that the American compact must be intended to encompass all religions. The word is NOT being used in its standard legal meaning, which is "not spiritual; not ecclesiastical; relating to affairs of the present (temporal) world" (Black’s 5th, p. 1214). — According to at least one legal scholar, "The government of the Union was conceived to be, not secular, but nondenominational, even interdenominational" (Principles of Confederacy, p. 534.). — Even a superficial study of American history makes it obvious that Jack Graham is correct. The united States was not intended to be secular in the legal sense of the word. Instead, it was clearly intended to encompass all Christian, even all Judaeo-Christian, denominations. But the nature of the global covenant makes it unavoidably obvious that it must encompass people from any religion who consent to abide by human laws that derive from this global covenant. So the united States must be not only interdenominational, but inter-religious. So it’s necessary to use two different definitions of "secular". The inter-religious definition is herein identified as a theological / custom term: secular. When "secular" appears in its legal sense, it appears with different typography: secular.

51"The Constitution of 1787 was a sheaf of compromises, the most fundamental involving the nature of the Union it created." — The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, p. 376, "History of the Court: Establishment of the Union", by William M. Wiecek.

52If there’s any doubt that Abraham practiced slavery, see Genesis 12:5; 14:14; 16:6.

53For pointing out these institutions, thanks to the makers of Molon Labe: How the Second Amendment Guarantees America’s Freedom. — URL: http://www.molon.us/.

54It’s probably more accurate to characterize the situation the way Bastiat did: "In The Law, . . .  Bastiat presents the irrefutable maxim that man’s rights exist prior to the formation of the state and cannot conflict with man’s prior rights." Quote is of Patrick Barron, "Mises, Kant, and Welfare Spending", Mises Daily, Friday, February 21, 2014. — URL: http://mises.org/​daily/​6670/​Mises-Kant-and-Welfare-Spending.

55def.: United States — "This term has several meanings. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations, it may designate territory over which sovereignty of United States extends, or it may be collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution." (Black’s 5th, p. 1375). — The author distinguishes these three meanings typographically like this: (1)UNITED STATES indicates "sovereign . . .  in the family of nations"; (2)United States indicates "territory over which sovereignty of United States extends"; and (3)united States indicates "collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution".

56Oxford Companion, "Article III", p. 47, Richard H. Fallon, Jr.

57Oxford Companion, "Article III", p. 47, Richard H. Fallon, Jr.

58Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, "Judge Napolitano on the Worst Supreme Court Decisions", Mises Daily, Wednesday, September 18, 2013. — URL: http://mises.org/​daily/​6531/​Judge-Napolitano-on-the-Worst-Supreme-Court-Decisions.

59Black’s 5th, p. 1261.

60Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789. — URL: http://archive.org/​stream/​writingsofbenjam10franuoft/​writingsofbenjam10franuoft_djvu.txt.

61For exposing the fact that the elitists behind the statist agenda have been eugenicists for a very long time, thanks to Alexander Emerick Jones and his crew. See Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement. — URL: https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=​x-CrNlilZho — bibliography — URL: http://www.endgamethemovie.com/​biblio01.html.

62"Fiat justitia, ruat caelum." — Black’s 5th, p. 561.

63URL: ../../../../​Memos/​MemoOnPersonhood/​pdf/.

64URL: ../../../../​Memos/​MemoOnContracts/​html/.

65URL: ../1_Helps/​1_0_Glossaries/.