The REAL question, in MY personal opinion, is not IF a government of the People can write laws, but rather, what authority can we delegate to them, which then determines what our public servants in government can write those laws to actually DO, i.e. their constitutionally proper application and impact.

I don’t see ANY authority that was delegated by either the federal OR state constitutions that allows our public servants to create laws REGULATING the behaviors or morals of men who are acting only in their private and personal capacities when those acts result in no identifiable tangible harm to another. In other words, if I have no personal authority to regulate my neighbor’s behavior or morals, then that is a power I cannot lawfully and rightfully delegate to anyone else as my agent so they may do in my stead that which I cannot lawfully or rightly do personally, ever.

Again, in MY personal opinion, when it comes to the PEOPLE, the ONLY valid laws our public servants can write are those stating a particular standard of punishment and process for the apprehension, prosecution, conviction, appeal, and the carrying out of the sentence (incarceration, death, etc.), for an unlawful or unjustifiable harm to the rights and property of any of the People.

Under the guise of the public welfare clause, therefore, the only preventative (malum prohibitum) laws that our public servants would have any valid lawful authority to write are those that are already proven by documented and historical fact to prevent harm to the public generally. Malum prohibitum laws such as “Don’t shit or dump your sewage in the public water supply” or “Don’t destroy public property as it is considered an unlawful taking of the property that deprives members of the Public in general of the benefit and enjoyment of the public property in question.” THOSE kinds of malum prohibitum laws are reasonable and just, but, most of the ones in existence today, whether regulatory or malum prohibitum, are not at all reasonable nor lawfully and rightfully applicable to the Peoples of a constitutional republic.

Furthermore, if I cannot lawfully and rightfully proffer immunity upon myself or my neighbor for the commission of crimes against the rights and property of another, then I simply cannot confer such immunity to my public servants. In the finite universe of such delegated powers and authority, it can be reasonably asserted that immunity in any form would attach to a public servant only if that public servants actions were not violative of other constitutional provisions and prohibitions as found within the Bill of Rights as well as being morally and ethically free from reasonable doubt in relation to even our unenumerated rights. Even then, such actions must be at least minimally consistent with all of those rights, even after guilt is established and punishment rendered, i.e. reasonable and humane treatment while incarcerated for the crime.

The majority of laws our public servants have enacted in the present day are goal oriented, not justice or individual rights oriented. The goals being the control of the general population in a manner suiting the desires of governmental actors, for whatever reason, and for the generation of revenue that flows into that particular government’s coffers, to its actors, and to those that are really pulling the political and “public policy” strings from the shadows. Which they do via any subversive or corporate means they can even tenuously declare as valid and lawful under the constitutions. THAT is the problem as I see it.

The very concept of “public policy” being controlling over our individual rights and privileges is, in and of itself, wholly unconstitutional, as it removes all of our individual rights and privileges and subjects them to the wayward approval or disapproval of whatever constitutes the “public policy” of the moment. The phrase “public policy” is nothing more than a pathetically cloaked euphemism for “the will of tyrants disguised as the will and consent of the governed,” and it is nothing less than the same kind of rule by majority found in a democracy and instituted via the proclamation that “the majority of the people have spoken and agreed.” In point of fact, a form of government based upon public policy is synonymous with the very same form of democratic government that our founding fathers firmly and vehemently rejected as being an acceptable form of government for the American people.

The principles underpinning the Ponzi scheme of public policy is best summarized with a line given by Mel Gibson’s character, Benjamin Martin, in the movie “The Patriot,” wherein Martin says, “Tell me, why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?” The epiphany of that realization being that all individual rights, privileges and immunities are now subject to the majority vote of a democracy rather than being fully protected against such actions by the stringent limitations of an actual Republican form of government, which is not only our individually guaranteed right, it is the only form of authorized government to be had in any of the several states of the union, and it is in dire jeopardy of being unlawfully undermined, subverted, and dismantled by the courts and legal profession in general.

Our fundamental individual rights were never meant to be subjected to the whims of public policy or democratic vote any more than they were intended to be subjected to government licensing and regulation, as both of those political schemes serve to do nothing less than to convert individual rights into privileges granted or taken away by the ever changing winds of either governmental or public approval. Therefore, both measures are wholly violative of the very foundational concept of individual rights and immunities from governmental and public derogation and abrogation.

Of course, there are and always will be those people that will have their issues with this way of thinking. Case in point:

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“Serious question though

You know I despise encroahment on past liberty rights as much as anyone.

However, I must admit that circumstances change as populations swell or change.

If the people lean on legislators to reduce drunk drivers and keep idiots off the road inclined to cause stupid wrecks and kill, do they have a duty and obligation to the people to enact something, like registration, insurance and a license?

I have to go there.”
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My response to this inquiry is as follows:

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“Not to my way of thinking.

HOW do ANY of those regulatory schemes change the behavior, morality, or ethics of the person who committed the act in the first place? After all, they usually already HAVE those regulatory trappings and STILL decided to endanger others by their actions, correct? So, no, I don’t see regulation or licensing as a constitutionally proper use of the delegated powers to govern.

The government CAN write laws that provides appropriate PUNISHMENT for an act that presents or results in the reckless endangerment or actual harm to the public or to specific individuals. That actually falls within the “public health and welfare” clause quite nicely and appropriately. Unlike the regulatory schemes you mentioned, that punishment WOULD have a direct impact upon the actor that might prevent future occurrences.

In essence, it once again comes down to the legislation of behavior, morality, and ethics rather than simply legislating a punishment for failing to take seriously one’s public duty to exercise due diligence to NOT violate the rights and property of others, whether that failure was knowing and willful or simply negligent to the point of criminality.
See, no registration or license required.”
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John Locke’s concepts on government are all about the strictly limited nature of delegated powers and authority. You can read about the intricacies of his thought on this issue in his writings titled “Two Treatises on Government.” Locke’s philosophy and perspective regarding the finitely limited form of governmental power and authority was so strict that the premise of his thoughts on the subject could be boiled down to virtually a single phrase, “the only legitimate power of government is to articulate the laws of nature.”

I agree with Locke’s premise on limited powers and authority of our government, but only up to a certain point. Our form of government, by logical and constitutional necessity, already prescribes a very strict set of boundaries within which the powers of government are allowed and are actually required to operate in order to be constitutionally lawful, especially when those laws are being directly applied to we the People or our property. The laws of nature simply can’t and don’t account for everything that is involved and evolves when men form societies and associations for their mutual protection and interaction.

For example, Nature does not provide for the willful and wrongful acts of men against other men. The law of “survival of the fittest” is not the law of men, it is the law of the jungle. Under this form of law crimes such as murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, extortion, fraud, or anything else, simply do not and cannot exist. Human societies are not supposed to be jungles, and the premise of “survival of the fittest” and “might makes right” is not the foundations upon which they are conceived and built.

Furthermore, the laws of Nature are neither cognizant of nor recognize any kind of individual rights or private property interests, nor do they provide for any form of remedy for those creatures whose ‘rights’ were harmed by another. The mother antelope has no court where she may file criminal charges against nor sue the lion or cheetah for killing and eating her young, right?

Therefore, my opinion is that the only legitimate power and authority of government is to first protect my individual rights and private property from harm or destruction, and second, to provide me a way to obtain enforceable remedy from the wrongdoer if such a harm were ever perpetrated, and third, to provide for the necessary punishment of those who would commit crimes against the rights and property of others in whatever form such harm may be perpetrated. Beyond that, government and the people should have no intercourse or relationship on a day-to-day basis.

So, while some of the laws of Nature have a limited place in human society, defense of self or of others for example, I stand by my assertions as to what I believe comprises the only constitutionally lawful form of law making authority and enforcement of laws that we can rightfully empower our government to write in relation to we the People within our collection of individual sovereign Republics.