by Dr. Dan Eichenbaum
Eight friends, going out to dinner, are arguing about restaurant choice. Each has their own favorite cuisine and chef. Decision time arrives, and one of the eight, let’s name him Alpha-1, unilaterally selects the restaurant and time. The other seven, with little further discussion, acquiesce. Alpha-1 is “Sovereign”. He exerted his ultimate authority to make a decision that was obeyed by the others.
Individual sovereignty is the essence of personal freedom. A colonist is, by definition, not sovereign, as he owes allegiance and obedience to whichever authority “owns” his colony. Having successfully rebelled against the King of England, a solitary sovereign, our Constitution’s framers inverted the pyramid of power by investing each individual, not any government entity, with definitive sovereign authority. Any power given to the state and federal governments was considered to be strictly limited and definitely “on loan” from that sovereign individual.
Our Constitution codifies this hierarchy of authority. Each state is a sovereign entity made up of sovereign individuals. Our nation is a federation of sovereign states, created by the Constitution, which is a compact ratified by those individual sovereign states. The federal government, as the creation of that compact, is most definitely not an equal partner. If one reads the proceedings of the ratifying conventions of the states, it is clear that the intent was to severely limit the powers of the federal government to those specifically listed in Article I, Section 8. The individual states, not the Supreme Court, had the authority to determine if the federal government exceeded its authority, and, as sovereign entities, could remedy the usurpation of power by nullification, interposition, or even by secession.
