The Constitution of the United States is a lot like the Bible. Americans largely agree that both are important, they claim to believe in the tenets presented by these documents, and atheists tend to be more knowledgeable in the actual texts of both.

Basing judgment on the random, unscientific surveys conducted by journalists, I believed myself to be unusual among Americans in that I had read the Constitution, all its amendments, the Declaration of Independence and all of the Federalist Papers before I turned 18 years old.

As a child, my mother had large prints of the Constitution hanging on our walls. While most Americans revere the their founding document, my family had an acute appreciation for it. You could say that we were the Constitutional Fundamentalists.

At this very moment, there is a little "pocket COTUS" document sitting on my desk. It seems to have become an inescapable aspect of my life. It really is sad to have to admit that this major fixture in my life is completely illegitimate.

I submit myself to the mercy of your flame-happy e-mail clients.

But even if we disregard the lawless nature of Statism, the very premises of the Constitution are not internally consistent. In discrete mathematics, we might call it "invalid reasoning."

COTUS is dead

Before I get into the Constitution's own logical problems, allow me to first address one of the biggest logical failure surrounding it.

The "Living Document" approach to reading the Constitution is a popular sentiment. It holds that the Constitution is legitimate but must constantly adapt to new circumstances. The preferred manner of achieving these ends is to ambiguate its text through ignorance and then to use politics and judicial fiat to then "clarify" a new meaning upon the text as written.

This belief seems most tenable among those who refuse to read the Constitution or any of its supporting text. With such deliberate ignorance, it is easy to believe that there is a great deal of "interpretation" required in order to apply Constitutional law.

On any point where there might be some confusion in the Constitution's meaning, a simple grep through the Federalist Papers provides, with verbosity, any information you may need in clarifying things. Those who pretend the Constitution is somehow encrypted or written in Chinese are simply suffering from historical illiteracy.

The Federalist Papers rigorously dispel beliefs commonly held among "Living Document" advocates. To argue that the Federalist Papers are not valid is to claim that the very premises which justified the Constitution are invalid because those essays were the very things that convinced people to ratify the Constitution. If the fundamental arguments in favor of the Constitution are not valid, why even bother arguing on Constitutional grounds in the first place?

The "Living Document" advocates with enough strategic sense to avoid the inevitable loss to historic fact will try to argue the irrelevance of history. This often comes by arguing red herrings about how technology or fashions have changed as if airplanes and cell phones had any bearing on the relevance of law.

If they are wise enough to avoid that fallacy, they will simply assert that law must be a reflection of the culture which certainly is not the same as the one seen in the 18th century. They claim that the Constitution is valid in a vague sense but we must look to the Supreme Court for the absolute, irrefutable meaning of it -- which is strangely considered an unquestionable truth that all future law is accountable to.

Why is it that the literal Constitution cannot be applicable on the grounds of fluctuating societal needs but court rulings regarding COTUS are irrefutable throughout all generations?

It is true that "the Founders" could not have foreseen all the nuanced demands that mankind would place on law. This truth is also irrelevant. Strict Constitutionalists do not argue that Benjamin Franklin was somehow clairvoyant to the point of obviating the modernization of law. James Madison was not Hari Seldon nor would he need to be for Constitutionalist arguments to be valid.

The point of the Constitution was to provide a framework by-which we could express our culture's demands of law. The Constitution is not itself the full legal expression of those cultural-legal needs; it only defines the procedures by-which we achieve those expressions.

Nobody at the Constitutional Convention considered the Constitution complete and worthy of immutability. Many states insisted that they would only ratify COTUS if certain amendments were made. Straight out of the gate, COTUS became the supreme law of the land with the clear intent on changing it. The first thing they did was add the first ten amendments which became the Bill of Rights.

When confronted with strict Constitutionalist arguments, the "Living Document" advocate will assume Constitutionalists mean we should all live in a world 100% identical to 18th Century America -- from dress, to economic activity, to slavery. They disregard that any shortcomings in the Constitution were fixable through amendment; the existence of the Bill of Rights invalidates such a dissent on strict Constitutionality.

The practice of redefining the terms used in the Constitution through political rhetoric or the occasional stroke of judicial fiat negates the purpose of putting the terms to paper in the first place. If words cannot have a literal, annotative meaning, they do not serve as an objective representation of law.

Setting a precedent of mutating the meanings of text rather than clearly amending it means that law is subordinate to the opinions of politicians. This is curious when similar practices in Parliament were the justification used by the American colonies to secede from the British Empire in 1776.

Contrary to what the talking heads would have us believe, the Constitution comprehensively defines all of the things which the Federal Power can legally do. Article 1, Section 8 plus a few amendments have exhaustively covered the authority granted to Congress.

This does mean that a federally funded "public option" health plan is illegal but, according to the 10th Amendment, a state funded equivalent is legally supportable. This means that the controversial Arizona legislation regarding immigration law is also illegal under the 10th Amendment even though Alexander Hamilton did argue that states could (and should) rise to service any needs that the feds failed to supply under the Constitution.

What these controversies illustrate is that "Living Document" advocates of the Constitution are just partisans of the Left-wise inclination and are no more consistent or Constitutionally informed than their Right-wing opponents.

Tu Quoque

Because I had so regularly been faced with arguments like those I have just now criticized, I had fallen into the Fallacist's Fallacy. I assumed that because only idiots bothered to argue with me on the Constitution, that it was idiotic to disagree with me on the Constitution.

News media and those who are principally informed by it were always eager to help me hold on to this fallacious belief. They would completely disregard parts of the Constitution according to their pleasure but would appeal to its authority on any matters that suited their personal prejudices -- thus reiterating my subscription to the saying "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." (Purportedly said by Thomas Jefferson.)

I foolishly hoped that some day I could be ruled by laws and not politics, that convincing people to adhere completely to the Constitution (rather than just evoking it for rhetorical purposes according to its coincidental alignment with political beliefs) would achieve this. This belief came with the failure to recognize the Constitution as a lawless document.

Now if my old statist self had read that last sentence, I know what he would be saying right now: "How can COTUS be lawless? It is the law!" And that really is my point.

Consider the many videos of police brutality that float around the Internet. Of course such footage does not constitute a reflection of the characters of all peace officers. What is important is the characteristics of those few "bad eggs" who resort to violence for their own satisfaction. It's rather interesting to count how many of those videos have the officer saying "I am the law" when the victim of their abuse questions the legality of their deeds.

There are many people and things that claim to be the law. That's what kings throughout history claimed. That's what Thomas Gage claimed when he provoked the American Revolution. The characteristic of claiming to be the law is described as authoritarianism.

Authoritarians will use whatever power they imagine themselves having as an excuse to get what they want. When the old Staatssicherheit broke into a person's house and stole their stuff, they did so under the pretense of enforcing or even being the law. When the power of any one person (or entity) is checked only by itself they become, as the saying goes, "judge, jury, and executioner" -- all elements of the law.

It's a strange dichotomy that whenever one claims to be the law, they are actually advocating lawlessness: An environment where their own criminal acts are tolerated.

Reason would dictate that if there is to be any law in an environment, it must be measured and applied by impartial third parties. This is why parties in a suit will prefer an arbiter or court to handle their case: They want their case to be ruled in a just manner.

When filing for suit against Walmart, it would be silly to allow a Walmart employee to act as arbiter in that case. One would not open the case in a Walmart-funded court and argue from the stance of Walmart's own company policies. The impartiality of that environment is obviously non-existent.

Yet people are totally content to do exactly this when they have a case to bring against the United States. They open their cases in Federal courts, it is ruled upon by Federal Judges, the opinions of past judges as well as Federal statutes are the texts that inform these judges as to the validity of the plaintiff's case. Separation of Powers does nothing to change the fact that all federal judges are employees of the federal government.

Thus, the Federal Government as defined in the Constitution, concentrates all aspects of law into itself. The Constitution is to the Federal Powers as "I am the law" is to the abusive police officer: It is a claim that one entity's opinion is the only thing that matters when measuring the legality of that entity's own actions. It is the claim that reasoned discourse is inferior to the claim of authority.

In an environment where law is truly impartial and applied equally to all people one of the two things would be true:

• Michael J. Astrue would be in jail
• Bernie Madoff would not

Both of them worked in identical ways. The difference is that Astrue's corporation happens to own all the courts, all the prosecuting attorneys, all the SEC inspectors, and all the legislators who get to arbitrarily define what acts are criminal.

It really is no surprise that, when the Supreme Court ruled on the matter, they said that Social Security was not a ponzi scheme. If one were to sue Walmart in a Walmart court, one would expect them to rule that Walmart was also a completely honest and benevolent entity and that all dissent on the matter is unfounded.

When I believed in the legitimacy of the Constitution, I would have argued that this would not be a problem if we only had obeyed COTUS which granted Congress no authority to run Social Security in the first place. But given my strict Constitutionalist argument above, they would only have needed to Amend SS into the Constitution and they would still be allowed to defraud people in the same way.

Even if Federal Powers were all strict adherents to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, they would still monopolize all the "legal" recourse you might have in the event of abuses. They could still claim "I am the law" and do whatever they wanted.

Some pretend like the democratic components of the federal government are supposed to solve this problem but they clearly do not. The population at large is clearly not content -- as shown in Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party have both shown. Fixtures of "law" that are supposed to be there to protect people seem to be principally aimed at marginalizing grievances if not incarcerating the grieved.

While the monopoly of power claimed under COTUS does appear to give us some kind of order, it does not give us any law. The mere exercising of government over others is not law. Law applies equally to all people. Law will appeal to the reason of impartial third parties. The Constitution appeals only to itself.

Boolean Algebra

If you take tools of logic and apply them to federal power, this is what happens...

Separations of Power

Claim: The Constitution is just because it separates power into three branches of government.

That is like saying AIG is just because it separates the administration of its business into departments. Simply creating subdivisions of authoritarian practice does not make it any less authoritarian. If certain responsibilities of a corporation are delegated to different employees, it does not change the fact that the coffers they all draw from are the same federal treasury.

If the statutes that regulate political campaigns and their funding are valid and an entity is to be identified by its source of money, those same premises must be applied to measuring the validity of the Separation of Powers claims.

A Consensual Contract

Claim: The Constitution is a contract made between states

Let's say three friends are considering entering a business deal with each other. They write a contract which states that they must all give a proportion of their current assets to the business, that they will all receive an equal stipend, from this venture, and that only two of them need to sign the document in order for all three to be bound by its terms.

The ability to bind somebody to a contract without their consent is patently wrong. Yet the Constitution does precisely when it defines its standard for ratification. From the get-go, we see that it is not a consensual contract.

Now let's say that two signatures are given and this contract is now enforced. The third member of this business doesn't fight it much. Years go by and one of the partners in this business wishes to do other things with his time. There is no exit clause in this contract. There are no provisions for retirement. Is this fair?

Nobody considers this aspect of the Civil War when discussing it but it is there. A proponent of slavery might argue that a contract was made between the parents of slaves and the parents of slave owners where the slave was contractually obligated to serve the titled owner and that this contract was heritable among all generations. The thirteenth amendment disputes this claim and yet the very same argument is used to bind present-day residents of the United States to the contract of the Constitution.

Necessary for Defense

Claim: The Constitution gives us the military defense we need

One need only glance at the United States Armed Forces to know that no state has the power to oppose US might. Invading the US would be an incredibly silly idea.

The Constitution explicitly states that Congress can't fund an army for longer than two years. Yet people argue that the army must be large, must be expansive, and must be ever-ready to face new threats (as if anybody wanted to fight the US). The claim that the Constitution provides the military defense needed does not mesh with the belief that there must be military bases all over the world.

If one subscribes to the belief in a need for a huge, perpetual army, they can not also believe that COTUS provides it. If they subscribe to the legitimacy of COTUS as written, they must necessarily believe in the illegality of the current army. If one wishes to adhere to the law while simultaneously having the current US defense strategy, they must amend the Constitution to allow for this. If they do so, they are not subscribing to the beliefs of "the Founders" who deliberately tried to prevent standing armies in the Constitution.

If it is true that you need an army as it is implemented by the Federal Powers, then one of the core tenets that advocated COTUS is invalid. It seems dichotomous to me that the Constitution is valid in the sense that it grants the power to create an army yet invalid in the sense that it actually grants that power.

Stable Currency

Claim: The Federal Reserve Act is remotely sane.

The constitution demands that the states within the union can't legally honor anything other than gold or silver as legal tender. It has said this since its drafting. Yet somehow, Federal Statutes require all states to honor Federal Reserve Notes which have no relationship to any metal.

If by some miracle of logical acrobatics, one could argue that the Federal Reserve was remotely legal, it places upon the province-states demands that are mutually exclusive with the Constitutional mandate to only honor metal as legal currency. These statutes can not logically coexist.

This creates an environment where it is patently impossible to not be a criminal. You are forced to choose to obey one statute or the other. It is not possible to obey both. True to Gresham's Law, the statute that gets favored is the one that mandates the use of the rapidly inflating currency as if Yugoslavia had nothing to teach modern, industrialized societies.

Were one to bring this conflict to the attention of Congress, that person would be ignored. Were one to bring this conflict to court, he would have "no standing" because addressing the issue represents an undue inconvenience to the Federal Powers.

The practical consequences of this are yet to fully manifest themselves but people who live on dollars are noticing the prices on food, fuel and other daily necessities rising. The legal consequence of this is that the Constitution defines a government which is free to ignore law at its convenience.

Conclusion

The Constitution is a mish-mash of invalidity. It is neither logically nor legally sound. It is no less tyrannical than the monarchy which preceded it.