From: sals@random.uchicago.edu (red-head fancier)
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 02:38:22 GMT

In article <1ila77INN7q4@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike  
Huben) writes:
> In article <93008.44842.J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM>  
J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:
> >In <1ikjvuINN7b0@armory.centerline.com>, Mike Huben writes:
> >>If you were born here, then your parents freely made the choice for  
you.
> >>At any time, you can select another nation to live in.  There is no  
secret
> >>about the fact that if you choose to live here you must abide by the  
laws:
> >>every immigrant explicitly agrees to that.  Those laws are created by  
the
> >>process of mutual agreement called representative democracy.
> >
> >In other words, *I* still haven't chosen *anything*, so it's not  
mutual.
> 
> You have chosen to remain here.

Much of this discussion ignores the question: How does being in a place  
entitle a government or any group of people to arbitrary (or nonarbitrary)  
dominon over oneself? You, Mike, posit the fiction of a social contract.  
But I never agreed to a social contract nor did most if not all the people  
in the US. Even if other people did then so what? How does the presence of  
a social contract among other people give them any power over me?  
(including the power to force me to leave) This is like a group of thieves  
gathering together and saying that we will steal (or tax) money from  
anyone passing through this door. Of course these theives engineer their  
agreement so that they gain more than they lose. This analogy is a loose  
analog, but it address the crucial point of whether or not a social  
contract among other can bind me in any why. I also must wonder how does  
the social contract bind anybody? I will assume that by the social  
contract you mean the US constitution, if you don't please enlighten me.  
Nobody alive has signed the constitution or done anything to assert that  
they have consented to be legally bound by the constitution. This alone  
destroys the constitution's validity as a contract, but let's examine this  
further. Somebody is bound to argue that because the founding fathers  
created the constitution and it was ratified by the states it is valid.  
However, this arguement ignores the fact that you cannot bind yur children  
to a contract when they are adults. The people of revolutionary era  
America could have bound their children by their property,. but they did  
not do so in any manner, neither the founding fathers or the states could  
have done so because they did not own all the proporty in America then and  
they definitly did not own all what was to become property in America. The  
people alive when the constitution was ratified did not even legally bind  
themselves to the constitution. For a contract to be valid it must be  
signed and delivered by and to all parties in the contract. Nobody signed  
the constitution (the modern reproductions have had the signatures added  
the original consitution has no signatures) the constitution was never  
delievered to anybody and most importantly everybody did not consent to  
the consitution.The constitution has no common law basis for validity.

 To posit that one is bound by the federal government because one is able  
to leave the country is to assume that other people have the right to  
dominion over you and your property in the absence of any valid contract.  
To say that the government does in fact have this power is to admit that  
the US government is a criminal organization because the government has no  
contractual basis and is enforced soley through the use of force.
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