July 14, 2025
Everywhere, power is exerted over people's life, liberty, and property by governments.
Limiting Governments
In tribes, power was exerted by chiefs. In larger agricultural civilizations, power was exerted by kings. The person who used the most power reigned.
In Israel initially, laws were given by God and administered by judges, and collective self-defense was organized under military leaders. In Israel later, power was exerted by kings, and people soon fell away from God.
The Dutch Republic, then England, and then the American Colonies had printed Bibles in people's native tongues, and had reformed churches. These innovations helped people individually grow close to God. People's natural envy was better-controlled, so people were able to add more value. Naturally, people chose to make themselves freer. The American Colonies started out with the world's lowest taxes and greatest freedom.
The Constitution's ratifiers needed support from people who had lived in freedom, experienced abuses of power by government people, and fought for freedom. To earn acceptance, the ratifiers took the best-available theory and transformed it into rules and sanctions.
The Constitution's foremost rule is that no person shall be unduly deprived of life, liberty, or property.
Rules are followed more fully when sanctions get used.
The Constitution's sanctions are that government powers must be separated into national and state jurisdictions, and that within jurisdictions, government powers must be separated into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. In each separated power, each person is required to support the Constitution by using his powers against other powers to offset and therefore limit the other powers.
Separate and offset. Divide and limit.
But after ratification, the drafters and their distinguished colleagues slacked off.
They never spun off analogous constitutions that would limit other powerful groups. They began working within parties to disuse the Constitution's sanctions.
The Constitution's sanctions now get systematically disused by government people. These people collude using parties.
Limiting a Party
Parties control governments. Parties' people therefore exert government power over people's life, liberty, and property.
We need at least one major party to have enumerated, limited powers. Some rules must be in a party constitution:
The [republican Constitution party] congress shall have power to solicit and collect donations;
to arrange national party meetings;
to set schedules for, and national party controls on, state party selection of candidates for the national government;
- and
to make all party laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the republican Constitution party government, or in any department or officer thereof.
The republican Constitution party shall have no platform.
The Constitution Needs a Good Party, pp. 43-4 53 (discussions omitted)
Other rules must be in party laws:
A previously-elected candidate shall qualify to run as a member of the party only if his Conservative Review Liberty Score [or alternatively, his John Birch Society Freedom Index in his most-recent term] is a minimum of 80%.
Party-sanctioned debates shall have no moderators, no commentators from the start to the finish of the debate, and no questions other than the questions asked by the candidates during the debates.
Candidates for Congress shall be selected using closed caucuses with proportional voting.
The candidate for president shall be selected using closed caucuses with proportional voting, using a candidate electoral college the same in numbers and distribution as the electoral college, and counting only candidate electors from regions represented by the party in the House or Senate.
State caucuses to select candidates for Congress and president shall be scheduled one state at a time, approximately equally-spaced apart in time, in order of decreasing party strength. The party strength shall be the average of the party proportions of the vote in the most-recent elections for each House and Senate seat in the state, with each election counted as being of equal weight in the average.
The Constitution Needs a Good Party, pp. 48-53 (discussions omitted)
The party constitution must have sanctions that replicate the best-available model: the Constitution's separated, offsetting powers.
A limited party can be built multiple ways, for instance by electing an independent to be president.
Limiting Other Groups
Other groups also exert power over people's life, liberty, or property. Group constitutions are needed, for example, for state governments, legislative houses, and major businesses.
State governments need limited, enumerated powers: to tax, borrow, regulate intrastate commerce, establish intercity roads, define and punish criminal offenses, regulate domestic and family affairs, administer civil justice in intrastate cases, appoint officers and train the militia, and enact exclusive legislation over the government district and needful buildings.
State governments should not be empowered to regulate property that's not in commerce, regulate businesses, operate and regulate schools, or operate and regulate social services. Excluding these powers will protect state residents' liberty and property, for example so that residents can provide or choose schooling, or can provide or choose charity social services, without being boxed out by government-advantaged producers.
The state constitutions' sanctions must replicate the Constitution's separated, offsetting powers.
Legislative houses have limited, enumerated powers vested in them by their jurisdiction constitutions.
In each legislative house, the powers must be separated well. Working groups must each have limited, enumerated power over at most one individual clause in the jurisdiction constitution. Each house member must choose to belong to just one working group. Each member will be incentivized to offset and limit other working groups' members.
Major businesses that wield security, surveillance, or other powers over people's life, liberty, or property need rules and sanctions that internally limit these businesses' powers. To succeed, these businesses must limit their own operations and develop better products that customers choose.
Like the ratifying generation's people, we the people must accept no less than freedom-from all powerful groups; and most crucially right now, from at least one party.
Separate and offset. Divide and limit.