The fundamental lie at the heart of modern political philosophy is the claim that the legitimacy of the State derives from the consent of the populace.
No State actually has the consent of its people.
And, in that sense, there are no legitimate States; there have never really been any.
But let’s pretend for a bit that a State actually did derive its existence in some meaningful way from consent; what would that look like?
That consent would have to be regularly renewed.
States change over time; laws come and go, and so do governing philosophies.
Populations change over time as well; people die, and new people are born. People also change their minds about things.
So a legitimate State would have to regularly renew its consent; a good way to do that would be a standard question included in every ballot. (I’ve discussed this before.)
That consent would also have to be granted to a chain of entities that starts locally.
There’s no good reason that I, out here in California, need to be associated with a State based in Washington D.C., all the way across the continent. According to Google Maps, it’s 2,818 miles from D.C. to my nearest town; that a State based in D.C. is the natural authority for me is absurd.
My house, and its associated land, can’t be moved elsewhere so I must be within whatever State is smallest and most local to me.
For me, that would be Sonoma County; it’s right here, so I have to be part of it.
We could argue about what the borders should be, and whether whatever my local State is should be called something else or operate in some other way, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have no choice about participating in whatever State is most local to me.
I cannot choose to move my land to another county.
But at the next level up, we find choice: my county could choose to be part of a different state.
If we were on a state border, we could choose to change to Oregon for example; since we’re not on a shared border, we could join or create a new state.
So, as a citizen, my association with the state of California is less necessary than my association with Sonoma County.
And even less necessary is my association with the United States.
So the chain of sovereignty here should be understood as starting with the citizen and moving first to the town/city/county where they reside, then to the state and finally the country.
Because at each additional level the citizen’s connection to that State becomes less necessary.
So, as a citizen grants sovereignty to each layer of State this grant must first go to the most local State.
Because the most local State is the only necessary State for the citizen to participate in.
So the chain of sovereignty should be thought of as:
citizen -> county -> state -> country
Most folks live in a more urban setting than I do, so for them you’d need to insert a city as well:
citizen -> city -> county -> state -> country
This creates a hierarchy of federation, with each joining (or, critically, not joining) the next-scale State larger than it. Each level, collectively, tells the next-largest level what to be.
(The fraught relationship between city-dwellers and folks who live outside the cities is a topic for another time.)
You may have noticed that this arrangement is the reverse of how modern States think of themselves.
The United States is predicated on the idea that the citizen’s relationship is with the country, which then legitimizes the other levels of State; it claims to follow a hierarchy like this:
citizen -> country -> state -> county -> city
But this is an illusion; this conception requires thinking of sovereignty as deriving from all of the citizens collectively, not from every citizen as individuals. It places the individual citizen at the bottom:
all citizens -> country -> state -> county -> city -> citizen
Instead of a hierarchy of federation, the modern State is a hierarchy of power, with each level authorizing the one below it. Each level tells the next-smallest level what to be.
(The fraught relationship between the country and the states here is also a topic for another time.)
This conception is only morally supportable in the singular case that all citizens consent to it.
Which, frankly, is absurd.
No rational individual would actually agree to participate in a system that considers them personally to be the least important participant and where the State claims (in the name of the people, of course) a legitimacy greater than their own.
So as we come to discuss the nature of the State we’re going to live in next, whether it’s a continuation of the United States or something new, look at how sovereignty in that State is conceived and how consent to that State is acquired and how it’s renewed.
