Basic Principles

1. Political v. Civil Association

The main purpose of establishing government is to protect PRIVATE property and PRIVATE rights. That protection is implemented mainly by maintaining an absolute separation between PUBLIC and PRIVATE property at all times as described below:

Separation Between Public and Private Course, Form #12.012
https://sedm.org/LibertyU/SeparatingPublicPrivate.pdf

The Constitution is the origin of private property and private rights which under franchise law are sometimes called "common rights". Its creator and grantor is WE THE PEOPLE, who are PRIVATE. It represents the absolute rights of PRIVATE/CONSTITUTIONAL "persons" in the absense of any act of POLITICAL or CIVIL legal association. Any attempt to pursue membership then results in a SURRENDER of some portion of said PRIVATE rights in exchange for PUBLIC revocable privileges under the Constitutional Avoidance Doctrine and the Public Rights Doctrine of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain. “A body politic,” as aptly defined in the preamble of the Constitution of Massachusetts, “is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.” This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private, Thorpe v. R. & B. Railroad Co., 27 Vt. 143; but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government, and 125*125 has found expression in the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non lædas. From this source come the police powers, which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the License Cases, 5 How. 583, “are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty, . . . that is to say, . . . the power to govern men and things.” 

[Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877); SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6419197193322400931]

Note from the "membership" mentioned above is implemented exclusively with the civil statutory law and NOT the Constitution. The civil statutory law functions as a Private Membership Association (PMA) in effect. That civil statutory law, as the above implies, is a social compact that only pertains to CONSENTING CIVIL members of the body politic who legally associate by choosing a civil domicile within the civil jurisdiction of the group. Those members so associated then become members of the COLLECTIVE and CIVIL agents of the state when serving in a political capacity, such as when voting or serving as a jurist or even when being a statutory "taxpayer".

Why Statutory Civil Law is Law for Government and Not Private Persons, Form #05.037
https://sedm.org/Forms/05-MemLaw/StatLawGovt.pdf

An act of birth is not an act of consent. You can't CHOOSE to be born. Thus, political status resulting from birth or naturalization is not, in itself, a privilege or considered consentual or revocable after it is obtained. To become a CIVIL member, a voluntary domicile must be ADDED to one's political status as a POLITICAL "citizen" to become a CIVIL "citizen". Those who never exercise their First Amendment right to consensually legally/civilyassociate are called "nonresidents" and "transient foreigners" and are instead governed by the common law and not the civil law. They are described in:

1. Foreign Tax Status Information Group (FTSIG)
   https://ftsig.org
2. Non-Resident Non-Person Position, Form #05.020
   https://sedm.org/Forms/05-MemLaw/NonresidentNonPersonPosition.pdf
   

Corrupt government prosecutors and agents will often maliciously try to blur the lines between POLITICAL membership and CIVIL membership in order to unlawfully enlarge their otherwise very limitied CIVIL jurisdiction as follows:

1. How You are Illegally Deceived or Compelled to Transition from Being a POLITICAL Citizen to a CIVIL Citizen: By Confusing the Two Contexts, Family Guardian Fellowship
   https://famguardian.org/Subjects/LawAndGovt/Citizenship/HowCitObfuscated.htm
2. Government Identity Theft, Form #50.46
   https://sedm.org/Forms/05-MemLaw/GovernmentIdentityTheft.pdf
   

Below is a diagram of how political status, civil status, and membership is reflected in both the constitution and the civil statutory law.

Essays and Commentaries Social Contract theory

1.    Social Contract and Constitutional Republics, Jon Roland, 1994, with 2007 Supplement.
2.  Constitutional History & Commentary Collection — Books, anthologies, and essays.
3.   On Liberty, John Stuart Mill (1860) — Carries social contract theory beyond Locke.
4.   Second Treatise on Government, John Locke (1689) — Principal proponent of the social contract theory which forms the basis for modern constitutional republican government.
5.   The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change, by Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College. Explores logical problems with constitutions, especially involving amendment of them.

2. Theory of Government AFTER VOLUNTARY CIVIL Association

Selections from The Liberty Library of Classic Works

1.  The Law, Frederick Bastiat (1850) — Classic treatment of one of the main challenges to the survival of democratic government.
2.  Politics, Aristotle (~350 BCE) — Laid out the alternative forms of government.
3.   Discourses on Livy, Niccolo Machiavelli (1517) — Argues for the ideal form of government being a republic based on popular consent, defended by militia.
4.   Representative Government, John Stuart Mill (1861) — Carries the theory of constitutional republican government beyond the Framers of the U.S. Constitution.
5.  Selected Works on Tyranny — To understand the principles of constitutional republican government, one must understand the principles of its opposite.
6.  Selected Works of Herbert Spencer (1802-1903) — Early libertarian political philosopher.
7.  Selected Works, Harvey Wheeler — Papers on Francis Bacon and constitutional history and law.
8.   De Cive (The Citizen), Thomas Hobbes (1641-47) — Laid basis for social contract theory, providing branching point for the theories of constitutionalism and fascism.
9.  Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln (1838) — Presents the idea of a political religion.

3. Off-site Links on CIVIL Government AFTER Voluntary Association

1. Law and Government Topic, Family Guardian
2.  Polybius and the Founding Fathers: the separation of powers, by Marshall Davies Lloyd — Analysis of how we got the idea of separating legislative, executive, and judicial functions into different branches of government.
3. Institutes of Oratory, Quintilian, 95 CE, tr. John Watson, 1856. A leading rhetorician of the  Cicero school  wrote this 12-volume treatise, that continues where Aristotle left off, and represents the highest standards of Roman virtue.
4. City of God, St. Aurelius Augustin of Hippo (354-430 AD) — Analysis of conflict between Christian ideal and secular reality in political affairs, first statement of "just war" in Book 19 Chapter 7.
   1.  Volume 1
   2.  Volume 2
5.  On the Laws and Customs of England, Henry de Bracton (1268) — First codification of English common Law.
6.  Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) — Develops doctrine of righteous government according to Christian principles, based in part on earlier work of St. Augustine, written 1265-73.
7.  Dialogus, William of Ockham (1280-1349) — This medieval English political philosopher laid the basis for the early theory of law, especially on property and the law of nations, that led to Common Law. In Latin, being translated into English, under construction. Noted for the Principle of Parsimony, also known as Ockham's Razor: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum" — "Do not multiply entities beyond necessity", or in other words, "When in doubt, do without." In the theory of knowledge, it means that among theories that equally explain the facts, always choose the simplest.
8. Institute on the Lawes of England, Sir Edward Coke (1628) — Authoritative commentary on the Magna Carta as understood at the time.
   1. Summary
   2. Second Part: Magna Carta
9.  The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
10.  An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776) — Classical economics that shaped the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
11.  John Stuart Mill — Econlibrary summary
12.  On Democracy in America, Alexis de Toqueville (1835, 1840) — Discusses the society that makes republican government work and how it is shaped by that form of government.
13.  Disquisition on Government, John C. Calhoun — Discussed the problem of defending the rights of a minority against a persistent majority.
14.  The Structure of Liberty, Randy E. Barnett — Excerpts from a libertarian approach to law.
15.  Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract, Entry from online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
16.  Liberalism, by Ludwig Von Mises. Critique of the dominant political faction in the modern world.
17.  Natural Law and Natural Rights, by James A. Donald. Historical review of the concepts.
18.  Why Freedom? — Debate on social contract theory between Tibor Machan and Jan Narveson at the Independent Institute Conference Center, March 31, 1999.
19.  Works of George Orwell — Includes 1984 and Animal Farm.
20.  Baruch Spinoza — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
21.  The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, by L. Fletcher Prouty (1997).
22.  Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois and the Rationale for the American Revolution, by Bruce E. Johansen.
23. Rupert Sheldrake — Scientific fields are too often captured by orthodoxy and dogmatism.
24. Heterodox Academy — Promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.
25.  The Proceedings of the Friesian School — Collection of academic papers, dedicated to the philosopher
26.  Lysander Spooner Collection — American political philosopher.

4. Political Science Theory

1.  Prisoner's Dilemma and Public Choice Theory — Explorations of the conflict between what is rational for the individual and what is rational for the group.
2.  Behavioral Economics — Explores the psychological and cognitive factors in economic decisions.
3.      Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems, by Jay Forrester — Classic paper on why public policies produce unintended consequences.
4.   Evolving Complex Networks in Constitutional Republics, by Jon Roland — Examines how changing network structures can reveal how political and economic processes behave and misbehave.
5.  Chaos and Constitutions, by Jon Roland — Examines how the behavior of societies can only be managed in small ways and without reliable outcomes.
6.  Metagaming for Constitutional Design — Toward constitution-writing programs that may generate better constitutions than conventions of human beings can design.

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