The people of the state of New York don’t like Donald J. Trump  much. They think he falsified business records, and have him in court over it.

Protecting abortion and legalizing marijuana are the will of the people of Ohio. They said so in a recent election.

Why does the United States have a constitution? Because “we the people” ordained and established one, that’s why.

Well, not exactly.

Trump was indicted by a prosecutor and grand jury, not by “the people of the state of New York.”

Abortion wasn’t protected and marijuana legalized by “the people of Ohio,”  but by about 57% of the Ohioan adults who chose to, and were allowed to, vote on November 7.

The US Constitution was ratified — “ordained and established” — by a few hundred legislators out of the country’s population of nearly 4 million, not by “we the people.”

People exist. “The people,” on the other hand, is a fiction that falsely implies unanimity of support, or at least of representation, to justify claimed unanimity of obligation.

About one in four Americans chose Joe Biden for president in 2020. The other 75% preferred someone else, or no one at all, or weren’t allowed to express their preferences in binding form. Guess who moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

One in five Floridians supported Ron DeSantis for governor in 2022, with nearly as many supporting someone else and the majority not voting (by choice or because they were forbidden to).  The 80% of Floridians who wanted nothing to do with DeSantis got him anyway.

If five hundred voters from a town of 5,000 people elect a city council of seven,  all 5,000 people are supposedly bound to obey rules made by those seven, pay taxes set by and disposed of by those seven, etc., because “the people have spoken.”

If I seem to be bashing the whole concept of “democracy” as practiced in modern America, well, I am.

That’s not to say that voting is any WORSE than a would-be dictator showing up with enough armed supporters to successfully proclaim himself the embodiment of a “national will” or the tribune of some racial, ethnic, religious, or political group’s “collective interest.”

But it’s not really any better, either.

Engaging in a bunch of “democratic” preening and ceremony doesn’t change the results.

Nor have attempts to “bind [our rulers] down from mischief,” as Thomas Jefferson put it, “by the chains of the Constitution,” proven successful.

Today’s “democratically elected” rulers enjoy more power over every aspect of our lives than any Egyptian pharaoh,  Roman emperor, or European monarch dared dream of wielding.

The first step toward freedom is admitting the problem, which is mistaking  “democracy” and politics for liberty. As William Tecumseh Sherman explained 150 years ago: “Vox populi, vox humbug.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“It don’t mean a thing,” Duke Ellington and Irving Mills informed us in 1931, “if it ain’t got that swing.”

Does Ohio still have that swing?

Over the last few years some, including University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven, have cast doubt on the state’s long-held “swing state” or “belwether” status in national elections — but presidential polling, combined with the results of the November 7 election, show that the Buckeye State could be as relevant as ever when it comes to discerning national political trends.

Recent New York Times and Siena College polls show former president Donald Trump leading incumbent Joe Biden in five of six non-Ohio “swing” states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennslyvania — all of which Trump carried in 2016 but lost in 2020 — with Biden ahead only in Wisconsin. But those same polls also predict a large shift in Biden’s direction if Trump is convicted in some or all of his currently pending criminal cases.

Meanwhile, the most recent Ohio poll noted at RealClearPolitics, from early October, has Trump up on Biden by 12 points. Not a lot of “swing” vibe there.

On the other hand, on November 7, Ohio’s voters defied the Republican Party’s positions on major issues, enshrining  abortion rights in the state’s constitution and legalizing recreational use of marijuana.

It’s not just Ohio moving in those directions. As the Libertarian Policy Institute’s Nicholas Sarwark notes, “[e]lection results across the country show a clear demand for broadly libertarian policies and candidates.”

Neither of the likely “major party” presidential nominees seem especially well-suited to exploit what looks like a potential “libertarian moment” (as Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie might put it). Nor does the Republican field of also-rans.

On the Democratic side, however, there may be room for movement … if Joe Biden retires from the race and endorses a better candidate.

Three names come to mind: Jared Polis of Colorado, Laura Kelly of Kansas, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. All three are Democratic governors who’ve proven they can beat Republicans in red (Kansas and Kentucky) or “purple” (Colorado) states, both for election to office and on the “individal freedom” side of policy issues like abortion and marijuana.

I’m not personally endorsing, nor do I expect to vote for, any of them (or for Biden or Trump). But if  the Democrats want to win America’s swing states, those are the hard choices involved in getting competitive. And the clock is ticking.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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While questions on the role of religion in American politics never go completely away, there’s an ebb and flow to the public conversation. The election of US Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker of the House of US Representatives looks like a “high tide” moment.

Johnson’s an unabashed Christian nationalist who’s pro-life, anti-LGBTQ, pro-Israel on “biblical prophecy” grounds, and opposes the “so-called” constitutional/Jeffersonian principle of separation of church and state: “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state,” he says, “not the other way around.”

Not unexpectedly, he’s experiencing pushback from various corners, including more than 12,000 Christians who’ve signed a petition denouncing him as a “false prophet” who “doesn’t speak for” them.

I’m a fan of keeping the state separate from pretty much everything, especially religion. There’s pretty strong historical grounding for believing that’s what the people who created the system we live in intended. In addition to Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he posited a “wall of separation,” the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli is clear: “[T]the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

On the other hand, if we’re going to allow the federal government to exist at all, I’m with those guys, who also ordered that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I’m not concerned with Johnson’s beliefs. In fact, since he’s a politician, I consider it foolish to assume that they bear any resemblance to his claims. For all I know he’s a closet Muslim, a secret atheist, or, most likely, a narcissist who sees God in the mirror when he shaves each morning.

His actions, however, are a different story.

When Johnson came to Congress, he swore an oath (in defiance of biblical command, by the way — Matthew 5:33-37) to “support and defend the Constitution.”

That oath obligates him to certain things even if the Constitution contradicts his interpretation of scripture.

If it’s impossible to be true to both, he needs to pick one.

If he can’t bring himself to do the job as he swore to do it, he should resign rather than betray his oath, and certainly rather than seek and accept the position of Speaker.

Unfortunately, he seems to have missed 1st Corinthians 10:21: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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