Written by Matt Morgan, Editor at The Daily Bell:

Ask a defender of the current “democratic” structure of governance where its authority comes from and the answer arrives on schedule:

The consent of the governed – votes!

It is the phrase carved into the Declaration of Independence, the one idea every civics class agrees on. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the people they govern. Fine. Let us take that standard seriously and see where it leads.

You know what consent looks like

You initial every page of a mortgage. You sign for a gym membership, a phone plan, a rental car, a software update you will never read. When a contractor changes the price mid-job, you call it a breach. When a company charges your card for something you never agreed to, you call the bank. Your entire commercial life runs on one rule: no signature, no obligation.

Now, here’s a challenge:

Find your signature on the arrangement that claims a third of your income, the authority to conscript your children, and the final word on every dispute between you and itself. There is no page to initial because there never was. The most demanding contract of your life is the only one nobody was allowed to decline.

The pollsters went and asked

Consent is an empirical claim, so it can be measured. Research firm, Rasmussen has asked American voters for years whether the federal government has the consent of the governed. Unfortunately, the yes answer has never come close to half.

Share of likely voters who say the federal government has the consent of the governed. Source: Rasmussen Reports.

In 2010 it was 21 percent. At its decade peak in 2011, 28 percent. By 2017 it was 23 percent, with 57 percent saying no outright. The governed themselves, asked directly, decline to confirm the consent that is claimed in their name.

Finish the thought

There are only two ways out. One is to say consent does not require agreement, in which case the word has been emptied and the Declaration’s standard is dead. The other is to hold the state to the same standard you hold your gym. You never signed. Most of your neighbors, asked point blank, say the consent is not there. A contract with no signatures, binding on people who deny agreeing to it, has a name in every other corner of your life. You would not honor it from a cable company.

So, why do we allow the institution with the most power over us to get the exemption our plumber never would.