In the late 1780s, a debate raged between the Federalists and the Antifederalists on whether a bill of rights in a constitution would be sufficient, or even harmful, to individual rights. Ultimately the Federalists won and we got a bill of rights, on the condition that there be a general liberty amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
-The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Fast forward to today, and the most prevalent debate among Constitutional scholarship is between Originalism and “Living Constitution” – whether we are to look at the intent of the framers in deciding policy, or to extrapolate to modern society. But these, like meta-ideologies of “conservative” or “liberal”, do not say anything in themselves: they require an anchor. Where the latter set derives its meaning by looking at where we are and saying either “Stay here” or “Go forward”, respectively, the particular prescriptions of Originalism or Living Constitution approaches depend on the particular constitutions they are looking at. Originalism is not obviously preferable to Living Constitution when interpreting a Communist constitution, for example.

Accordingly, just as actual anchored policy beliefs (i.e., Capitalism vs. Socialism, gay marriage policy, etc.) are orthogonal to meta-policy approaches (“Do it now” vs. “Ease into it” – Conservatism and Liberalism as such are usually better described as Gradualism versus Shock Therapy, a terminology which has been unfortunately limited to post-Soviet reconstruction so far), the ideas of the relation of the constitution to modern society are less relevant than the question: what does the constitution allow? Instead of asking “what policy do we pursue” along with so many overbloated governments, a better question is “what kinds of policies are we allowed to pursue?”.

Approach 1: A Negative Meta-Policy. This is the dominant approach in almost all Western states. It says to a legislature, “if the constitution doesn’t say you can’t do it, you can”. The ninth amendment is more or less meaningless in this interpretive context: the space of action which the legislature can restrict is constrained only by the specific amendments: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…, and the rest of the bill of rights. Though there are fuzzy areas of interpretation (for example the campaign laws that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission recently overturned), the legislature has more or less stayed clear of egregious Bill of Rights violations.

However, this has not stopped them from expanding into a whole host of regulatory and redistributionary activity since the New Deal era. There is no general presumption of individual liberty except so far as explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights. Independent regulatory agencies have proliferated, each infringing upon the liberty of some and the welfare of all. In this way, the Living Constitution approach can be roughly translated into a negative meta-policy interpretive approach: because the founders could not predict the necessity of the FCC or FAA, the argument goes, Congress may by default assume authority to regulate it.

Approach 2: A Positive Meta-Policy, by contrast, says “unless the constitution says you can do it, you can’t”. The strongest positive meta-policy is, of course, the total abolition of the legislature. By actively preventing the encroachment of legislatures on the individual, positive meta-policy would be associated with far stronger individual liberties.

There is a strong case to be made that the United States Constitution was written as a document of positive meta-policy. A number of sufficient powers are enumerated to Congress, the Presidency, and the Courts. And as if the inference were not enough, the tenth amendment even makes explicit the constitution of the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
-The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Though the wording allows the individual states to set up regulatory and redistributionary apparatuses themselves, even this would be preferable to the nationalized system that has been accruing authority to itself by the ostensible authority of the Supremacy Clause, for the pressures of interstate competition would restrain the whimsy of the state governments in a way that the federal government is not restrained.

The failure of the United States Constitution to secure for the citizens of the United States unforeseen encroachments by its legislature should serve as an example to constitution writers: even if a document of positive meta-policy, with a severely restrained legislature, would be preferable to no legislature at all, there is the ever-present danger that the blanket restrictions will be simply ignored.

Socialists, Syndicalists, and other collectivist groups will often posture their system as one of worker supremacy. They will also characterize Capitalism as a system of employer supremacy. This is not the truth, as if a system had to favor either employers or employees. Capitalism is rather a system of consumer supremacy – for both employee and employer are alike in their office as consumers. Both employer and employee are ultimately subject to the demands of the consumer.

Democracy, on the other hand, is thought of as a system of voter supremacy. Yet it is not the supremacy of the individual voter, but the supremacy of a collective of voters: the tyranny of the majority. The voters are homogenized, and the preferences of the collective are forced upon the individuals of the group with all manner of regulations and prohibitions, restrained (usually) only by provisions of particular sacred rights. It is not only a static system but a coercive one, forcing that stasis upon the electorate through myriad public programs.

And as if this were insufficiently worrying, the reins of the collective are even indirect: though they may vote for or against representatives, once a representative is in, he has more or less free reign until the next election. And given that representatives are a package deal of issues, they may not even sufficiently represent the majority in all their decisions (for example, a politician elected on the basis of one issue who then thwarts the electorate on other issues). The incumbent representative has much leeway for caprice on all but the most inflammatory issues.

Democracy is often characterized as being compatible with (and sometimes even necessary for) Capitalism: one a political system and the other an economic system. This is, however, a false dichotomy – for what is politics now but economics? Both now act as systems of distribution; the difference is that one is also a system of production. Democracy is not necessary for Capitalism; Capitalism is necessary for Democracy.

The history of the past 80 years has been the Democratic system of distribution and redistribution gradually encroaching upon and displacing the Capitalist system of distribution. People are ceding their individual supremacy as consumers to the collective as voters. No longer is mutual agreement sufficient justification for an exchange; now mob rule has crystallized into a monstrous and ever-expanding regulatory and welfare state. The default of freedom has been replaced with obsequiousness to the collective – or at least those institutions which claim to represent it.

I believe in the supremacy of the individual realized through his office as a consumer. This is incompatible with any form of collective supremacy, including Democracy. It is for this reason that we are better off without a legislature – without an avenue for mob rule to encroach directly or indirectly upon the agency of the individual.