If Our Cells Behaved Like We Do, the Nation Would Already Be Dead

by Darius A. Lecointe 

If the cells in our bodies responded to disease the same way Americans respond to violations of the national Constitution, none of us would still be alive.

A living organism cannot survive if its cells wait for instructions, hesitate out of politeness, or look to a single “supreme cell” to decide whether they are allowed to defend the body.

Yet that is precisely how the United States responds to constitutional injury.

We behave as though the Constitution is a passive rulebook that springs to life only when someone files a lawsuit. We behave as though the Oath of allegiance means nothing until the judiciary—an institution that was the last to receive the Oath—is “called upon.” And we behave as though violations of the Constitution can be tolerated indefinitely without consequence.

No biological system could survive under that model. Neither can a constitutional system.

The Constitution as DNA—not a rulebook

The metaphor is not rhetorical. It is structural.

Biologically, an organism survives because responsibility is distributed. Every cell contains the same genetic code and acts to defend the organism without waiting for external approval.

Constitutionally, the United States survives for the same reason.

The Constitution functions as a shared identity structure—our national DNA—given life not by judicial command but by the universal Oath of allegiance. The framers never intended the Court to be the sole guardian of constitutional meaning. The responsibility is collective.

Marshall understood this when he wrote in Marbury v. Madison that acts repugnant to the Constitution are void—not voidable, not subject to judicial grace, not contingent on litigation strategy. Voidness is an immediate consequence of constitutional violation, just as cellular immunity is an immediate response to biological threat.

We used to understand this

In Hayburn’s Case (1792), federal judges did not wait for a lawsuit. They informed President Washington within weeks that a portion of a statute he had signed was unconstitutional. Congress repealed it.

They acted as immune cells do: instantly, instinctively, and faithfully.

That is what constitutional fidelity once looked like. Today we would call it “activism.” They called it the Oath.

The modern failure of constitutional immunity

Our political culture now mirrors an immune system in collapse.

We complain.

We observe.

We wait for someone else to act.

We defer to courts that have mistakenly embraced a doctrine of self-restraint at the very moment the system requires vigilance.

Meanwhile, constitutional pathogens proliferate. Political actors exploit public ignorance. Whole branches of government refuse to perform their constitutional function unless formally “invited,” as though fidelity were optional.

If the body behaved this way, it would die of trivial infection.

If the Republic continues this way, it will fail by the same mechanism.

The only cure: universal constitutional awareness

The survival of a constitutional organism depends on citizens who understand what the Constitution requires—not just lawyers, not just scholars, not just judges. Everyone.

Without that awareness, the Hydraulic Constitutional Force—the Constitution’s natural self-correcting mechanism—cannot operate. The system becomes vulnerable to every opportunistic form of political disease.

We cannot wait for the next crisis to learn how our own Constitution works.

We cannot rely on institutions that have abdicated their role.

We cannot outsource vigilance.

A constitutional people must know what their cells know:

That the genetic code is already complete—it doesn't wait for permission to mean what it means.

That threats must be recognized immediately—not after someone files the right paperwork.

That responsibility is universal—every cell contains the same instructions.

We need citizens who know that an unconstitutional act is void the moment it occurs, not when a court says so.

Who know that the Oath of allegiance binds immediately, not eventually.

Who know that Hayburn's Case happened—that constitutional officers once acted like immune cells, swiftly and without permission.

Without that recognition capacity, the system cannot defend itself.

And if we continue unable to recognize constitutional injury when it occurs, the Constitution will die of infections we could not even name.

Part IX — A Blueprint for an America250 Declaration of Constitutional Renewal

by Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD 

As America approaches 2026, the 250th anniversary of independence offers a rare constitutional moment. Anniversaries alone do nothing, but they can focus national attention. America does not need a new constitution — it needs a renewed commitment to the one it already has. A Declaration of Constitutional Renewal would not alter the text but would re-anchor the national identity that the Constitution describes.

1. The Declaration Must Begin With Identity

A constitutional system cannot function without a shared identity. A renewal document must affirm the sovereignty of the Constitution, the equality of all citizens bound by it, and the primacy of responsibility over power.

Without shared identity, governance fails.

2. It Must Reject the Myth of Judicial Supremacy

A Declaration of Renewal should clarify that all branches — and the people — share responsibility for constitutional fidelity. The Court interprets; it does not define the nation. Renewal requires rebalancing constitutional duty across the system.

3. It Must Reaffirm the Oath as a Living Obligation

The Oath binds officials to protect the Constitution at all times, not only when litigation arises. A renewal declaration should restate that duty clearly. The Oath is not symbolic; it is the mechanism that connects identity to governance.

4. It Must Restore the Sequence of Constitutional Life

The Declaration should articulate the foundational order:

Identity → Governance → Fidelity → Force

Reversing this sequence produced the instability of 2025. Renewal requires restoring it.

5. It Must Acknowledge the Full Story of the Nation

A sustainable constitutional identity cannot be built on incomplete narratives. Renewal requires honesty about Indigenous sovereignty, the mixed motives of early settlers, the failures of institutions, and the resilience of constitutional principles.

Truth is the foundation of fidelity.

6. It Must Call Citizens Back Into Constitutional Stewardship

A Declaration of Renewal must emphasize that citizenship is an active constitutional role. The people are not observers of constitutional life; they are its engine.

7. It Must Chart a Forward Path

The Declaration should outline commitments for 2026 and beyond: i. institutional restraint, ii. legislative responsibility, iii. executive fidelity, iv. and civic vigilance.

The Goal of the Declaration

The objective is not ceremony. It is clarity.

A nation struggling with identity must deliberately reaffirm it — or risk losing it entirely.

Part VIII — Rebuilding Constitutional Identity for 2026 and Beyond

by Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD 

If America is to exit the cycle that began in 1621 and intensified through 2025, it must rebuild something more fundamental than institutions: its constitutional identity. A nation cannot sustain governance or fidelity when its people no longer share an understanding of who “we” are. As America approaches 2026 — the 250th anniversary of independence — the opportunity to renew identity is real, but the window is narrow.

1. Identity Must Be Chosen, Not Assumed

For most of U.S. history, Americans treated national identity as automatic. But identity is not inherited; it is maintained. The first step toward renewal is recognizing that constitutional identity must be consciously affirmed, not absorbed from myth or habit.

2. The Constitution Describes a People, Not a Government

Recovering identity requires returning to the original premise: the Constitution does not merely create institutions — it describes the character of the people who operate them. A renewed identity must therefore be committed to constitutional sovereignty, aware of the limits of power, and grounded in shared responsibility.

3. Myth Cannot Sustain Identity

The sentimental Pilgrim myth collapsed because it was never true. Modern myths are no more durable. A renewed identity must be built on historical honesty: the coexistence, conflict, and cooperation of many peoples whose stories were never reconciled. Integrity, not nostalgia, is the basis of constitutional life.

4. Citizenship Must Be Restored as a Constitutional Role

Citizens cannot remain spectators. Rebuilding identity requires recognizing violations as civic emergencies, demanding fidelity from leaders, and treating the Oath as a national obligation, not a formality.

A passive people cannot sustain a constitutional identity.

5. Institutions Must Reclaim Distributed Responsibility

Each branch must reinterpret its role through responsibility, not supremacy or deference. Congress must reassert its duty to resist unconstitutional acts. The Executive must practice restraint. The Judiciary must abandon the illusion of exclusive authority.

Shared responsibility is the architecture of constitutional identity.

6. 2026 as a Constitutional Turning Point

America250 is not merely a commemoration. It is the first national moment in generations with the potential to redefine who Americans are. The goal is not celebration but clarity — a renewed identity capable of sustaining governance and fidelity.

The Path Forward

America cannot rely on force, improvisation, or courts to navigate the next century. It must rebuild identity — honest, shared, and constitutional. Only then can governance stabilize and fidelity return.

Part VII — Why America Repeated the Mistakes of 1621 and How to Break the Cycle

by Darius A.  Lecointe, PhD, JD 

If the crisis of 2025 feels familiar, it is because the United States is reenacting the unresolved contradictions of 1621. America has repeated the same pattern for four centuries: identity confusion, improvised governance, fading fidelity, and rising force. Understanding why this happens is essential to ending the cycle.

1. America Never Resolved Its Foundational Identities

The three identities at Plymouth — Wampanoag, Separatist, and non-Separatist — were never reconciled. Instead: the Separatist story became national myth, the economic motives of the non-Separatists faded into the culture, and Wampanoag sovereignty was erased.

A nation that suppresses its origins repeats them. Our identity confusion comes from an identity myth built on omission.

2. We Inherited a Habit of Improvisation

The Mayflower Compact was a short-term solution treated as a founding moment. Americans learned to celebrate improvisation instead of seeing it as a warning. This habit resurfaced in: constitutional shortcuts, emergency powers, judicial overreach, and political improvisation replacing fidelity.

Improvisation became tradition.

3. We Confused Power With Responsibility

Early settlers equated authority with moral right. Modern America still does. We assume: elections grant broad power, institutions may act until stopped, and the Constitution matters only when courts intervene.

This is constitutional drift.

4. We Misunderstood the Constitution as a Tool, Not an Identity

For generations, the Constitution was taught as a rulebook or manual. But it describes who we are, not just what government does. Today’s disputes feel unwinnable because they are identity conflicts disguised as legal arguments.

5. We Entrusted Responsibility to the Wrong Branch

Judicial supremacy completed the pattern. Once Americans believed the Court defined meaning: citizens disengaged, Congress abandoned resistance, presidents stopped exercising restraint, and the Court became the focus of national desperation.

Responsibility shrank to one branch.

6. Breaking the Cycle Requires Returning to Identity

To stop repeating 1621, America must do what the early settlers could not: acknowledge competing identities, fuse them into a shared constitutional identity, restore the sequence identity → governance → fidelity → force, and return responsibility to all branches and the people.

The Lesson for 2025

America repeats the mistakes of 1621 because it never learned them. Breaking the cycle requires recovering the one thing the Constitution cannot supply on its own: a unified, honest national identity.

Part VI — Restoring Constitutional Responsibility: A Practical Path for 2025

by Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD 

If America’s constitutional crisis is a crisis of identity and responsibility, then the way forward must begin with recovering both. Judicial supremacy displaced the constitutional duties of citizens and institutions, but the solution is not a new doctrine. It is a return to the original design: shared responsibility at every level of national life.

1. Responsibility Begins With the Oath

The Oath is not ceremonial. It is the constitutional mechanism that binds officials to the identity of the people. Every officer — executive, legislative, judicial — has the same duty: protect the Constitution at all times, not only when “called upon.”

Reaffirming the meaning of the Oath is the first step toward restoring fidelity.

2. Congress Must Reclaim Its Duty

Congress has become reactive, waiting for courts to resolve violations. But the legislative branch was designed to defend the constitutional identity of the nation. Congress must: refuse to implement unconstitutional demands, assert its independent interpretive duty, and treat violations as identity threats, not partisan maneuvers.

A passive Congress is incompatible with constitutional life.

3. The Executive Must Relearn Its Limits

The Presidency has drifted into a posture of personal will. Restoring constitutional responsibility means returning to Washington’s model: lead within the Constitution, refuse authority not granted, and treat the Oath as a constraint, not an instrument of power.

Executive restraint is a form of fidelity.

4. The Judiciary Must Step Out of Supremacy

The Court must abandon the illusion that it alone defines the Constitution. Its proper role is to articulate, not to dominate. Fidelity demands: transparency about constitutional limits, rejection of unnecessary intervention, and recognition that responsibility is not exclusive.

A non-supreme Court strengthens the system.

5. Citizens Must Reenter the Constitutional Equation

For too long, Americans have acted as spectators of constitutional conflict. But constitutional identity belongs to the people. Citizens must: treat violations as civic emergencies, demand fidelity from representatives, and understand that the Constitution’s sovereignty depends on public responsibility.

The people are the first line of defense, not the last.

6. Institutions Must Remember the Sequence

Stability returns only when the constitutional sequence is honored:

Identity → Governance → Fidelity → Force

Today, the order is reversed. Restoring the sequence is not abstract. It requires daily reaffirmation of identity and active defense of constitutional norms.

The Lesson for 2025

The Constitution does not survive because it is enforced. It survives because the people and institutions bound by it choose fidelity over convenience.

Restoring constitutional responsibility is not optional. It is the only path out of identity drift and back into constitutional life.

Part V — How Judicial Supremacy Broke the Constitutional Sequence

by Darius A. Lecointe, PhD,  JD 

For most of American history, the Constitution corrected itself through the balance of identity, governance, and fidelity. But over time, the nation shifted from constitutional responsibility to judicial supremacy—the belief that the Court alone determines meaning. This shift broke the sequence of Constitutional Life and weakened the nation’s ability to self-correct.

1. The Founders Never Intended Judicial Supremacy

Nothing in 1787 gives the Court exclusive authority over constitutional meaning. Early practice confirms this:

i. Hayburn’s Case: judges refused to enforce an unconstitutional law without waiting for litigation.

ii. John Jay declined advisory opinions to preserve the Court’s role, not supremacy.

iii. All officers took the Oath—not only judges.

Responsibility was distributed.

2. Marbury Has Been Misread

Modern Americans treat Marbury as granting the Court final say. But Marshall’s point was simple: acts repugnant to the Constitution are void because the Constitution is sovereign — not the Court.

Judicial review was a consequence, not supremacy.

3. Supremacy Replaced Responsibility

Once people believed the Court alone guarded the Constitution:

i. citizens stopped acting as constitutional stewards,

ii. political branches abandoned their duty to refuse unconstitutional acts,

iii. and the Court became the center of national identity—an impossible burden.

4. Supremacy Created Paralysis

If only the Court can correct violations:

i. unconstitutional acts stand until challenged,

ii. crises escalate while institutions “wait for cases,”

iii. and the Constitution becomes a technical puzzle instead of an identity statement.

The early Republic acted immediately when fidelity was threatened. We no longer do.

5. The Cost in 2025

Today Americans:

i. accept unconstitutional claims until the Court intervenes,

ii. treat violations as partisan issues,

iii. and behave as if the Constitution is negotiable until litigated.

Supremacy has replaced citizenship.

6. The Lesson for 2025

The Constitution cannot restore itself through one branch. It requires shared responsibility — executive, legislative, judicial, and civic.

To recover stability, America must return to Marshall’s insight:

The Constitution is sovereign. The people are responsible. The Court is not the Constitution.

The Path Ahead

Until responsibility is restored, identity will fracture, fidelity will weaken, and force will dominate. Rejecting supremacy and restoring duty is essential for constitutional life.

Part IV — The Hydraulic Constitutional Force: How the Constitution Corrects Itself

 by Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

The United States has survived repeated constitutional crises not because our institutions are strong, but because something deeper operates beneath them. I call it the Hydraulic Constitutional Force (HCF) — the natural, self-correcting mechanism built into constitutional systems. It appears whenever identity fractures, governance fails, or fidelity collapses. It is the Constitution’s way of restoring equilibrium, and istory has recorded it again and again.

1. The HCF Appears When Institutions Do Not

When institutions refuse to act, the HCF creates pressure they cannot ignore.

Hayburn’s Case showed judges stepping outside procedure to warn the President that a statute violated the Constitution. They did not “wait for a case” because fidelity required immediate action. The Court yielded to the Constitution’s self-correcting force.

Similarly, in Trump v. Thompson, the D.C. Circuit described how their ruling was responsive to this self-correcting force.

2. The HCF Exposes Identity Drift

The force emerges most visibly when Americans behave as though they are no longer bound by a shared identity.

Identity drift produces conflict, and conflict triggers self-correction.

2025 is seeing the same pattern. Competing identities are placing pressure on institutions that can no longer ignore the imbalance.

3. The HCF Limits Human Will

The Constitution was built to resist domination by individual will — whether of a president, a court, or a faction. The HCF activates whenever will threatens identity.

This is why Marbury’s principle matters: acts repugnant to the Constitution are void because the Constitution is sovereign, not the actors within it.

The HCF ensures that human will cannot permanently override constitutional identity.

4. The HCF Does Not Prevent Crisis — It Prevents Collapse

Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution is not designed to prevent crisis. It is designed to ensure crisis does not become destruction.

The HCF intervenes through: public reaction, institutional pushback, structural limits, and moments where the system simply refuses to bend further.

We see this now in the growing rejection of judicial supremacy, the renewed debate over the Oath, and the public recognition that constitutional violations signal identity change.

America’s challenge is to respond before the pressure becomes force.

The Path Forward

If we ignore identity, the HCF will continue to push through conflict and instability.

If we recover identity, the system will stabilize without coercion.

The choice in 2025 is whether we align with the force — or resist it until it acts on us.

Part III — How Constitutional Fidelity Works: Identity, Governance, Fidelity, Force

 by Darius Lecointe, PhD, JD

America keeps treating the Constitution as a rulebook. But constitutions are not rulebooks — they are identity documents. They describe who a people are, and only then define the system built on that identity. This sequence is the key to understanding both 1621 and 2025.

1. Identity Comes First

Every constitution begins with identity, not law.

The Separatists tried to form a new identity in Holland, as the founders of San Marino did in 301, but failed. Their children became “Dutchmen,” and the community split. A divided identity made it impossible to form a stable constitutional order.

The same condition exists today: groups with conflicting identities all claim the same Constitution. No document can unify a people who do not share identity.

2. Governance Reflects Identity

Stable governance follows a stable identity. Confused identity produces improvisation.

The Mayflower Compact is often celebrated, but it was a survival measure by a group:

outside its authorized territory,

internally divided,

unsure who held legitimate power.

Governance was improvised because identity was unclear. America is improvising again today.

3. Fidelity Requires Shared Identity

Constitutional fidelity is not mere obedience — it is loyalty to a common identity.

Early American cases make this clear:

Hayburn’s Case: judges refused to enforce a law that violated the Constitution.

John Jay’s refusal to give advisory opinions: the Court protected constitutional identity.

Marbury: acts repugnant to the Constitution are void because they violate the people’s identity.

Today’s crisis is a crisis of fidelity because Americans no longer agree on who “we” are.

4. Force Is the Final Stage

When identity collapses and fidelity fails, force fills the vacuum. Not always violence, force can appear as:

executive overreach,

legislative paralysis,

judicial supremacy,

normalization of unconstitutional acts.

This is exactly what happened in 1621: three identities collided, no shared framework existed, and power determined survival.

5. The Sequence We Ignore

America keeps starting in the wrong place — trying to “fix” governance while avoiding the deeper identity conflict.

But the constitutional sequence is fixed:

Identity → Governance → Fidelity → Force

Reverse the order and instability follows.

The Lesson for 2025

America is not struggling because its Constitution is weak. It is struggling because its identity is fractured.

Until Americans agree on who we are, fidelity cannot return.

And without fidelity, force becomes the default — just as in 1621.

Part II — The Constitutional Lessons of 1621 for America in 2025

The real history of the 1621 harvest gathering reveals something Americans rarely consider: three identities — Wampanoag, Separatist, and non-Separatist English — sharing a place but not a constitution. America began not with unity, but with contradiction. And 2025 shows we still have not resolved it.

1. America Has Always Lived With Misaligned Identities

The Mayflower groups carried conflicting assumptions:

Separatists sought a religious community of their own.

Non-Separatists wanted economic opportunity under English law.

The Wampanoag acted from sovereign authority on their land.

The Crown expected loyalty.

The Mayflower Compact was a temporary fix, not a constitution.

They began with identity instability, and the same pattern appears today. Our governance reflects that.

2. Who we are Constitutionally shifts when the Constitution is violated

When the settlers drafted the Compact outside their patent, they weren’t just breaking rules. They were changing identity. They were no longer acting purely as English subjects; they became something undefined.

This is the lesson for 2025:

When a nation tolerates unconstitutional behavior, it is not simply allowing violations — it is adopting a different identity.

Identity drift, not legal disagreement, is the core of our crisis.

3. The Crisis of 2025 Mirrors the Crisis of 1621

Today we see:

officials treating limits as optional

citizens viewing violations as partisan

institutions waiting to be “called upon”

groups claiming incompatible constitutional identities

Plymouth shows that without shared authority, a society loses its constitutional center. We are in that moment again.

4. Improvisation Is a Warning, Not a Foundation

The Mayflower Compact is remembered as the start of self-government, but it existed because the settlers:

landed outside authorization,

lacked a shared foundation, and

needed a temporary structure to avoid collapse.

Improvisation saved them, but it is not sustainable. Today, the U.S. is improvising again — stretching norms, redefining powers, and treating obligations as negotiable.

5. Stability Requires Identity Before Fidelity

A constitution cannot function when the identity of the people bound by it is fractured.

Americans treat constitutional violations as political acts. But the Constitution describes identity. Every violation signals an attempt to become a different people.

We now see a struggle between those holding the 1787 identity and those acting under a new, undefined one.

The Lesson for 2025

America is not in crisis because the Constitution is weak. America is struggling because its identity is unstable.

The real question of 2025 is whether we can agree on who we are.

If identity is lost, fidelity cannot exist. And without fidelity, force becomes the default.

Part I - The Three Peoples at the First Thanksgiving — and the Constitutional Mystery Americans Still Don’t See

By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

In 2021, the National Archives marked the 400th anniversary of the 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth — a meeting of 90 Wampanoag and 52 English survivors of the Mayflower voyage. The Archives finally acknowledged publicly what historians have known for decades: Most of what Americans believe about the “First Thanksgiving” is myth — crafted long after the event.

The Archives corrected several popular errors:

The Mayflower passengers did not discover “empty wilderness.” They landed on Wampanoag land.

The Wampanoag were not strangers; some already spoke English through earlier encounters with Europeans.

The alliance between the Wampanoag and the English was strategic, not sentimental.

Wampanoag agricultural knowledge saved the English from starvation.

But even this more honest public version still hides the deepest truth of all.

The 1621 harvest celebration was not a meeting between two peoples. It was a meeting between three. And the third group — forgotten in the American imagination — may hold the key to understanding the recurring constitutional crisis we are now living through.

I. The “Pilgrims” Were not One People

American classrooms teach that the Mayflower carried a single group fleeing religious persecution. That story is only half true.

In reality, the Mayflower passengers consisted of:

1. English Separatists, religious dissenters who had lived for a decade in Leiden, Holland.

2. Non-Separatist Englishmen, motivated by economic opportunity, status, or adventure — the same profile as the men who settled Jamestown in 1607.

3. The Wampanoag, whose land the English occupied and whose strategic calculations shaped the survival of the settlement.

Only about half the passengers were the people we now call Pilgrims. The rest were not refugees at all. They were ordinary English settlers — employees, craftsmen, traders, and opportunists — who had joined the voyage for the same reasons others joined the Virginia Company a decade earlier.

The “First Thanksgiving” was therefore not a quaint, harmonious scene but an encounter shaped by three distinct identities, each with its own constitution.

II. The Lost Decade: The Pilgrims Followed San Marino’s Path — Until They Didn’t

This is the part of the story Americans almost never hear.

Before the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, they lived for ten years in Leiden, Holland, practicing their faith in peace. In doing so, they followed the example of the early Christians who founded San Marino in 301, a community also created by people fleeing religious persecution.

San Marino’s founders succeeded because they were able to form a new identity, isolated enough to grow into a distinct constitutional culture.

The Separatists in Holland could not.

Dutch culture was strong, the children were becoming “Dutchmen,” and the community feared it was losing its English identity.

Identity is the first stage of constitutional life, and theirs was slipping. So instead of continuing on the San Marino path, they chose a different one: They sought a royal charter from King James I — returning to the very system that had persecuted them.

This is the first constitutional mystery of American history.

Why did a persecuted group voluntarily reattach itself to its persecutor? Why seek English authorization instead of building a new identity abroad or in Holland?

Their answer created the contradictions America still lives with.

III. The Legal Story No One Teaches

Here is the version every American should know:

The Pilgrims and non-Pilgrims planned to settle near the Hudson River, then part of Virginia.

They had royal permission to settle there.

A storm blew the Mayflower off course.

They landed illegally in New England.

Because they lacked authority to settle where they landed, they drafted the Mayflower Compact, a temporary constitutional patch until a new patent could be obtained.

This means:

They were authorized to settle in one place, unauthorized to settle in another, and divided among themselves by identity, theology, and purpose the entire time.

The 1621 celebration occurred not under a unified “Pilgrim” identity but under constitutional improvisation, identity instability, and jurisdictional confusion.

America’s constitutional paradox began here — not in 1776 or 1787.

IV. The First Thanksgiving Was a Constitutional Collision

The celebration in 1621 was not just an intercultural meeting between Wampanoag and English. It was a collision of constitutions: Wampanoag sovereignty, English royal authority, Separatist religious identity, Non-Separatist colonial ambition, and the improvised governance of the Mayflower Compact

The English were not one people.

They were a mixed multitude, bound together by geographical accident and constitutional necessity.

This is the part Americans never learn.

V. America’s Schizophrenia Began in 1621

You cannot understand the present constitutional crisis without understanding this original one.

The English at Plymouth fled persecution but sought royal approval. They wanted religious autonomy but insisted on English identity. They desired separation from England but asked England to authorize it. They settled without permission in a land that was not theirs. They formed a government only because their original charter no longer applied. 

This is the earliest concrete instance of America’s constitutional schizophrenia: identity pulling in one direction, governance in another, and constitutional fidelity somewhere in between.

The same confusion persists today.

Whenever Americans tolerate violations of the Constitution, they do not merely break a rule — they adopt a new identity. Identity is always the first stage of constitutional life, and it precedes law. Americans have forgotten that.

The Pilgrims did too.

VI. The Hidden Lesson for Our Time

The Pilgrims’ forgotten complexity matters now for one reason: America is again living through a crisis of constitutional identity. Just as in 1621, we see: mixed motives, divided identities, competing constitutional claims, and the attempt to justify violations of existing authority by rewriting the past.

The first Thanksgiving was not a symbol of unity. It was a warning: when identity is unstable, constitutional life is unstable.

The Pilgrims preserved their Englishness — and America is still paying for that unresolved contradiction.

The Oath Betrayed: The Dysfunction America Refuses to See

The United States government frequently condemns other nations for violating their constitutions. Venezuela is only the latest target — threatened with removal by a government that claims to act in defense of constitutional order. Yet those who support such threats know full well that the United States itself is violating its own Constitution. The dysfunction of the U.S. government is not unknown; it is overlooked. 

The Forgotten Oath 

Every officer of the United States swears to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Nowhere in that oath do we find the words “when called upon.” The duty is constant, unconditional, and personal. It binds the conscience as much as the office.

But this duty has been diluted by habit and convenience. The modern officer acts as though fidelity to the Constitution is situational — activated only by crisis or public outrage. The result is a government that proclaims fidelity abroad while tolerating dysfunction at home.

The Dysfunction We Pretend Not to See

The paralysis of Congress, the erosion of checks and balances, and the normalization of executive defiance are not isolated flaws. They are symptoms of a deeper betrayal: the quiet abandonment of the Oath itself.

When the head of state once boasted (as a candidate) that he could “shoot a man in Times Square” without losing political support, he was testing not the law but the conscience of the nation. The troubling truth is that he was right. While state law would punish the act, the federal government has repeatedly failed to act against violations of the Constitution itself.

The dysfunction is not hidden — it is simply ignored. Officials evade responsibility. The public accepts paralysis as normal. The institutions designed to correct violations now enable them.

When Fidelity Was Immediate

It was not always so. In Hayburn’s Case (1792), Congress required judges to administer pensions under executive review. Within weeks, the Circuit Court judges wrote to President Washington refusing to comply, explaining that the law violated the Constitution. They had not been “called upon.” Their oath compelled them to act, and Congress repealed the offending law.

A decade later, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall declared a provision of the Judiciary Act void because it conflicted with the Constitution. Once again, Congress accepted the correction.

These early moments were not about judicial supremacy — they were about constitutional fidelity. Officers of government recognized that the Constitution’s survival depended on their active responsibility, not on institutional inertia.

From Fidelity to Dysfunction

Contrast that with today’s government. The same Constitution that once inspired self-correction now sits paralyzed in the midst of dysfunction. Congress yields its powers to the executive; courts defer to political convenience; presidents stretch or ignore constitutional boundaries with impunity.

And yet, these violations provoke no institutional alarm. The dysfunction is so pervasive that it has become invisible — a silent erosion mistaken for stability.

To denounce Venezuela or any other nation for constitutional infidelity while our own government fails to function as designed is to confess hypocrisy. It is the Oath itself — not foreign governments — that stands violated.

The Real Indictment

The early republic treated the Constitution as a living measure of conscience. When government erred, it corrected itself swiftly and openly. Today, we treat dysfunction as inevitable and fidelity as optional. We have inverted the moral order of the Republic.

The silence of those who have sworn the Oath is not mere oversight — it is an indictment. It reveals that the institutions once animated by conscience now operate on habit, calculation, and fear.

The dysfunction of the U.S. government is the one truth both parties refuse to name, because acknowledging it would mean accepting that the Constitution no longer governs the government.

A Call to Remember

The Constitution was never self-enforcing. It was sustained by men and women who understood that fidelity to it required action. Hayburn’s judges did not wait for a crisis; Marshall did not wait for public opinion. They acted because their Oath left them no choice.

If the officers of the United States rediscovered that understanding — if they remembered that the Oath binds them even when silence is easier — then perhaps America could again speak credibly about constitutional order abroad.

Until then, the greatest threat to the Constitution will not come from Venezuela, Russia, or China. It will come from the willful blindness of a government that refuses to see its own dysfunction. 

Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

The Sequence of Constitutional Life: A reflection on how the Constitution lives, learns, and corrects itself.

By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

I. Rediscovering the Living Constitution

Every constitution has a life cycle. It is conceived in identity, tested through governance, sustained by fidelity, and protected — only as a last resort — by force.

When we reverse this order, the Constitution becomes brittle. When we restore it, the Republic breathes again.

This trilogy—The Missed Blueprint, Identity Before Governance, and Fidelity Before Force — retraces that original sequence, revealing how the U.S. Constitution, like all living systems, survives through a self-correcting force of fidelity rather than coercion.

II. Part One: The Missed Blueprint

San Marino and the Seeds of Infidelity

Before the Pilgrims set sail, Christians fleeing Diocletian’s persecution had already founded the Republic of San Marino (A.D. 301). They built their identity on principle before establishing governance.

By contrast, the English colonists (Puritans and Separatists included) sought royal charters before defining themselves as a moral community. In doing so, they created a paradox: independence by permission.

The result, by the time that independence was thrust upon them, was a society anchored in political legitimacy rather than moral integrity — a seed of constitutional infidelity that still grows today.

Lesson: The legitimacy of law arises from conscience, not from the permission of power.

III. Part Two: Identity Before Governance

The Forgotten First Principle

Every constitution presupposes a people who already know who they are.

This is what America’s founders misunderstood.

The Constitution was not meant to create identity but to express it. When we look to institutions for meaning, we invert the sequence. Marbury v. Madison (1803) was not a power grab — it was a call to fidelity. Marshall taught that “a government of laws, and not of men” must examine itself continually to remain constitutional.

Lesson: Constitutional order requires self-knowledge before self-government.

IV. Part Three: Fidelity Before Force

The Hydraulic Principle of Constitutional Order

The Constitution contains within itself a self-correcting mechanism: the Hydraulic Constitutional Force (HCF) — the unseen current of fidelity that restores balance when authority exceeds responsibility.

From Hayburn’s Case (1792) to Marbury v. Madison (1803), from Trump v. Thompson (2022) to Trump v. United States (2024), the pattern is the same. When fidelity weakens, pressure builds until the system corrects itself.

This is not poetic metaphor but constitutional physics. Acts repugnant to the Constitution collapse because they are disconnected from the source of legitimacy.

Lesson: Fidelity, not force, is the Constitution’s true instrument of enforcement.

V. The Sequence of Constitutional Life

These three essays recover the order by which all republics live — or die:

Stage	Principle	Constitutional Function
Identity	Who we are	The moral community from which law derives.
Governance	How we act	The organization of authority under consent.
Fidelity	Why we endure	The hydraulic pressure that restores balance.
Force	When all else fails	The last resort, not the first principle.

To reverse this sequence is to court disintegration.

To restore it is to revive constitutional life.

VI. The Call to Renewal

As America approaches its 250th year, we must remember that renewal does not begin with rewriting laws — it begins with rediscovering sequence. The Constitution does not need new interpreters; it needs faithful stewards.

Our task is to restore what history inverted:

Identity before governance. Fidelity before force.

The Constitution will then once again be what Marshall understood it to be — a living covenant of responsibility, not a relic of authority.

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Fidelity Before Force: The Hydraulic Principle of Constitutional Order

By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

I. The Hydraulic Constitution

Every living system possesses a self-correcting mechanism. In biology it is homeostasis. In physics it is equilibrium. In constitutional governance, it is fidelity — the moral pressure that holds the written law and the living conscience in alignment.

I call this the Hydraulic Constitutional Force (HCF) — the self-regulating current that restores balance whenever any branch, or any citizen, strays from constitutional duty. It is not mystical. It is structural. It operates through the Oath of Allegiance, through conscience, and through the collective insistence that no act repugnant to the Constitution can endure.

When fidelity falters, the HCF builds until correction becomes inevitable. We saw it in Hayburn’s Case (1792), when judges refused to carry out unconstitutional duties, and again in Marbury v. Madison (1803), when Chief Justice Marshall affirmed that fidelity — not force — makes government lawful.

II. When Force Replaces Fidelity

The framers distrusted power but believed in law. They assumed that law would tame force. Yet by neglecting the principle of identity before governance, they left open a fatal gap: the belief that authority, once established, could substitute for conscience.

Over time, the Republic shifted from moral equilibrium to mechanical enforcement. We built institutions strong enough to compel obedience but too weak to cultivate fidelity. The result is a government that governs by pressure, not persuasion.

Today the branches act like hydraulic pistons locked in competition: each exerts pressure to correct the other, but without the lubrication of conscience. The system still moves, but it grinds.

III. Marbury’s Hidden Lesson

Marbury v. Madison is widely misread as an assertion of judicial supremacy. It was, in truth, an act of restraint. Marshall declined to claim jurisdiction where the Constitution gave none. His decision released the Court from the temptation to enforce what conscience alone should correct.

By declaring that “a law repugnant to the Constitution is void,” he revealed the hydraulic law of fidelity: acts disconnected from the Constitution’s moral source collapse under their own weight.

The Constitution, like the body politic it governs, maintains itself not by domination but by discharge — by expelling whatever is incompatible with its integrity. That is not interpretation; it is metabolism.

IV. The Modern Imbalance

Recent history demonstrates the cost of forgetting this law.

In Trump v. Thompson (2022) and Trump v. United States (2024), we witnessed branches of government contending for supremacy rather than submitting to shared responsibility. Each acted as though authority were the prize rather than the product of fidelity.

Yet the HCF remains at work. Each act of excess produces its opposite. Each abuse of power awakens civic conscience. The system, though strained, seeks equilibrium. The very turbulence of our moment is evidence that the Constitution still breathes.

The danger lies not in the pressure itself, but in misunderstanding it. Americans see polarization where there is correction; conflict where there is recalibration.

V. Fidelity as Force

The paradox of constitutional order is that fidelity itself is the strongest form of force. It compels without coercion. It binds without violence.

When officials honor the Oath, the HCF remains balanced. When they betray it, legitimacy drains away. No decree can replenish what conscience has withdrawn. The Constitution reclaims itself not by decree but by decay of the void.

Marshall understood this hydraulic truth: fidelity before force is not moral preference—it is constitutional design.

VI. Restoring the Sequence

If identity before governance explains how a people become a nation, fidelity before force explains how that nation endures. Together they form the self-correcting architecture of republican life.

The order must be preserved:

Identity defines who we are.

Governance organizes what we do.

Fidelity sustains what we believe.

Force is the last resort when all else fails.

Reversing this sequence — placing force before fidelity — creates tyranny. Restoring it restores balance.

VII. The Living Covenant

The Constitution is not self-executing in a mechanical sense; it is self-executing in a moral one. Its vitality comes from the continuous exchange between word and will, between principle and practice.

The Hydraulic Constitutional Force is that exchange made visible. It is the pressure of conscience acting upon power. It is the Constitution reminding its stewards that their authority is conditional upon fidelity.

As America approaches its 250th year, our task is not to seek new doctrines but to recover the old sequence:

Identity before governance. Fidelity before force.

When we do, the Constitution will again reveal what it has always been — not a mechanism of power, but a living covenant of responsibility.

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Identity Before Governance: The Forgotten First Principle of Constitutional Order

 By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

I. The Principle We Forgot

Every constitution presupposes a people who already know who they are.

That is the principle America forgot.

The Republic of San Marino, founded by Christians fleeing Diocletian’s persecution, demonstrates this truth vividly. Its founders formed a moral community before establishing any government. Their shared conscience became their constitution.

By contrast, America’s early settlers — Englishmen fleeing persecution and others seeking profit — defined themselves through royal charters and colonial licenses. Their identity was borrowed, not born. And when the time came to sever ties with the Crown, they still sought validation from authority rather than conscience. 

“Identity before governance” is not an idealistic phrase—it is the essential sequence that gives constitutional order its strength. When the sequence is reversed, power supplants principle, and government becomes self-justifying.

II. From Charter to Covenant

The Puritans who sought freedom of worship in Massachusetts still asked for the King’s permission to exercise it. The Virginians who pursued fortune in Jamestown did the same. Each believed their purpose needed royal sanction.

This dependence was carried into the American founding. Independence from Great Britain was achieved politically, not philosophically. The Declaration proclaimed liberty, but the habits of dependence lingered.

That is why Marbury v. Madison was not the birth of judicial review — it was an attempt at moral correction. Chief Justice Marshall reminded the government that the Constitution’s supremacy is not the Court’s power but the people’s conscience.

His opinion’s is the most overlooked civics lesson in American history. Marshall teaches that a government “of laws, and not of men” requires self-examination at every level. No branch may act beyond constitutional bounds—not because the Court says so, but because the Constitution itself forbids it.

III. The Great Reversal

Unfortunately, America read Marbury backward.

The doctrine of voidness — that acts repugnant to the Constitution are null — was transformed into a doctrine of judicial supremacy. The people traded their birthright of fidelity for the comfort of interpretation.

That reversal explains our current constitutional confusion. We treat crises as matters for litigation rather than education. We ask the courts to fix what civic conscience refuses to confront.

In San Marino, the people never surrendered their conscience to a higher institution. Their survival across seventeen centuries proves that fidelity, not force, sustains constitutional life. Theirs is not a republic of courts but of conviction.

IV. The Marbury Message

Marshall’s genius lies not in asserting the Court’s authority but in reminding the nation of its responsibility. Marbury is not a monument to judicial power; it is a mirror held up to the Republic.

To understand Marshall’s intent, one must read his opinion as an act of civic pedagogy. He used the form of a judicial opinion to teach the people the substance of self-government. The Constitution, he implied, is not a text awaiting interpretation but a covenant awaiting faithfulness.

When we reduce constitutional fidelity to compliance with rulings, we lose sight of the fact that every citizen who takes the Oath of Allegiance becomes part of the Constitution’s living identity.

V. The Path to Renewal

Renewal begins with remembrance. Before we can restore constitutional order, we must recover constitutional identity.

We must teach that fidelity is not a judicial function — it is a civic duty. The Constitution does not enforce itself; it educates us into obedience. Each branch of government, each citizen under oath, must rediscover the sequence that San Marino preserved and Marshall understood:

Identity before governance. Conscience before command. Fidelity before force.

Only then will the Constitution cease to be a legal instrument and become again what it was meant to be: the living record of a people faithful to themselves.

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The Missed Blueprint: San Marino and America’s Forgotten Foundation

 By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

It should by now be obvious that the interpretations of history that are not emphasized may hold the key to the future. Much of what we accept as “American history” begins too late and explains too little. We start with the English colonies and their revolt against Great Britain, overlooking the deeper question: Why did those who fled persecution choose to establish their new communities under royal charters rather than under divine conscience?

The standard answer — that they sought legal protection and economic security — reveals the very misstep that shaped the American experiment. The Puritans and Separatists who crossed the Atlantic were not pioneers of liberty in the purest sense; they were participants in a hybrid project that combined faith and license, conviction and concession.

A Forgotten Precedent

Long before the Pilgrims set sail, a small group of Christians in Europe had already faced a similar trial. Fleeing the persecution of Emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century, they sought refuge on Mount Titano, high above the Adriatic coast. Guided by a stonemason named Marinus — later canonized as Saint Marinus — they founded a community dedicated to the principle of freedom of conscience.

Around 600 CE they adopted a Constitution that transformed that settlement into the Republic of San Marino, the world’s oldest surviving republic. For over seventeen centuries it has remained independent, not through conquest or expansion, but through moral coherence. Its founders sought no charter from emperor or pope. Their legitimacy came from unity of conscience.

In that light, the American colonies’ choice to seek royal charters rather than self-constitute was more consequential than we realize. Their claim to moral independence was undermined at its birth by the dependence they accepted in law.

Identity Before Governance

San Marino demonstrates that identity precedes governance. A people must first know who they are before deciding how they will rule or be ruled. The early Christians of Mount Titano formed a moral compact before a political one. In essence, their community was their constitution.

Unfortunately, the English colonies were corporations before they were communities. The Crown granted permission to settle; governance followed economic purpose. Only later did religious refugees blend into this framework, altering its tone but not its foundation.

Even the Massachusetts Bay Colony — established by Puritans seeking religious freedom — operated under a royal charter that defined its existence in commercial terms. This fusion of moral and mercantile motives explains why American political development has always oscillated between moral aspiration and material ambition.

The Birth of Constitutional Infidelity

The failure (or inability) to ground the new society in moral self-definition rather than royal permission laid the foundation for what might be called constitutional infidelity. When the Declaration of Independence severed the legal tie with Britain, it did not sever the habit of seeking validation from authority.

Even as Americans proclaimed that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, they built a system that deferred moral agency to institutions rather than conscience. The Puritans’ reliance on charters mirrored, in miniature, our later reliance on judicial supremacy — the belief that authority must descend from above rather than rise from within.

That pattern persists today. We invoke courts to rescue us from political failures, as though moral judgment were a matter of jurisdiction. The separation of powers has become a separation from responsibility.

The San Marinian Lesson

San Marino endures because its order rests on fidelity, not force. Its founders proved that the strength of a constitutional system depends on moral coherence, not size or wealth. They never claimed infallibility — only integrity.

America’s founders built a brilliant structure but neglected the foundation. They assumed a written Constitution could substitute for a shared moral compass. But documents do not protect nations; people do. The Oath of Allegiance is meaningful only if the community understands that the Constitution represents a covenant, not a contract.

Rediscovering the Forgotten Blueprint

As America nears its 250th year, “renewing the Constitution” should mean rediscovery, not revision. The pilgrims could have followed San Marino’s example — forming a community bound by principle before law. Their failure to do so set in motion the constitutional contradictions that still haunt us.

To recover fidelity, we must reverse that order:

Principle before power. Conscience before command. Identity before governance.

The path forward may therefore lie not in innovation, but in rediscovery — in returning to the moral architecture that early Americans ignored and that San Marino quietly preserved for over a millennium.

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The Lessons Trump Learned from Birtherism

1. The Origin of a Constitutional Misunderstanding

Birtherism was not a mere ploy for Donald Trump; it was a belief he genuinely held. He believed Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen and therefore could not legitimately occupy the presidency. What makes this belief significant is not its falsity, but its persistence despite constitutional failure. The courts had already rejected efforts to challenge Obama’s eligibility before Trump took up the cause. Yet Trump revived a claim that had been legally buried — and in doing so, learned a dangerous lesson: that public belief could outlast constitutional fact.

2. The Lesson Mislearned

Birtherism taught Trump that the President could not easily be removed, even if accused of violating the Constitution. The effort to delegitimize Obama’s presidency failed not because the system was weak, but because it was strong enough to reject baseless claims. Yet Trump seems to have drawn the opposite conclusion — that a President is nearly untouchable once in office. He is now testing that theory in full view of the nation.

3. The Misunderstanding of Presidential Power

Trump’s greatest error is to assume that the Constitution cannot act without the courts, and that enforcement depends on political will rather than constitutional fidelity. Had President Obama possessed the power Trump now claims — the power to disregard constitutional restraints — the United States would already have ceased to be a constitutional republic. The survival of the Constitution depended not on judicial supremacy, but on the internal restraint of those who swore an oath to it.

4. The Broader Constitutional Blindness

Trump is not alone in misunderstanding the Constitution. Americans, across political lines, have come to view it as a document that others — courts, Congress, or Presidents — are responsible for enforcing. In truth, the Constitution was designed to protect itself through the Oath of allegiance, which binds every officeholder and citizen to resist acts repugnant to its principles. When we forget that shared responsibility, we make constitutional violations appear as mere political disputes.

5. The Real Lesson of Birtherism

Birtherism should have taught the nation that constitutional protection begins long before the courtroom. The real threat is not that a President might be illegitimately elected, but that legitimate power might be used illegitimately. The Constitution is not self-executing by chance; it is self-executing by design — through the conscience and courage of those who have sworn to preserve it.

Title: America250 and the Temptation of the Old World

As the United States approaches the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, a troubling paradox has emerged. The nation born out of resistance to concentrated power now flirts with its return. Many Americans—out of frustration, fear, or nostalgia—openly express admiration for strongmen, for decisive rule unencumbered by deliberation, and for the myth of the benevolent autocrat who can “fix” what democracy has broken. It is striking, and deeply ironic, that this yearning for authority resembles the very system our founders risked everything to escape.

I. From Subjects to Citizens

The first settlers who left Europe for the New World were not seeking a new king. They sought relief from religious persecution, economic oppression, and arbitrary rule. They came to establish communities where the conscience of the individual, not the command of the crown, would be sovereign.

A century and a half later, the signers of the Declaration of Independence gave political voice to that spiritual and moral exodus. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” was not a declaration of superiority but of equality—the claim that the right to govern oneself was not a privilege conferred by a ruler but a condition inherent in humanity.

The Constitution later gave this principle its institutional form. It did not merely create a new government; it created a new kind of government. Its genius lay in distributing power so that no one could claim to be the government. Every branch was limited, every officer bound by oath, every act subject to the supreme law of the land.

II. The Oath and the Revolution of Responsibility

Unlike the Old World monarchies, where allegiance was to the crown, the framers required allegiance to the Constitution. This Oath represented a revolution in moral and political responsibility. It declared that fidelity to law, not loyalty to men, was the foundation of legitimate power.

Every officer of the United States—civil or military, elected or appointed—swears this Oath. It is the invisible thread that holds the republic together. It transforms power from a personal possession into a public trust. When that trust is violated, the act is void—not merely illegal, but without constitutional existence.

Chief Justice John Marshall understood this when he wrote in Marbury v. Madison that “an act repugnant to the Constitution is void.” His point was not to expand judicial power but to reinforce the supremacy of constitutional responsibility. The Constitution is not self-enforcing; it lives through the fidelity of those who have sworn to uphold it.

III. The Temptation of the Old World

Yet today, that fidelity is under strain. Many have come to equate freedom with disorder and order with domination. They view democratic debate as weakness and constitutional limits as obstacles. In their impatience, they seek salvation in strong personalities and sweeping powers, forgetting that the Revolution itself was a rejection of that very impulse.

To adopt the habits of the Old World would be to forget that the American Revolution was not a war for conquest but an act of separation from a system that placed rulers above the ruled. It was an experiment in self-government, not a rebellion for power. The founders’ goal was not to enthrone new masters but to dissolve mastery itself.

The Constitution they drafted is not a monument to power but a manual of restraint. Its checks and balances are not symptoms of dysfunction; they are the machinery of liberty. The deliberate pace of lawmaking, the independence of the courts, the accountability of elections—these are not flaws in the design but features of a system meant to protect us from our own worst instincts.

IV. America250 and the Renewal of Constitutional Memory

As America prepares for its 250th anniversary, the commemoration risks becoming a pageant of patriotic nostalgia. But true remembrance requires more than flags and fireworks. It demands that we recall why we became a nation and what we vowed never to become again.

The founders’ rejection of monarchy was not merely political—it was philosophical. They understood that the concentration of power in one person or faction is incompatible with the dignity of free citizens. They believed, as James Madison warned, that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

If we have learned anything from our history, it is that liberty does not perish in a single act of oppression but through a gradual forgetting—when we cease to see the Constitution as a living covenant and begin to treat it as an obstacle to our desires.

V. A Call to Constitutional Fidelity

America250 should be a moment of renewal, not regression. A time to remember that power in America is not self-justifying—it is accountable. That no oath is to a person, party, or ideology, but to the Constitution itself. That the experiment in self-government continues only as long as we, the People, remember that we are both its subjects and its stewards.

We are heirs to a Revolution that replaced submission with responsibility. The founders did not fight for the right to rule but for the right to be ruled by law. To forget that is to betray not only their memory but our own future.

The world will be watching in 2026. Whether we present a republic faithful to its founding or a people nostalgic for its undoing will depend on whether we remember that the Constitution’s greatest strength is not its age but its timeless truth: that sovereignty resides in the People, and that all who govern do so only by their consent.

America as One Living Organism

Blaise Pascal once observed that “the entire succession of men, during the course of so many centuries, should be considered as one man who subsists always and learns continually.” Humanity, he said, is one long-lived being — forever learning from its errors, slowly acquiring wisdom through the continuity of its collective life.

If we apply that insight to the history of the United States, we can begin to see our nation not as a succession of administrations or political eras, but as a single constitutional organism — one whose lifespan is measured in centuries rather than years. Like Pascal’s immortal man, America is a being that subsists always and learns continually.

1. The Constitution as America’s DNA

The Constitution is the genetic code of this living entity — a record of the principles that determine how the body politic repairs, reproduces, and sustains itself. Each generation interprets that code, sometimes faithfully, sometimes in error.

When the First Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1789, it altered the constitutional structure it had just ratified, unaware that it was mutating the new organism’s DNA. When Chief Justice Marshall decided Marbury v. Madison (1803), he did not seize power for the Court, as later myth would suggest; he diagnosed the mutation and restored the principle of constitutional fidelity — that acts repugnant to the Constitution are void.

That principle is the immune system of the Republic. Yet in the centuries since, Americans have confused that immunity with judicial supremacy, allowing one organ of government to claim authority over the others. The resulting fevers — from Dred Scott to Dobbs — are symptoms of the same underlying disorder: forgetting that the Constitution belongs to the whole body, not a single branch.

2. Error and Learning in the Constitutional Body

Every generation of Americans repeats this cycle of error and learning. The Civil War was a violent autoimmune crisis — the organism attacking its own limbs in confusion over its own identity. Reconstruction was the painful process of recovery. The New Deal rebalanced the metabolism of federal power. The Civil Rights Movement reopened the neural pathways between principle and practice.

Each of these episodes represents what I have called the Hydraulic Constitutional Force — the self-correcting current that moves through the body politic, pushing it toward constitutional balance even when its parts resist. The nation learns through trauma, just as the body learns through pain.

3. The Educational Purpose of History

If we read history this way, its purpose is not to glorify past triumphs but to teach constitutional physiology. The Founding is America’s infancy; the Civil War its adolescence; the twentieth century its maturation. Our present divisions may mark the onset of midlife crisis — a struggle to remember why we exist at all.

Education, in this view, is not merely civic instruction but cellular memory. Each citizen, by the Oath of allegiance, becomes a living cell in the constitutional organism, charged with preserving the DNA of self-government. When we forget that responsibility — when we think the courts or the president will do it for us — we invite constitutional disease.

4. Rediscovering the Role of the Citizen-Cell

Pascal’s vision helps us see that national renewal is not a matter of winning elections but of restoring the flow of constitutional consciousness through the body politic. Every act of fidelity — every refusal to accept what is repugnant to the Constitution — is a cell remembering what it is.

This is why the right to vote, the duty to serve, and the Oath to support the Constitution are not merely privileges or legal forms. They are biological functions of the Republic’s living body. When neglected, the organism weakens; when performed in good faith, it strengthens its immune response.

The true measure of national health, then, is not prosperity or power but the integrity of its constitutional metabolism — the balance between its organs of government and the vitality of its citizens’ understanding.

5. The Practical Benefit of the Pascalian View

The greatest benefit of viewing American history through Pascal’s lens is humility. We see that the United States, like the human species, has not yet reached maturity. We are still learning how to govern ourselves, still discovering what fidelity requires.

This perspective also replaces cynicism with purpose. Each of us, whether judge, legislator, or ordinary citizen, becomes a participant in the organism’s education. Our task is not to perfect the Union by force but to help it remember what it already knows — that justice, liberty, and fidelity are not ideals we impose on the Constitution but properties that emerge when we live by it.

6. A Living Republic

To speak of the United States as one living being is not mere metaphor. It is the only way to explain how a document written in 1787 continues to adapt, correct, and renew itself through the choices of those bound by its Oath.

Like Pascal’s immortal man, America subsists and learns continually. It suffers fevers, forgets lessons, recovers strength, and grows wiser through experience. Its errors are our own; its recovery depends on us. The Constitution is not a relic we preserve but a life we sustain.

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In the end, the history of the United States is not a record of what its leaders have done, but a record of what its body has learned.

And the lesson, repeated through every generation, is the same one Pascal discerned in humanity itself:

We are one being, still learning to remember what we are.

— Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

Wheat and Tares in America’s Field

For a time, America looked like wheat. The young nation that rose from the improbable victory of independence carried the air of something chosen, something blessed. It grew swiftly, spreading its influence beyond its own borders, and came to be called the “leader of the free world.” To many, it appeared a field heavy with golden grain, ready to nourish not only its own people but also nations far beyond its shores.

But now, the field looks different. What once looked like wheat increasingly resembles tares. The noble stalks we thought would feed the world reveal weeds entwined among them—poisonous, deceptive, choking out the good. The nation that once inspired others to strive for liberty and justice seems now to be voluntarily giving up its place among the sisterhood of nations, ceding its moral authority in exchange for division, resentment, and short-sighted gains.

Do we know what we planted? Perhaps that is the wrong question, for the truth is that the seeds were given to us. America did not invent liberty. It did not create justice, nor did it fashion human dignity from nothing. These seeds were gifts—sown from English common law, from Enlightenment philosophy, from the lived faith of persecuted minorities, and from the wisdom of those who declared that “all men are created equal.” But mingled among these were other seeds: slavery, exploitation of the vulnerable, arrogance cloaked as destiny, and the compromise of principles for power. The field was never pure.

For a long season, the harvest looked good. America prospered, outpaced rivals, and seemed to embody the ideals others only spoke of. But wheat and tares look the same until the time of maturity. Only when they ripen do you see which feeds and which poisons. Now, as the world realigns and America stumbles under the weight of its contradictions, we begin to see clearly what was sown.

This is not cause for despair, but for reckoning. To ask what we planted is to remember that we were entrusted with seeds we did not own. They were given to us by Providence, by history, by generations past who believed enough in freedom to risk everything for it. What will we do with that trust? Will we allow tares to choke the field, or will we, with humility, labor to preserve the wheat?

The harvest is not yet complete. There is still time to distinguish, to protect, and to cultivate what is good. But the season is advancing, and the signs are visible. America must look again at its field and remember: the gift was never ours to squander.

For a time, America looked like wheat. The young nation that rose from the improbable victory of independence carried the air of something chosen, something blessed. It grew swiftly, spreading its influence beyond its own borders, and came to be called the “leader of the free world.” To many, it appeared a field heavy with golden grain, ready to nourish not only its own people but also nations far beyond its shores.

But now, the field looks different. What once looked like wheat increasingly resembles tares. The noble stalks we thought would feed the world reveal weeds entwined among them—poisonous, deceptive, choking out the good. The nation that once inspired others to strive for liberty and justice seems now to be voluntarily giving up its place among the sisterhood of nations, ceding its moral authority in exchange for division, resentment, and short-sighted gains.

Do we know what we planted? Perhaps that is the wrong question, for the truth is that the seeds were given to us. America did not invent liberty. It did not create justice, nor did it fashion human dignity from nothing. These seeds were gifts—sown from English common law, from Enlightenment philosophy, from the lived faith of persecuted minorities, and from the wisdom of those who declared that “all men are created equal.” But mingled among these were other seeds: slavery, exploitation of the vulnerable, arrogance cloaked as destiny, and the compromise of principles for power. The field was never pure.

For a long season, the harvest looked good. America prospered, outpaced rivals, and seemed to embody the ideals others only spoke of. But wheat and tares look the same until the time of maturity. Only when they ripen do you see which feeds and which poisons. Now, as the world realigns and America stumbles under the weight of its contradictions, we begin to see clearly what was sown.

This is not cause for despair, but for reckoning. To ask what we planted is to remember that we were entrusted with seeds we did not own. They were given to us by Providence, by history, by generations past who believed enough in freedom to risk everything for it. What will we do with that trust? Will we allow tares to choke the field, or will we, with humility, labor to preserve the wheat?

The harvest is not yet complete. There is still time to distinguish, to protect, and to cultivate what is good. But the season is advancing, and the signs are visible. America must look again at its field and remember: the gift was never ours to squander.

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Everybody wants to go to heaven (because they don’t like conflict), but nobody wants to live there (because they can’t accept everyone). That paradox says as much about our politics as it does about our faith.

We imagine heaven as a place of perfect peace, where conflict is resolved and all is harmony. But if we are honest, what most people mean by “heaven” is the absence of struggle, not the presence of justice. We want quiet, not reconciliation. We want relief, not responsibility.

The problem is that real heaven—whether we conceive it religiously or as the political community we claim to be building—cannot exist without acceptance. If heaven is where “all are welcome,” then it is not enough to want to go there. We must also learn how to live there, side by side with those we would rather avoid.

The Constitutional Parallel

This is precisely the dilemma the framers of the American Constitution handed us. They drafted a structure designed not to abolish conflict, but to discipline it—to make a durable peace out of disagreement. The Constitution does not promise heaven. What it does promise is a community of self-government strong enough to absorb differences without falling apart.

But that only works if we are willing to live in it. And here is the echo of my opening paradox: Americans want the benefits of constitutional order without its demands. We want rights, but not responsibilities. We want liberty, but not the acceptance of those who exercise it differently. We want the shelter of constitutional heaven without learning how to live with our constitutional neighbors.

Marbury and Voidness

Chief Justice John Marshall’s great lesson in Marbury v. Madison was that acts repugnant to the Constitution are void. That principle was not about power, but about fidelity. It was meant to remind every branch of government—and every citizen—that constitutional responsibility belongs to all of us.

Yet over time, we have distorted Marshall’s insight into a myth of judicial supremacy. Instead of embracing our shared responsibility, we offloaded it onto the courts. Like people who say they want heaven while expecting someone else to do the work of living there, we have expected judges to preserve our constitutional order while we pursue private comfort.

This is why we are surprised when our constitutional “heaven” feels more like a battleground. We wanted peace without acceptance, order without participation.

The Hydraulic Constitutional Force

There is, however, a deeper truth that refuses to be ignored. The Constitution has what I call a Hydraulic Constitutional Force—an energy that self-corrects, nudging us back toward fidelity even when we resist it. We saw a glimpse of this when the D.C. Court of Appeals acknowledged that force in Trump v. Thompson. The Constitution pushes back against attempts to make it an instrument of exclusion, just as heaven pushes back against our attempts to privatize it.

But the Hydraulic Constitutional Force does not abolish responsibility. It only reminds us that responsibility cannot be escaped. To want the Constitution without living in it is to miss the point entirely.

Living with Our Neighbors

So the question is not whether we want heaven. Of course we do. The question is whether we are willing to live there—willing to accept our neighbors, political and otherwise, as fellow residents in a shared order.

That is the harder work. It means tolerating dissent without equating it with treason. It means recognizing that the Oath of office binds every official, regardless of their ideology, to protect and defend the Constitution—not as a weapon, but as a common home.

We may not always like the neighbors. We may not even fully trust them. But if heaven is real, and if constitutional self-government is to endure, then we must learn to live with them anyway.

The Real Invitation

The paradox I began with is more than clever wordplay. It is a test of fidelity. To want heaven but refuse its terms is to want an illusion. To want constitutional government but deny its responsibilities is to build on sand.

We have to decide: are we content with imagining peace while avoiding our neighbors, or are we willing to accept the invitation to live in it?

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Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD

The Founders Didn’t Plan the Great American Experiment — They Found Themselves in One

When we talk about “the Great American Experiment,” we usually speak as though it were deliberate — as though the Founders had a blueprint and set out to design the most ambitious government in human history. But that narrative is backwards.

The Founders did not plan an experiment. They found themselves inside one.

Identity Before Governance

The first constitutions drafted by the newly independent states were less about governance and more about identity. These were not technical manuals for running governments. They were declarations of being; documents that said, this is who we are now.

Their purpose was to mark the break with Britain and to enshrine in writing that sovereignty now resided with the people. Rights were listed not so much to protect against imminent abuse, but to announce a new political identity to the world and to one another.

Governance Was an Afterthought

Because identity was the focus, the structures of government that emerged were often improvised, inconsistent, and in some cases, deeply flawed. Many states simply repurposed colonial charters or borrowed heavily from English models. The first national framework — the Articles of Confederation — reflected this mindset. It preserved state sovereignty above all else and offered little in the way of actual governing power.

For a time, this seemed enough. The Revolution had been won, independence secured, and the idea of a strong central government still made many nervous. But the weaknesses of the Articles quickly became obvious: Congress couldn’t regulate trade, enforce laws, or even reliably pay soldiers. Governance — neglected at first — now demanded urgent attention.

When Crisis Forced the Question

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was not the final act of a carefully laid plan. It was a response to a national crisis. Only when the Articles failed did governance become the central concern. In that sense, the Constitution was not so much invented as discovered.

By trial and error, the states had learned what would not work. By 1787, they were ready to design something that might. The result was not perfect — it never is when humans are involved — but it has endured longer than any other written constitution in history.

We Are Still Part of the Experiment

If we did not plan this experiment, then we are not its masters — we are its participants. That means we are not at liberty to bend it to our will, as some among us, seem to think they can.

And that raises deeper questions: Who planned this experiment? And who is running it now?

The best answer may be that the experiment was planned by the same force that orders the natural world — by Providence, or by what the Founders themselves called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The Constitution, viewed in this light, is not merely a human invention but a discovery: a record of principles waiting to be recognized.

And who runs the experiment? Not any one person or party — not even the Supreme Court — but the Constitution itself. Its structure contains what I call the Hydraulic Constitutional Force (HCF): a self-correcting mechanism that resists distortion and rebalances the system over time. Chief Justice Marshall captured this reality in Marbury v. Madison when he declared that “a law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” That principle of voidness is not an assertion of judicial supremacy, but a reminder that no branch of government — not even the judiciary — is free to bend the constitutional order to its own preferences.

And this is not just historical reflection. The D.C. Court of Appeals, in Trump v. Thompson (2022), effectively recognized the same reality when it described how the constitutional system itself responds to crises. That decision reads less like a narrow ruling and more like a description of the HCF at work — acknowledging that the Constitution’s design contains within it the very pressures and pathways by which it protects itself.

A Lesson — and a Challenge — for Today

Remembering that our constitutional order began as an experiment should give us both humility and courage. Humility, because we are not the final word — our generation can still learn and correct. Courage, because the Founders themselves did not wait for perfect solutions before acting.

But reflection is not enough. The experiment is ongoing, and its survival depends on us. Each constitutional crisis — from Dobbs to Trump v. United States to the debates over presidential immunity — is a signal that the HCF is active, pressing us toward correction. These moments are not merely partisan battles. They are invitations to reassert constitutional fidelity.

The Great American Experiment is not ours to end. It is ours to honor — by learning, by teaching, and by acting to keep the system in balance.

I am back

 After a long hiatus I'll be publishing my ideas on the gap between mythology and reality.