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 Congress repealed it.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.