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