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> Why not? If you'd like to get into a lengthy discussion about fundamental political philosophy, I'd be happy to do so. :P But basically, if *every* person in a population is oppossed to a law (as would be assumed if *nobody* obeys it), why should the government have the right to make it?

> You misunderstand. I didn't mean that the people vote on every law, but rather the power of the government is derived directly from the people. This is the most fundamental concept of American government (read the Declaration of Independence or Amendments IX and X of our Constitution) and to most democratic systems. It's an old idea, dating back at least as far as John Locke and probably further.
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> The idea (often called the social contract theory) is that government exists only at the behest of the people, since it is the people who institute governments in the first place. This is essentially why you elect representatives: it is your way of exercising control over the government which exists only to serve you. This principle is applicable to monarchies as well as democracies (Locke's seminal work on the subject was written in response to the English Glorious Revolution).

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> Stephen

Since this has turned into a political philosophy discussion, I have a question to ask. I happen to be taking Idiot Amerian Gov't and Politics for Credit 101, and the rote memorization that's obviously been in textbooks for several generations now is that John Locke came up with the idea of a social contract. But in my philosophy class, we read some original Locke and some original Rousseau, and it seems to me that though Locke was probably more responsible for the way that the Constitution has been interpreted, the idea of a social contract was at least as much Rousseau's. My question, then, is who came first, and who came up with social contract first? My philosophy teacher, for whom I have great respect, seemed to be hinting that Jefferson was referring to Rousseau two or three times in the Declaration of Independence, but I don't know.