ABSTRACT
Thomas Jefferson did establish the consent of the governed in the Declaration of Independence, and responsibility for the government does follow from that. The consent of the governed is part of the country’s essential philosophical premise—its attitude toward power. The Founders all considered self-rule an experiment. Washington wrote that if the people desire to modify the distribution of the constitutional powers it should be done by the amendment procedure specified in the Constitution. In all cases where the government is to “act on the people, let the people be represented and the votes be proportional.” Thus the representative branch, to which the people delegate their power, has to have the dominant power—the power to raise and spend money, the war power, the power to impeach anyone in the other two branches, and the power to control what the Supreme Court can hear.
