WorldNetDaily (thanks, theobamafile.com) today published a commentary by former Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes, Plaintiff in Keyes v. Bowen, in which Dr. Keyes describes the fundamental principles of a constitutional republic and how we are a nation of laws, not people.

Excerpts from the commentary are below…

Relying on the results of the recent election, some will say “by the authority of the people,” which is to say the majority of the people which elected him. But until now, the United States has not been simply a democratic republic (that is, a regime in which the sovereign power follows the will of the simple majority) but a constitutional democratic republic (in which the sovereign power follows the will of the constitutional majority, and is bound by the terms and conditions specified in the Constitution.) The best illustration of the difference may be taken from the very history Obama’s election is supposed to culminate – the history of black Americans. In 1954, when the Supreme Court announced its opinion in the famous Brown v. Board desegregation case, the simple majority of the American people had repeatedly and continuously accepted or tolerated segregation, both in their election of representatives and in the legislation passed by those representatives. The Court held segregation to be contrary to the Constitution (the Supreme Law of the Land) and therefore unlawful. Its authority to do so rests on the clear logic of judicial review succinctly articulated by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers:

A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both: and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decision by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental. (Federalist 78)

Though the results of any given election also represent the will of the people, the validity of those results rests on the substantive and procedural understanding arrived at by the people and expressed in the provisions of the constitutional compact. In it, the people have agreed that, first in its adoption and then in the adoption of any changes in its terms, a more comprehensive majority is required than that which decides the outcome of any other election prescribed by it. The need for this more comprehensive majority makes the Constitution a more permanent and durable expression of the will of the people than any subsequent action by a simple majority. In this context, those who compose the simple majority are, like the members of the legislature, subordinate agents of the constitutional majority. …

If Barack Obama is allowed to assume the office of president without positively establishing his eligibility under the Constitution, it will set a precedent for exempting the allocation of executive power from constitutional restrictions on the pretext that majority support overrules constitutional authority, popularity supersedes the fundamental law. Obviously, this is a recipe for the establishment of democratic dictatorship, like that which characterized the revolutionary first republic in France and licensed its murderous excesses. It is the counterpart of the “democratic people’s republics” in whose name countless millions were imprisoned and killed by oppressive party dictatorships in the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, etc.

In an era when the insecurity implied by the threat of terrorist attack already overshadows our liberties, only one thing may be more dangerous to our freedom than such a precedent – the fact that it comes about because of the ignorance, fear, or selfish ambition of those sworn to uphold the Constitution. If they lack the character to do so now, before abuses of executive power create an environment of physical fear and intimidation, what must we expect once those abuses produce their inevitable effect? The people mesmerized by his tinsel rhetoric may expect Obama to resist the temptations of demagogic tyranny, but if he assumes office knowing that in doing so he has already successfully set aside the Constitution, no reasonable person could agree with them. As Shakespeare wrote, “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.” (“Macbeth,” Act 3, Scene 2)