There is no word in the English language more important in a discussion of government than the word "sanction." If you don't know what the word "sanction" means you can't possibly understand government, because sanction is the word that describes where the authority of government comes from.

Webster defines sanction as "an authoritative action that confirms or ratifies a decision." Think about that. Sanction implies that every decision requires an action of some kind that proves the validity of that decision.

Now, in essence, government is nothing more and nothing less than a series of decisions. In other words, all actions in reality that we call actions of government begin with a decision. The word sanction implies that the decision itself, even a decision of government, requires an action of some kind before that decision can be seen to be authorized: that's what Webster means by "an authoritative action that confirms or ratifies a decision".

This idea that decisions have to be confirmed or ratified by an action is as old as government itself. In the days of kings, sanction was provided to the king's decision when the king pressed his ring into the hot wax that sealed the document on which the decision was inscribed. The symbolism of that action on the king's part was a graphic demonstration of the meaning of the word sanction. When the king pressed his ring into the hot wax sealing the document on which his decision was written, the king was actually balling up his fist and pushing it into the decision itself. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the king was telling everybody that the power behind the decision written on that particular document was the power symbolized by the king's balled up fist. In other words, the king was saying he personally would see to it that any person who disobeyed the decision in the document was beat into submission.

The problem the king was dealing with is the age old problem of government: call it the problem of consent. Unless people granted the king the right to be the author of decisions that people have a duty to obey, the only way the king could get people to obey his decisions was through brute force.

Everyone who has ever been involved in government knows government is a meaningless word unless the decisions of government are obeyed by everyone subject to government. Every government that has ever existed on the face of the earth has known there are two ways government can rule: by authority and by brute force.

Let's examine the way of authority first: Authority is the word that describes the power that people grant government. Notice that the word "authority" is very similar to the word "author." There is a reason for this similarity: the power we call "authority" is actually the power to be the author of decisions. In other words, the power of authority is the power to author--to write--decisions for other people.

The power of authority is a real power in reality because people consent to obey the decisions made by those to whom authority is granted. The power is seen when government decisions actually move people to do things they did not independently decide--write--for themselves.

For instance, there was a time in history when most everyone believed kings received sanction from the author of governments to rule people. Because the people believed the king had the right to author decisions that people were obligated to obey, the king was given authority by the people. An ax murderer might have the power to force people to obey his will temporarily, but he would never be seen to have authority because the people knew the ax murderer had never received sanction from the author of governments for his actions.

Here's an example of how authority functions: The king's ring pressed a sign into the document containing his decision. Now those who granted the king the right to make decisions for them saw the king's insignia as sufficient evidence to obtain their consent to obey the king's decision. The governed consented to the fact that the king had the right to be the author of decisions that must be obeyed. The king ruled those people by authority.

But what about those who refused to grant the king the right to be the author of their decisions, the right of authority? For those people, the king had a message, the message that lay behind the insignia on the king's ring: the message in the king's balled up fist.

The message in the king's balled up fist had real meaning because the king was backed up by real power, the power represented by the brute force of everyone who granted the king authority. It was that brute force that was brought to bear on those who refused to concede authority to the king.

Sanction is a word that includes in its meaning both of the two possible alternative mechanisms through which government can occur. A decision has meaningful legal sanction if that decision carries with it both authority and the raw, brute force necessary to force obedience from those who refuse to consent to the authority of the author of the decision.

Are you beginning to see why the concept of sanction is the key to understanding where authority comes from? Without the action taken by the king to push his fist into the wax, the decision written on the document would have no recognizable sanction that could enforce obedience from everyone.

For another example of sanction, take the Constitution of the United States. Sanction for the decisions contained within that document was provided when the various states acted by ratifying the document. Legal scholars today recognize that ratification process as exactly equivalent to the king pressing his fist into the wax. The elected Representatives of we, the people, committed all the force, the brute power, of the people of the United States of America to defend and enforce the message contained in the document called the Constitution of the United States of America. Therefore the document was perceived to have legal sanction, to be law in the United States of America.

The point is that no decision, no matter whether it be by king, Court, Congress, or whoever, can be seen to be authoritative without some authoritative action that provides sanction to the decision.

In order to put the government of the United States into a meaningful historical perspective, you've got to see how sanction was provided that allowed the government of the United States to exercise authority. Long before the Constitution of the United States was ever ratified--exactly eleven years before to be exact--the government of the United States of America received permission to exercise authority in this nation.

That permission came in the form of a sanction, an authoritative action that confirmed or ratified a decision. That sanction, the insignia of the King that sealed the decision spelling out the foundation for Law in the United States of America, was pressed into the document containing that decision in the Revolutionary War of the United States of America versus the Empire of Great Britain. That sanction was provided in the verdict handed down in the Court of Last Resort by the Author of governments in response to a case brought before that Court by the Founders of the United States of America. The brief for the Case that was brought by the Founders and the American people was contained in a document called the Declaration of Independence. When the real citizens of the United States of America analyze that brief, they will realize that they are looking at the foundation for the Law that has authority over every citizen of the United States of America. And when the real citizens of the real United States of America realize what has happened to the Law in this nation, the real citizens of the United States of America will grant authority to those who are willing to enforce that Law in this nation.

If the people who live in this country refuse their consent to that Law, there will be no alternative but to take the case back to the Court of Last Resort. Those interesting in avoiding that alternative must understand the real Law that presently rules the real citizens of the United States of America.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SANCTION

Our inability to understand exactly how the Declaration of Independence received sanction that carried with it the full authority of Law can be traced to the fact that we have been taught to assume that the only sanction that can provide a government with legal authority has to be provided by some type of elected assembly of the people. Such is not the case.

We have been treating the subject of government as if the creation of the government and the creation of the form of government were one and the same process. That is a mistake. The creation of a government is one thing; the creation of the form that government will take is another. Each of these two activities requires a different type of sanction.

Throughout the history of mankind, only one action has ever worked to provide sanction for the decision to create a government. Now this, I am convinced, is the precise point that we have all been ignoring that has made it impossible for us to make sense of what has happened to the government of the United States. How did the decision embodied in the Declaration become sanctioned as law?

Let's look again at the Declaration: The Declaration is designed to define what kind of government the Creator intends to exist on this planet. The Founders declare that this government was intended by God to be one created by the consent of the governed, following the form the governed deemed fit to accomplish its purpose. The Law being defined in the Declaration was a Law concerned not with the form of government but with the creation of a new type of government. It was that Law that was being declared in the Declaration. In other words, the Declaration of Independence is a proposal for the creation of a new type of government based on a new definition of the plan of the Creator for government. In theological terms, the Declaration of Independence is a definition of exactly how God intends the ministry of the law to be carried out (government by consent of the governed for the purpose of protecting Creator-endowed rights, etc.).

Now the proposed form of government outlined in the Declaration obviously met with some serious opposition from the king, et al. For this reason, the signers of the Declaration called the document a "Declaration" rather than a Law. They knew that their declaration, in order to have the force of law, would have to be tested. But they also knew that if their Declaration met the test and was found to be an accurate analysis of the Creator's plan for government that their Declaration would be fully sanctioned and stand as Law with all the full authority that term stands for.

The men who created this government took their decisions--their self-evident truths about what God wants from government--to the only Court on this planet that can actually rule on questions related to the creation of a government. The Revolutionary War fought by the Founders of the United States of America was a case fought in the Court of Last Resort. And in that Court they made their case before the Judge of nations, and the Judge of men's souls. And the Judge ruled on the decision taken by those men. His decision was revealed in the outcome of the proceeding. And in that outcome sanction was provided to the decision taken by the men who created the government of the United States of America. Their decision became fully sanctioned as the Law for government in this New World called the United States of America.

All else was simply formality. The ratification of the Constitution of the United States was a formality because the Constitution itself was a formality. The Constitution was a formality because it concerned only the form that the government would take. The reality--the government itself--had already been created and had already been ratified. It had been ratified and confirmed by the authoritative sanction received in the Revolutionary War. And everybody in the United States understood it!

We have gotten in trouble because we have forgotten what was once as plain to everyone in this nation as the nose on your face. When this nation was young, everybody understood exactly where the people got the right to write their own Constitution, they understood precisely how they got the right to play governor: God himself had sanctioned their right by allowing them to prevail in the Court of Last Resort. People would have laughed in anyone's face who tried to argue that sanction was derived from the consent of the governed, or from the Constitution of the United States. They all knew that this government had received sanction years before the Constitution was even written. And they knew exactly how that sanction had been provided: the King of Kings had pressed His fist into wax warmed by torrents of human blood and thereby sanctioned the decision outlined in the Declaration. Sure, we, the people, "ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States" but we did it with full knowledge that we had received sanction to ordain and establish the form of government: God Himself had sanctioned the creation of that government by the decree He issued in the Court of Last Resort. And that decree confirmed the ideas in the Declaration of Independence as Law.

But now historical fact has almost faded from view. People have forgotten what is necessary in the creation of a government. But that's not all the people of the United States have forgotten: we have forgotten the very plan that was sanctioned as the grand strategy that would guide this government in every action taken by government!

How could such an awesome and potentially earthshaking lapse of memory occur? Is it possible that two hundred years of life have caused the United States of America to contact some virulent form of Alzheimer disease that afflicts nations? Or is there another explanation available, one that while not so simple and easy to understand actually allows us to become equipped to participate in implementing the only plan that can actually allow the government of the United States of America to operate with real authority on this planet?

There is such an explanation and you need to understand it if you are a citizen of the United States of America.