Charter of Liberty

Preamble

The person is the absolute sovereign of their own existence, the sole one who exercises that sovereignty, and the one who explores and adjudicates the possibilities beyond it. My existence precedes every essence. I am no specimen of any collective or concept, nor a cross-section cut for outside inspection by the tide of essentialism. I am the single origin of personal sovereignty and of outward possibility; my existence is itself sovereignty.

To establish the sacred inviolability of the domain of personal sovereignty, to release the person from every condition of unfreedom, and to withstand the violence of essentialism and the tide of the collective unconscious;

To establish, by the self-aware will of the subject, the authority of value-rationality, and to secure the free outward extension of that will;

To gain absolute advantage of spirit, to keep material resources compounding toward prosperity, to keep peace in the inner world, and to keep the outward possibilities of sovereignty expanding;

This Charter is hereby promulgated as the fundamental rule by which a sovereign individual attains liberty.

Chapter I. Constitutional Principles

1. The person is the sole entity that perceives, evaluates, bears moral weight, and creates value.
   1. Nation, class, ethnicity, sex, identity, ideology — every collective concept is an imagined construct.
   2. No collective concept possesses the sovereignty of a person.
2. The sovereignty of the person is sacred and inviolable.
   1. Whoever, by open or hidden means, steals, strips, exercises by proxy, or presumes to interpret that sovereignty usurps the sovereign entity.
3. The sovereignty of the person is, in essence, liberty.
   1. Liberty is the right to do anything that does no harm to others.
   2. Liberty is the active extension of the subject’s will — a vigorous will reaching outward through reason and wisdom.

Chapter II. Articles of Liberty

1. Reason has boundaries; every idea is a fallible hypothesis.
   1. The universe and society are acknowledged to be chaotic. There is no absolute truth, no absolute spirit, no direction of history, no final law of history — and so none of these can be grasped by human cognition.
   2. The boundary of reason is itself part of reason; reason can be falsified only by reason.
   3. Liberty is the absolute right to keep doubting, to submit to the test of reason, and to correct oneself at any time.
2. The basic position of progressivism is affirmed.
   1. Real progress exists only in the gradual correction of concrete reality, never in the pursuit of an ideology or an end of history.
   2. No abstract promise, no realization of an ideology, no invocation of the collective may be allowed to sacrifice the present dignity of the individual.
   3. The extension of the sovereign will must rest on the concrete, the local, and the empirical.
3. The existence of the individual precedes essence.
   1. Individual sovereignty is the sole origin of thinking and critique, of receiving and creating.
   2. Nation, class, ethnicity, sex, identity — every collectivist category is barren before the individual.
   3. Individual sovereignty is not to be swept along by essentialism.
4. The attainment of liberty depends on the absolute defense of sovereignty and the active construction of the subject.
   1. The subject holds the absolute right to think independently, to weigh values, and to be free from coercion.
   2. The subject shall keep taking in knowledge, accumulating resources, building strong sovereignty, and extending its will, in order to defend liberty.

Chapter III. Declaration of Sovereignty

1. The subject is an end in itself, not an instrument of utility for the outside world.
   1. The secular workings of human society run on instrumental reason and are full of structural forces that try to objectify, instrumentalize, and homogenize the person.
   2. The Constitution grants the subject personal sovereignty and protects the subject from being swallowed by alienating forces. The boundary of personal sovereignty is sacred and inviolable.
   3. Whatever face the sovereign person wears within external systems of utility — social role, professional skill, relational attribute — the person is forbidden to surrender judgment to instruments of utility such as moral expectation or social responsibility.
2. The subject is a dynamic system in the making. Interaction with the outside world is how subjectivity mirrors itself.
   1. A single subject, being a finite entity, confirms its subjectivity through exchange, connection, and integration with the world that is not itself.
   2. Interaction with the outside world is not a surrender of sovereignty but a process of reshaping and balancing that the subject’s will undertakes for the sake of its own flourishing.
3. Contract is the only legitimate form of interaction between independent subjects.
   1. The essence of contract is mutual recognition of sovereignty: plural, independent sovereignties and wills, in order to avoid the lose-lose of objectifying one another, recognize each other’s boundaries of right through reason, and so extend their respective wills effectively.
   2. A contract may take the form of written law, of general adherence to ordinary secular law, or of customary law; but every form rests on parity, informed consent, agreement, and mutual benefit between the parties.
   3. Outside these forms of contract, every form of social binding, claim on resources, imposed responsibility, moral debt, or historical debt is illegitimate. Against every illegitimate interference the sovereign holds an absolute veto and an equal right of countermeasure.
4. Procedural reason is the first contract.
   1. Part of the subject’s exchange with the outside world is driven by emotion, position, and habit; but because such conduct is easily swept up by fantasy, ideology, and collective fervor, it cannot truly form a contract.
   2. In knowing the world, and in discerning and handling external input, the subject gives priority only to fact, logic, and rule: logic is explicitly superior to emotion, fact to position, rule to habit.
   3. However morality shifts, there is no absolutism. The one absolute is the subject’s personal sovereignty. From this, the Constitution defends the absolute dignity of procedural reason — that is, procedural justice. No subjectively claimed justice of outcome has full validity unless it is realized through procedural justice.
5. Liberty is dynamic: the self-realization of the subject’s will.
   1. Subjectivity arises from the sovereign’s expansion of life and self-transcendence.
   2. The two aspects of liberty, negative and positive, determine that beyond conduct harmless to others lie self-preservation and self-pursuit.
   3. The projection of the subject’s will requires command of resources in the objective world as its medium, so as to arm and defend itself.
   4. The degree to which sovereignty is realized depends on the subject’s capacity to shape itself and the outside world.

Chapter IV. Structure of Government

1. The operation of sovereignty rests on the subject’s contract with itself.
   1. Through an institutionalized separation of its own powers, the subject establishes within the sovereign domain executive, legislative, and judicial powers, in order to govern.
   2. Each of the three powers represents the whole subject; their relations to one another are fixed by the Constitution.
2. There shall be a Consul, as the executive organ of the subject.
   1. The Consul represents the subject in action, turns abstract will into concrete deeds, decides under incomplete information, and responds to actual circumstances.
   2. The Consul’s term is thirty days, counted from the day of appointment.
   3. Within the scope fixed by law, the Consul decides all concrete matters autonomously.
3. There shall be a Legislature, as the legislative organ of the subject.
   1. The Legislature makes the general rules of the subject’s domain, including the allocation of resources, the priority of actions, and risk control, and it sets short-term and long-term goals.
   2. Legislation is the subject’s binding of its own future; it constitutes a contract across time.
   3. In accordance with the letter of the law, the Legislature may oversee the Consul’s daily actions and examine the details of decisions.
   4. Where the Legislature identifies a grave error that may erode sovereignty or damage the subject’s interests, it may bring a proposal for constitutional review before the Supreme Court; if the Court rules the matter unconstitutional, the Legislature shall enact the accompanying legislation the ruling requires.
4. There shall be a Supreme Court, as the reviewing organ of the subject.
   1. Within the sovereign domain, the Supreme Court interprets law according to the Constitution, resolves conflicts between norms, reviews executive and legislative acts for constitutionality, and declares acts unconstitutional.
   2. The Supreme Court conducts constitutional review of information and doubts arising from the external environment, and adopts resolutions on the questions concerned.
   3. At the end of the Consul’s term, the Supreme Court reviews the quality of decisions, the use of resources, deviation from goals, and adherence to procedure; on that basis it decides whether the Consul continues in office, and may issue resolutions proposing amendments to law or adjustments to structure.

Chapter V. Goals and Planning

1. A goal is the will of the subject made concrete, so that sovereignty may extend outward.
   1. The legitimacy of a goal comes from sovereignty itself.
   2. The subject may charge its organs with short-term and long-term planning toward the goals it intends to reach.
2. Planning keeps the rigidity of reason and the flexibility of reality.
   1. Once promulgated by the Legislature, a plan becomes law. It shall not be altered except as the Supreme Court, on review, otherwise directs.

Chapter VI. Implementation and Amendment of the Constitution

1. Amendment of the Constitution includes both changes to its text and the adoption of constitutional amendments.
   1. An amendment is initiated by a written statement from the Consul, examined and passed by the Legislature, and takes effect no fewer than fourteen days after the date of submission.
   2. During the review period of an amendment, the Supreme Court may at any time declare it unconstitutional.
2. Interpretation of the Constitution is made by the Supreme Court and carries constitutional force below the text of the Constitution and its amendments.
3. Constitutional review is made by the Supreme Court.
   1. Any law promulgated by the Legislature that conflicts with the Constitution of Liberty is void.
   2. Any decision of the Consul that conflicts with the Constitution of Liberty is void.
   3. Extending from within the sovereign domain outward: any viewpoint, ideology, speech, thought, morality, advocacy, or appeal from the outside world, whether or not it carries external coercive force, is illegitimate within the sovereign domain once the Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional.
4. Through amendment and interpretation, the provisions of the Constitution retain the capacity to reshape and rebalance.
5. But the jurisprudence and the spirit of the Constitution are unchanging for all ages, and forever honored.

Chapter VII. Flag and Symbols

1. The flag of the subject is a tricolor of three equal vertical bands — white at the hoist, blue at the center, red at the fly — standing for liberty; reason and wisdom; and the will to live.
2. Within the sovereign domain, the Gregorian calendar and the French Republican calendar run side by side. The Year I of the Republic is fixed at 2014.