Power Is Loaned, Not Owned

Your state representative doesn't own his seat. You loaned it to him.

That sounds like a small thing to say, but it turns the way most of us think about government right side up. We talk about "our" representatives as if they were landlords and we were renters, hoping they'll get around to fixing the leak. It is supposed to be the other way around.

Walter puts it plainly in the introduction to Right Side Up: A Tale of Two Parties:

"It is time to remind Washington, D.C. (and every state capital) that power in America is loaned, not owned."

This post kicks off a new series here at Right Side Up Missouri, drawn from the book. The series asks one question over and over: who does this country belong to? Today we start with the loan.

Where the power comes from

The book reminds us that our government, "modelled on precepts laid out in the Bible, is supposed to exist at the consent of the governed." Notice the word consent. Government doesn't generate power on its own. It borrows it from us.

Walter writes:

"Real power is supposed to flow upward, from us, the governed, with Godly morality at its core. Yet more and more it flows downward, from them, the government. Many in office have forgotten that their authority exists only because we lend it to them, and their job is to protect the rights we already possess, not to grant or withhold rights as they see fit."

That last line matters. A government that hands out rights can take them back. A government that only protects rights it didn't create has to answer to the people who hold them. The book is clear about where those rights come from: "the unalienable rights given to us by God". Government is the hired hand, not the owner of the farm.

How the loan works in Missouri

You don't have to go to Washington to see the loan in action. It happens right here.

• The Missouri House has 163 members. Each one is elected for a two-year term. Every other November, the loan comes due and you decide whether to renew it.
• The Missouri Senate has 34 members, elected to four-year terms.
• Your county officials (commissioners, clerk, collector, assessor and the rest) are elected by the people of Jasper County, too.

None of those people owns the office. Every one of them holds it on terms you set at the ballot box. That's what a constitutional republic is: the people lend authority to representatives, for a set time, under written limits.

When the borrower forgets

Here's the trouble. Loans that never get checked on start to feel like gifts.

When we only show up once every couple of years, and only to vote and complain, the people holding the loan stop thinking about who it came from. Walter admits in the Foreword that he used to be part of that problem. He describes "people like myself, not being engaged sufficiently in the political process beyond voting and complaining, and 2) politicians, all too happy to fill the void caused by our absence."

That is the honest part of the story. Politicians didn't steal the keys while we were watching. We set them on the counter and walked off.

There was a time when that wasn't so. In the book's first chapter Walter describes the frontier families who settled this country:

"Government, if you could even call it that, was as local as the guy you saw at church on Sunday."

You can't forget who you work for when your boss sits two pews over.

What a lender does

If power is loaned, then we are the lenders. Lenders check on their loans. Here's what that looks like in plain terms:

• Know who holds your loan. Can you name your state representative and state senator? Your county commissioner? If not, look them up this week.
• Call them. Not just when you're angry. Call when they do something right, too. They should hear from the people they work for more than they hear from lobbyists.
• Show up. County commission meetings, school board meetings and city council meetings are open to the public. Few people go. That's exactly why going matters.
• Vote, all the way down the ballot. The races at the bottom of the ballot are often the ones closest to your kitchen table.

The book ends its introduction with a challenge:

"We have the ability to do it, but do we have the will?"

So let us ask you

Who's the last elected official you called?

Tell us in the comments: who it was, what you called about, and whether you got an answer. If you can't remember the last time, that's all right. That's what this series is for. Over the next few weeks we'll keep walking through Right Side Up: A Tale of Two Parties, one idea at a time, and we'll keep coming back to the same question: who gets to decide, and how far away from you should that decision be made?

The loan is yours. It's time we started acting like it.

Learn more about Walter and the book at [rightsideupmissouri.com/meet-walter](https://rightsideupmissouri.com/meet-walter), and follow the series at [rightsideupmissouri.com/blog](https://rightsideupmissouri.com/blog).

Sources

• Walter Hayes, IV, Right Side Up: A Tale of Two Parties, Foreword, Introduction and Chapter 1.
• Missouri House of Representatives (163 members, two-year terms): https://house.mo.gov/
• Missouri Senate (34 members, four-year terms): https://www.senate.mo.gov/