The Constitution is no contract

"The American individualist Lysander Spooner exploded the contractual theory of the State by analysing the US Constitution. He could find no evidence of anyone ever making a contract to set up a government, and argued that it was absurd to look to the practice of voting or paying taxes as evidence of tacit consent. 'It is plain', he concluded, 'that on the general principles of law and reason ... the Constitution is no contract; that it binds nobody, and never did anybody; and that all those who pretend to act by its authority . . . are mere usurpers, and that every body not only has the right, but is morally bound, to treat them as such.'"