consent of the governed

All of the procedure, the Constitution, everything really has to always go back to be checked against the idea that our government has the consent of the governed, that we are actually the sovereign.

Although these different thinkers reach very different political conclusions, they are all—even Hobbes—operating within a fundamentally democratic paradigm: Governments are justified by some kind of appeal to the consent of the governed; the state of nature is the key philosophical tool for establishing how people reason through their rights and obligations to each other.

Note “We the People” in the preamble to the Constitution, legitimate governments “deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” in the Declaration of Independence and “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in the Gettysburg Address.

“By accepting only one of the issues raised by the Governor and holding the other two issues in abeyance, the majority refashions this court as the Governor’s avenue for imposing policy changes without the consent of the governed,” she wrote.

So, we depend on the news media, a dependence that's very dangerous in a democracy where the precept is that we need the informed consent of the governed, while what we're getting is their uninformed pseudo-consent.