The people created government. The Constitution is the government’s charter and chain, not the source of the people’s rights. When government exceeds its delegated powers, it acts without legitimate authority. The people retain the authority to reform, replace, or abolish such government, and Article V provides the lawful mechanism to change the constitutional structure itself.

“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author

“It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those that are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author