Money and federal autocracy: 1913 and the quiet inversion of the American constitutional order

The American Revolution affirmed that sovereignty inheres by nature in each Citizen, and collectively in the People. The Constitution completed a structure in which authority flowed from Citizens to their several State republics, and from the States to a Union holding only delegated powers. 1913 inverted that order. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments were procedurally valid, but substantively illegitimate. The decisive change needed no amendment: the Federal Reserve Act displaced constitutional money, removing the fiscal discipline natural money imposes unconditionally. A century of evidence confirms a trajectory towards federal autocracy. Restoring constitutional order begins with gold and silver coin, which only statute now prevents.