Bend sinister: how the constitution saved the republic and lost itself

I n the construction of a state, legitimacy is everything and nothing. Students of the state have taken a wrong turn by following Max Weber's formulation of the ideal typical state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physicalforce within a given territory" (Gerth and Mills 1946, 78).' Although an ideal type can be helpful, the concept can be frozen as an absolute. I call it Weber's syndrome because he left no place for illegit imacy. There is, for example, no reference to illegitimacy in Gerth and Mills' carefully compiled essays of Weber. And a Google search revealed that "political legitimacy" came up with 219,000 hits while "political illegitimacy" came up with 3,ooo hits. "Gov ernment legitimacy" earned 18,400 hits while "government ille gitimacy" received 195.2 It is highly probable that Americans make illegitimacy a taboo word because it suggests that makes us just another ordinary state. Every state is the cold remains of conquest, control-by-force. Thus, on the coat of arms of every dictatorship, monarchy republic, or democracy, including that of the U.S., there ought to be a promi