A. Sovereignty

All political power in the United States comes from the Citizens. Government only exists because the Citizens delegate power to it. They limit what it can do through this Charter. No Office, law, institution, or official is above the Citizens or the law. All government workers answer to them and can be held accountable through lawful means.

The philosophy this charter is based on, its founding principle, includes the idea of consent of the governed. If government really derives its "just powers from the consent of the governed," then it has to be the case that the power comes from the governed. In other words, government gets its power from us. Full stop.

The Constitution of 1789 implies this is the case ("We the People"), but it never explicitly makes the case that the people, in particular the citizens, are the source of the government's power. Over the two plus centuries since its ratification, government has, little by little, eaten away at the rights of the people. I wanted to set power structure back in its proper order, and I wanted to do that before anything else.

This clause's position as the first positive statement of the Charter places the emphasis on the citizens, where it belongs.