All claims to political authority or legal power, are rooted in implicit agreements about the knowledge necessary to govern, how it is attained, and who is qualified to possess it. Such agreements are what hold societies together and allow political systems to emerge. Whatever the historical situation, agreements about knowledge are always the basis of consent. When agreements become questioned by a critical mass of the relevant population, a revolution or a counterrevolution, is empirically discernible. We will explore American agreements about knowledge and, thereby, that configuration of political authority in the United States which expresses the fundamental realities of the system.