"A Republic, If You Can Keep it"

As Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall after the final day of deliberation and the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman stopped him and asked, "Well, Doctor [Franklin], what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin answered, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Franklin's answer was quite wise, and perhaps prescient. 

He understood that the Constitution that he had just helped write, and the government and nation it would now define, was only as good as the diligence of The People in holding their elected and appointed officials to its enumerated powers and limits, as well the willingness and ability of The People to assume the risks and responsibilities that would now be essential and necessary in order to live in a civil society with unprecedented liberty and freedom, and clearly defined protections thereof.

He also understood how difficult this might become, hence his "if you can keep it."

What does this mean?

It means that in order to keep the republic, you are required to participate. Most people would respond to this by saying "I vote, so, I'm participating." WRONG. Participation means: 

1) Understanding just what it is in which you would participate, that is, the Constitution, the supporting documents of the Constitution, history, and current events.

2) Understanding just what your elected and appointed officials are doing, as well as the consequences of their actions - both intended and unintended.

3) Holding your elected and appointed officials to the powers and limits of the Constitution and to the highest ethical standards and fiscal responsibility.

If you don't have the knowledge derived from 1) and 2) you are incapable of completing 3), and you should NOT vote.

I just had the intense displeasure of sitting in a restaurant well within good earshot a group of people who were engaged in a conversation I can only loosely describe as 'political'. These people were so completely clueless that they would make excellent fodder for one of those late night TV impromptu street interviews in which people make utter asses of themselves by their appallingly ignorant incorrect answers.

One woman kept remarking incredulously about her housekeeper. "She's brilliant!" she repeated at several points. "She's written a few books." "Her English is better than mine. She has a Shakespearean command of English." But the woman also couldn't understand how her housekeeper, who she repeatedly suggested is smarter than her, could hold an opposing view to hers and vote, "against her own self-interest". This woman simply could not understand how her smart housekeeper could find taking other peoples' money via government police powers, both directly and in the form of government services, repugnant.

A man at the table actually declared with complete, but ignorant confidence to his companions, that "progressive income tax rates are in the Constitution" (they are not, only the power to levy taxes is mentioned in the Constitution).

It not hard to realize exactly how we have the crooks, tyrants, parasites, lunatics, and idiots currently in Congress, the courts, the White House, statehouses, and bureaucracies when you realize that these people, and tens of millions just like them, vote.

Even worse, because there are so many ignorant fools as these, the Constitution has been rendered little better than a quaint historical document by hubristic and power-hungry politicians, judges, and bureaucrats taking advantage of this lack of knowledge, vigilance, and action. A sampling of how:

The Tenth Amendment says that any power not enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution is reserved to The People and the states. Every day, the federal government flagrantly violates this Amendment, with the help of the next example.

The 'commerce clause', which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce for the purpose of keeping commerce between the states free and unimpeded, has been perverted via the bizarre judicial contortion that since any given penny eventually crosses state lines, everything and anything is "interstate commerce" and can be "regulated" (with "regulation" taking on an entirely different meaning and scope than that intended by the writers of the Constitution), and thus the federal government gave itself powers it was never intended to have, that are supposed to be left to The People and the states.

Obamacare attempts to pay for itself via a federal mandate that individuals buy a private product, that is, health insurance. Seems like a good way to cover the costs, but the government has absolutely NO right to force a citizen to engage in any act. If this insurance mandate is upheld, it would mean that the government has the right to force anyone to do anything. This violates so much of the Constitution it's too much to specify here!

And most recently, the National Defense Authorization Act, which in flagrant violation of the Constitution gives the federal government the power to arrest American citizens on American soil on mere suspicion of "terrorist affiliations", and imprison them without evidence, charges, hearings, trial, or habeas corpus. This effectively repeals the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, doing away with all guarantees of due process. Knowing a couple of people who were falsely accused of crimes, this is no abstract fear I express!


Of course, many of you think none of this touches you, or that you benefit from it. The problem is, everything comes with a cost. What you don't pay for with money, time, and labor, or that of other people, you pay for with reduced liberty and freedom, and thus opportunity and future, and eventually and inevitably it touches everyone, and we are harmed in ways we've never yet had to suffer in America (but are starting to), that have caused immeasurable misery and enslavement throughout the rest of the world.

So, I wonder - can you keep it?

Or is it already gone?

In which case I challenge you: Can you take it back?