“A republic,” Benjamin Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.” The anecdote has become part of the lore of America, and for good reason.
The heat was sweltering when delegates emerged from Independence Hall on Sept. 17, 1787. Crowds had gathered outside, waiting for news from the Constitutional Convention.
Among them was Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent Philadelphia socialite, who approached Benjamin Franklin, who at 81 was wizened but still sharp. , and for good reason. Franklin’s quip captured the fragility not only of the American experiment but of liberty and self-governance itself. This is not to say the American experiment has failed, nor to suggest the United States has not been a force for good in the world.
It has. But it is fair to ask,For one, few people today even speak of America as a republic. It is far more commonly described as awrote in Federalist No. 10 that “pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” he was warning that unchecked majority rule often devolves into factionalism, instability, and the erosion of individual rights.
That description feels uncomfortably familiar today, and there’s reason to believe it stems from the erosion of the constitutional system Franklin, Madison, and company created in 1787.. They feared concentrated authority, and nothing was more dangerous than unchecked government.
When Thomas Paine called government a “necessary evil,” he was describing the premise on which the Drawing on the ideas of Montesquieu, David Hume, John Locke, and other Enlightenment thinkers, the framers split federal authority into three branches, but that was only the most visible feature of America’s checks and balances. Federal powers — coining money, regulating interstate commerce, declaring war, maintaining armed forces — were carefully enumerated in the Constitution.
Then came the Bill of Rights. do: censor speech, disarm citizens, conduct unreasonable searches, seize property without due process, etc. The 10th Amendment further stated that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved to the states or the people. All of this was intended to keep the government in check. The framers understood that government mission creep is the norm. That is precisely what happened over the course of generations.
Today, the federal government regulates nearly every form of economic activity not expressly prohibited, often through executive agency fiat.or compel individuals to buy insurance. Still, Obamacare passed Congress. President Donald Trump often appears uninterested in involving Congress at all. From unconstitutional tariffs to unlawful bump stock bans to the undeclared war in Iran, now stretching beyond 70 days, Trump has repeatedly acted unilaterally.
Even supporters of these actions couldn’t argue they are republican in nature. This is precisely the kind of concentrated executive power the founders feared. Though Washington has grown in power, checks and balances continue to work. The Supreme Court has recently rolled back executive power grabs, including President Barack Obama’s carbon dioxide Still, the court cannot rescue the American experiment on its own.
Only a renewal of the ideals on which the nation was founded can do that. The first emphasized virtue: self-command, moral responsibility, prudence, and justice. The second explained how prosperity emerges when people are free to produce, trade, innovate, and cooperate under stable rules that protect life, liberty, and property. Despite these challenges, the American experiment can survive another 250 years, but only through a renewal of the classical liberal ideals on which it was founded.
It will not survive another 50, however, if Americans forget what Benjamin Franklin understood: Keeping a republic requires a virtuous people devoted to liberty, not power.
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