If We Can Take It!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Where is the republic?

It had been a long four months. The debate was constant and – at times – the exchange was heated. To the participants of the meeting, the cooperative effort to craft the ideas that would shape the founding of a nation, and the collaboration to codify these ideas into a mere 4,444 word document, was by no means a preordained undertaking; a fact that was all too evident when the convention nearly broke apart in disarray on several occasions, not to mention when some members walked out in protest. But they had finally reached this moment in time—on the afternoon of 17 September 1787—when the work product was complete and all that remained to do was for the contributors to affix their marks to the parchment. The signatures were penned, one by one, except three. And then the convention was adjourned to City Tavern where members of the historic event gathered together one last time for nourishment and reflection. Posterity would prove the magnificence of the Guiding Hand that worked its way in that summer of 1787.

At age eighty-one, Benjamin Franklin was the elder statesmen at the convention. Infirm, Mr. Franklin would journey to and from Independence Hall, carried forth by four inmates from the local jail. It was on this last day of the convention, as he was leaving Independence Hall, a woman stopped the quintet to ask, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?”

The reply came without hesitation. “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

§

It is with great sadness that paper and pen meet to offer this response to Mr. Franklin: “I am sorry, sir; but we have not kept it.”

Perhaps we lost it when President Woodrow Wilson—who lamented the “defects” in our constitution because of the separation of powers it enshrined—implemented policies to concentrate power in the hands of so-called enlightened men in Washington and embarked upon the period we call liberalism or progressivism: tyranny, by another name. Thomas Jefferson warned us of such activity when he said, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

John Adams said, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” Perhaps we lost it when the federal government encroached upon public education to change what was taught and how it should be funded, so much so that the principles of our founding have been lost to generations of Americans. Benjamin Disraeli warned us of such tactics when he said, “It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.”

Perhaps we lost it when President Roosevelt embarked upon his New Deal entitlement programs and laid the foundation for confiscatory taxation and income redistribution. Jefferson warned us of such things when he said, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” John Adams reiterated the warning when he said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

Perhaps we lost it through the repeated intrusion of the federal government on the authority and sovereignty of the state governments—so much so that now even Mr. Universe himself, the governor of the State of California, goes to Washington, crawling on his knees with begging-bowl in hand. James Madison warned us that such “ambitious encroachments” by the federal government “would be signals of general alarm,” and he pondered in Federalist 46, “what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.”

Perhaps we lost it when our elected federal representatives discarded their oath and the limits placed upon them by the constitution. You would think it a very easy oath to uphold, since Article I, Section 8 of the constitution grants only eighteen clearly written powers to the federal government. Jefferson was clear when he said, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated,” and James Madison confirmed, “The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

But regardless of when the event occurred—if indeed, it was a single event at all—the republic is surely lost. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce vetoed a bill that contained a provision to help the mentally ill in society. When explaining the reason for his veto, President Pierce said, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. To approve the measure would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.” James Madison was equally clear on such matters when he said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

The Founding Fathers and their contemporaries were not heartless men; they were passionate about many things, just as we are today. But their zeal for liberty far exceeded their fervor to reach into another’s pocket to subsidize their interests. They knew, as did the Frenchman Frederic Bastiat, that “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” And so they fought a war to rid the land of the pillaging that had become a way of life for the British Crown.

Does this not describe our society and the actions of politicians in Washington today? Do they not enshrine theft and other mischief in legal code and then glorify their actions while they luxuriate in the fruits of their plunder? How is it possible that the same constitution that prevented President Pierce from passing legislation benefiting the mentally ill now grants authority to the federal government to nationalize automotive companies, insurance companies, student loans, and private healthcare? How soon before these very same politicians set their sights on energy, private pensions, and other property to which they also have no constitutional authority to confiscate? Or as Thomas Paine said, “We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”

Thomas Paine would recognize the new pretenses created for revenue and taxation if he were alive today. Do we not hear the rhetoric of a demagogue when we listen to a president slander insurance companies, health-care providers, energy companies, and private citizens who earn a wage that is deemed excessive, while he simultaneously pits citizen against citizen to create class warfare? This is the oratory and agitating well-familiar to students of the Communist Manifesto. Perhaps you notice the abundance of quotes from our Founding Fathers and their contemporaries used herein to underscore a good deal of our founding principles that have been lost. Has our republic gone so far astray that our elected representatives know only to apply the language and doctrine of Karl Marx and not that of the Founders?

Benjamin Franklin knew of the warfare between the differing classes, and so he pondered not the proletariat and the bourgeoisie that consumed the thoughts of later Marxists, but rather the constant struggle between two other groups of people; those who use their God-given talents and rights of liberty to create, and those who abuse their natural blessings to take what has been created by the first. And so Benjamin Franklin wrote:

“As all history informs us, there has been in every State and Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing and governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh—get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever.”

No, we have not “kept it,” as Doctor Franklin challenged us to do. If Benjamin Franklin’s ghost was to be seen wandering the streets near Independence Hall today and he was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” he would likely respond:

“Madam, you have got neither. You have allowed yourselves to be outwitted, and now you have a government that claims unto itself the unalienable rights to control your Life, to confiscate your Liberty, and to hamper your pursuit of Happiness. You were given a constitutional republic, but you have not kept it—and so now you must take it back. Hurry while you can, for there are still those among you who have not forgotten the principles of freedom or the republic we bequeathed. But if you dither further, you shall learn of the bitterness about which my good friends wrote: you shall either taste the unpleasant truism of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”; or you shall too late comprehend the harsh reality spoken by John Adams, who said, “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

Thank you for the republic, Doctor Franklin . . . that is, if we can take it.