“A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”

Words That Haunt Our History

It was the last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 18, 1787.

James McHenry (1753-1816), a delegate from Maryland, recorded, “A lady asked Dr. Franklin, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?'” Franklin memorably replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Dr. Franklin’s words have haunted our history from that day, but seldom more so than they do today. We’re discovering again that although our democracy is strong, it is not impregnable. It can be lost. Franklin got it right. It is up to every generation to keep it.

Republic or Monarchy?

In January 1776, newly-arrived immigrant Thomas Paine, made the same distinction when he helped ignite the Revolution in Common Sense. He asked, “Where … is the King of America?” He answered, “I’ll tell you Friend … in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
Paine named the urgency of the moment. “If we omit it now, some [dictator] may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.” (Sound familiar?)

He declared, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”  And they did! And they entrusted that newly-made world to us. But…

Who’d A Thought…

“Who’d a thought that just prior to commemorating our overthrow of a king, the U.S. Supreme Court would reinstate monarchy?” Ken Sehested asked the question in Baptist News Gobal. He went on, “That might be an exaggeration, but only a teeny-weeny one. With today’s Supreme Court ruling, presidents of the U.S. have ‘at a minimum, a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.’” Hamilton fans can hear King George singing, “You’ll be back.”

Sehested went on to say: “If ever there were a Rubicon to be crossed, today, in U.S. history, it happened. As it happens, no, not every person is subject to the law. Already in 2019 former President Donald Trump presciently claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power ‘to do whatever I want.’”

I can still hear Richard Nixon saying, “Well, when the President does it that means it is not illegal.” History might have been different if he had had the Court in his pocket back then!

In light of the Court’s ruling, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Anne Applebaum, described a second Trump Presidency.

“Donald Trump has said that he wants mass deportations, perhaps carried out by the military—and he could do that. He wants to turn the Department of Justice against his enemies, and he might do that too: Just this week, he reposted a demand that Liz Cheney face a military tribunal merely for opposing him. The Supreme Court has just removed some more guardrails around our imperial presidency, and of course that process could continue, especially if Trump is able to pick more justices … If you think none of this can happen in America, please read the history of Hungary or Venezuela, stable democracies that were destroyed by extremist autocrats.“

It’s worth your time to hear historian Heather Cox Richardson compare Trumpism with Victor Orban’s takeover in Hungary, including Orban’s claim of “Christian” authority. The plans for Project 2025 take us immediately in that direction.

Keeping the Republic

On one level, the choice in the coming Presidential election is between two old men. Unless the Democrats make an unexpected change, you can stop whining about not liking either of them! These are your choices.

After 50 years in government and a legislatively productive Presidency, Joe Biden is showing signs of aging and, some are suggesting symptoms of early-onset Parkinson’s. The former President is an aging, convicted felon, fraudster, and self-described sexual predator who Marco Rubio called “a con artist” and who behaves in ways that are consistent with sociopatic narcissism.

But this election is about much more than whether you like or dislike Biden, love or loathe Trump. It impacts elections across the board, from the Presidency to the local school board. Biden and Trump are the products and representatives of two radically different visions of our republic. Biden represents a democratic (small “d”) consensus that, with differences and disagreements along the way, has guided this nation and our global allies since WWII, as demonstrated by NATO.

To the degree that he has any values other than self-aggrandizement, Trump is of a totally different order. Project 2025 lays out in disturbing detail the plan to shatter the government as we know it. It envisions concentrating power in a “unitary executive” which, in the words Former White House Counsel John Dean, would mean “neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it.” The current majority on the Supreme Court has just moved us in that direction.

Sadly, the writers of Project 2025 cloak part of their agenda in an ultra conservative distortion of Christianity. You can forget the separation of church and state which the Founders enshrined in the First Amendment. It has been described as reflecting “the anti-feminist, anti-choice, and anti-LGBTQ priorities of the Religious Right, calling for ‘government power’ to be deployed to ‘restore the American family’” (That is, of course, “family” defined by their traditionalist view) It declares that the federal government must protect fertilized eggs from the moment of conception and calls for criminal action against distributors of abortion medication. 

The plan also decrees that business owners should be able to ignore nondiscrimination laws that conflict with their religious beliefs while not protecting the religious beliefs of employees. It turns out that freedom“is only freedom to live in alignment with their religious worldview.” The New England Puritans tried that until Roger Williams broke their mold by modeling religious freedom.

That’s only a glimpse at the 922-page plan. Trump’s denial of knowing anything about it is consistent with the way hides himself behind a lie of not knowing. But you can forget the messy, noisy, ponderous process of democracy or the judicial system. Speaking on Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts declared, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” It’s their way or the highway that leads to another January 6 insurrection.

So, here we are. We have been given a republic. The question is whether we will keep it.

Grace, peace and courage,

Jim