To Renew the Republic

Vanity

[Jacquerie]

We send good conservative people to Washington, DC. Most go wobbly, rino or worse.

Oppression is on the rise. Institutions that worked so well to keep us free for so long are powerless to stop a rampaging executive branch. What happened?

We stopped maintaining our republic.

There isn’t a worldly creation that doesn’t need continual upkeep and renewal. Without regular maintenance to our marriages, autos, homes, bodies and souls, they will degrade and eventually cease to operate, or will ill-serve their intended purposes. Everything not consciously maintained and reinvigorated will degrade and spoil.

The ancients were aware of this as it applied to republics. So were our Framers. At birth republican stoicism rules. Democracy follows. Demagogues arise and republics fall into anarchy. The cry to do something about the disorders leads to tyranny. Rinse, wash, repeat. Isn’t America close to the ‘do something’ phase?

Americans know their forebears created the world’s best republic, yet the American republic is not the longest lived. At about 450 years, that achievement goes to the Roman Republic, and the Romans had to work to keep it. Liberty ended when the Romans stopped improving.

Over the course of invasions, depressions, decemviri, and the occasional demagogue, the Roman Republic long managed to renew itself to meet changing circumstances. In particular, the constant tension between the few and the many was finely tuned over the centuries. Plebs and nobles had their distinct powers, and when one overstepped its bounds, the other was ready to defend its freedom. Through regular improvements to their republic, Machiavelli described republican Rome as being on the straight path which could lead them to perfection.

Shouldn’t that concept be put back into practice in 21st century America? Didn’t we, just as the Romans, do that for so long? From 1607 to 1912, from the time of our colonial forebears to the time of my grandfather, the American governing system(s) continued to improve.

Step back for a moment and consider:

1607-1702. England was too consumed in religious conflict, civil war and revolution to pay much attention to her American colonists. Heavily influenced by biblical teachings, our societies and governments grew in something approaching a Lockean state of nature. 1702 -1765. Early maturation of colonial governments.
1765- 1776. Improvements to American self-rule collide with George III.
1776 -1781. Thirteen independent republics go it alone.
1781-1788. The Articles of Confederation are a logical first step, but insufficient to implement the revolution and secure freedom.
1788. We The People form a more perfect union in a system that improved upon the Articles of Confederation.
1791. The bulwark of constitutional freedom is immediately strengthened with a Bill of Rights. 1795. Article III is further clarified in the 11th Amendment.
1804. Article II, the electoral college process is improved by the 12th Amendment.
1865. The 13th Amendment bans the British imposed institution of slavery.
1868. The 14th Amendment reinforces personal and societal rights guaranteed in the Declaration and Bill of Rights.
1870. Negroes are guaranteed equal political rights in the 15th Amendment.

Thus, the American republic was regularly maintained, improved, and strengthened. Most amendments refined the relationship of man to state, and man’s freedoms under self-rule. Notice that we also worked to perfect governing institutions through the 11th and 12th amendments, by tweaking the judiciary and presidential election process. America responded to actual circumstances, noticed room for betterment, and did what was necessary. Of note is that the essence of the 1787 judiciary, congress, and the executive remained intact through 1912.

In 1913 the mistakes began. The finely tuned congressional institutions of 1787 along with a central respect for property were destroyed upon ratification of the 17th and 16th Amendments.

Instead of strengthening the republic in the face of societal and economic change, Americans betrayed themselves. Overnight they weakened the freedom enhancing structure of their government. With the 17th Amendment they tossed confederal government and embraced a democratic republic, which history has shown to be precursor to anarchy, followed by tyranny.

They cut and pasted an inferior popular form over a finely tuned freedom enhancing federal structure. Without adjusting enumerated powers which were designed with the assumption that the states would forever participate in congress, America substituted freedom and property with democracy as it’s central tenet.

The mistake of the 17th Amendment wasn’t evident until the New Deal, when popularly elected senators rolled over and did the bidding of FDR and his radical Supreme Court justices. By the 1960s only the dullest did not recognize the threat posed by encroaching DC power and wealth transfers.

Rather than identify, admit and repeal the mistaken 17th, America has settled this past century for a senate corrupted from its original purpose. Rather than serve to put teeth into the 10th Amendment, and provide wise counsel to the president in the course of his nominations to high offices, judiciary and treaties, America accepts a senate of demagogues whose first talent is reelection, followed by the promise of sending taxpayer goodies back to their states.

There isn’t much time to step back on the straight path to republican perfection. As our history and recent experiences show, all human creations are subject to corruption and will perish unless consciously renewed and reduced to first principles.

Obama is gathering despotic powers as quickly as he can. Little stands in his way, and certainly not a Uniparty congress.

Yet, we can avoid the historic cycle of once free republics, but unless we take active measures to restore American republicanism, Obama will continue his assault.

Article V of the Constitution is there, it is within our grasp. We must take it, restore federalism, or join history’s long list of failed republics.

[RKBA Democrat]

It’s caesar’s game played by caesar’s rules.

[tet68]

Well put. Wilson did more damage to this country than
people today realize.

[IronJack]

Well said.

[Jacquerie]

Thanks!

[Walrus]

Not bad, Jacquerie, not bad.

[Taxman]

Taxman Bravo Zulu!

Well said!

[gattaca]

bump

[gattaca]

bump

[Jacquerie]

Thanks.

Have you read the Indiana statute dealing with her delegates to an Article V convention?

Here is the Indiana statute that will govern delegate commissions.

I summarize it here.

[gattaca]

Thanks