Posted on 06/17/2024 4:19:53 AM PDT by Sam77
There's an old story that Benjamin Franklin was approached after exiting the Constitutional Convention, and he was asked what sort of a government they had created. His response was, "A republic, if you can keep it."
Virtually everyone who learned anything from their middle school/junior high school government class learned that we are a Constitutional Republic, although now I wonder if everyone is actually taught this anymore.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
Democracy has a different name; it’s called Mob Rule.
And so, ever since the creation of the Constitution and the Republic, someones have been doing their best to subvert the intended structure. Up to now, they have done a bang-up job of perverting the Constitution having defeated most of its meaningful parts using its meaninful parts to their advantage. It is or was a Republic, if we could have kept it.
They’re both wrong as can be.
America today is Ochlocracy.
The discovery by the supreme court of the “penumbra” of the Constitution wherein the right to abortions was found is a classic example.
If you think Obergefell v. Hodges was judicial usurpation wait’ll you see Rov v. Wade.
The Constitution, unamended is a fairly simple document, giving the rules for creating and administering laws, and stating what things the Congress could and could not legislate, and how to amend (i.e., change) the Constitution itself. It was meant to be simple and straightforward. Then, folks noticed that maybe it would be a good idea if the Constitution clearly stated bad things the government should not do, like control speech or confiscate firearms.
After a while, slavery going out of fashion, it was decided to make that illegal, and to insure the rights of freedmen.
Then it just got silly, with the government bursting out of its seams and taking on more and more responsibility for things it cannot do, and should not try, and the Supreme Court rubberstamping every gimcrack hairbrained notion some Ivy League professor could dream up and get the New York Times to endorse.
Nearly 50 years ago we had the IADC standard land drilling contract. It was four legal pages with one page devoted entirely to columns of items and 'X' and 'O' for who provides what. It had worked well all through the 50s and 60s. So far as I know it still exists but the last contract I signed was more than 20 pages plus amendments and master service contract all totaling to nearly 100 pages. It still does the same thing it did 50 years ago and the X and O page is still the most frequently referenced aside from the weasel words in the repair hours clause.
Now the contract is even more complicated since we have to deal with responsibility for such things as who has caused the PTSD claimed by many who say it is caused by hurricane evacuations and such. Strange how the whole crew came down with the malady just after the rig was stacked. Go figure.
As for government expansion. Without boundaries, specific mission and limited people organizations will always morph to waste. It being too time consuming to sort out the necessary from the chaff the most expedient solution is to whack away with a mostly indiscreet machete and build back from there. There will be unintended victims but the greater good will be served. Give a person a job and without specifics he will justify it somehow to survive. Give them enough rope and money and they will build empires. This government has too many people on the payroll, has given them too much rope and FAR too much money. We have far far to many empires of waste, fraud and abuse. People who have serious jobs and plenty of necessary things to do usually don't get into mischief or minding someone else's business.
So, did Franklin actually say that? Well, maybe.
Probably.
With some changes.
The quote doesn’t appear in any of Franklin’s writings, nor in the transcripts of the convention debate, nor in any contemporaneous newspaper accounts.
According to quote trackers Bartleby and the Yale Book of Quotations, it first appeared in 1906 in the American Historical Review. But that doesn’t mean it comes from the 20th century; the Review was publishing for the first time the notes of James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
This is what he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
The notes are both more and less specific than the legend. It was a “lady” who asked him, not just “someone.” But the location of the alleged exchange, outside Independence Hall, does not appear here.
Zara Anishanslin, a history professor at the University of Delaware, recently wrote in The Washington Post that even more details are known than that. In fact, in McHenry’s original notes, he included the footnote, “The lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philad[elphi]a.”
Mrs. Powel is Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent society figure and the wife of Philadelphia Mayor Samuel Powel. Like Franklin, Powel was known for her wit and knowledge. She often hosted convention delegates and their wives in her home, and later became a close friend of George and Martha Washington, who spent most of Washington’s presidency in the temporary capital of Philadelphia.
In fact, McHenry published his story much earlier than its 1906 appearance, Anishanslin wrote, in an anti-Jeffersonian newspaper in 1803, and in later pamphlets and essays. In one of these versions, he describes Franklin as “entering the room” to speak with Powel, implying this happened in her home and not on the streets of Philadelphia.
Though the anecdote didn’t become well-known until the 20th century, it must have gotten at least a modicum of attention in the 19th century. In 1814, Powel wrote to a relative that she had heard the story about her conversation with Franklin but couldn’t remember it herself.
Franklin’s witticisms often carry an ominous tinge — and were often edited. Another of his famous quotes from that era comes just after Washington had been elected the first president.
“The first man put at the helm will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards,” he said.
But that isn’t the full quote. He continued, “The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.”
There’s an extended version of “A republic, if you can keep it,” too. In McHenry’s 1803 account, Powel immediately shoots back, “And why not keep it?”
Franklin responds, “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”
Members of Congress, interpret that at your peril.
I wonder if school students learn Anything these days about how our country was established & is operated (on a good day).
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