Not quite 20 years after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a famous author published a book, looking back on that auspicious event in our nation’s history. This book included the first telling of the famous Benjamin Franklin story, where a well-known Philadelphian, seeing Franklin shortly after the closing of the Constitutional Convention, asked him, “Dr. Franklin, do we have a monarchy or republic?” and Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
And that is the big question that faces us today: can we keep our republic?
I’ve spent these last several pages discussing my thoughts on how we can preserve our republic, and what each of us needs to do in that regard. I’ve laid out my feelings on how we need to build a society with:
- Strong education
- Healthcare for all
- Affordable housing
This society has to lead to participation in national service from our youth, continued participation and voting, and active engagement in our political system. We need engagement with the local representatives to ensure that the will of the people locally is driven up through the system, not the will of the system flowing down to the people like scraps below a table.
It’s up to all of us. We can hate our national situation. We can complain about our state of disunion or we can do something about it! As I said in my initial posting, it is up to each of us to register to vote, but most importantly, to contemplate what we want to vote for and what kind of world and country we want to live in and raise our children in.
We need to think about our ideals and how we implement them to create a society. We need to speak to our children about the world that they want to inherit from us, and then we need to speak to our neighbors and our entire community to truly understand the communities that makes up our nation. Then we need to look to the people who wish to represent us and tell them what kind of a nation we want and how they will best represent us to bring that about. Those that do not listen to to the people should not be voted for. If you don’t like you choices, find better ones, or become one.
We all know how this is supposed to work and we complain that it doesn’t, but if we don’t do our part to make it work, it never will. It is now up to each and every one of us to do our part and to save our republic.
I understand that it may sound idealistic and naïve, but I think if we look back at our history our founders were certainly idealistic, if not naïve about their chance of success with their new nation. After all, if the success of America in 1787 was such a sure thing, that person mentioned in the first paragraph above would never have had to ask Franklin the question if we had a republic, or a monarchy. Why are we asking ourselves that again today?