If You Can Keep It

Statue of the Repub­lic, Chicago

I am increas­ingly becom­ing wor­ried about the state of our great Nation.  Every day I see more and more how we are falling from a once great repub­lic (not a democ­racy) to a bro­ken sys­tem, which is lead­ing dan­ger­ously to total­i­tar­i­an­ism.  I’m not just say­ing that because of Barack Obama and he being a Demo­c­rat.  No, it didn’t start with him.  It’s been going on longer than I’ve been alive.  How­ever, in recent years it has accel­er­ated at an increas­ingly alarm­ing rate, most notably with George W. Bush’s spend­ing pol­icy.  (And yes, I voted for him — twice…)  Most of us (includ­ing me) have had our blind­ers on.  I am fully awake now.

I was doing a lit­tle search on quotes from our found­ing fathers, and I stum­bled across this one from Ben­jamin Franklin.  I truly believe that this man, as well as the oth­ers who started the fight for this great coun­try, were God-inspired and true Chris­t­ian men.  How else could they have suc­ceeded in break­ing away from tyranny?
The Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion of 1787 was delib­er­ated in secret.  No one from the gen­eral pub­lic (not even the media) were allowed in.  Anx­ious cit­i­zens of our young coun­try had gath­ered out­side of Inde­pen­dence Hall in Philadel­phia to learn what gov­ern­ment they would have.  His­tory has it that a Mrs. Powel asked Ben­jamin Franklin, “Well, Doc­tor, what have we got, a repub­lic or monar­chy?” Dr. Franklin didn’t hes­i­tate when he said:

A repub­lic, if you can keep it.

Well, I think that the past year and the years ahead will be the ulti­mate tes­ta­ment as to whether this state­ment — nay, chal­lenge — will be answered.  Will Amer­i­cans wake up to what our “lead­ers” in Wash­ing­ton are doing?  Will we raise our voices; will we shout from the rooftops and moun­tain­tops and say “No more”?  No more Big Brother, No more gov­ern­ment spend­ing, no more hand­out to ille­gal aliens?

We’ll see.

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