“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”, by Randall Smith

President Trump Will ‘Lead America Back to God,’ According to 1983 Prophecy, by John-Henry Westen
July 1, 2020
Justice Roberts Splits The Baby, by Thomas FitzGerald
July 2, 2020

*Image: Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, c. 1785 [National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.] 

By Randall Smith,  The Catholic Thing, July 1, 2020

Randall B. Smith is a tenured Full Professor of Theology. His book Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Guidebook for Beginners is available from Emmaus Press. And his book Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture at Paris: Preaching, Prologues, and Biblical Commentary is due out from Cambridge University Press in the fall.

Randall SmithThe legend has it that a crowd had gathered outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention were concluding in 1787. As Benjamin Franklin exited the Hall, a woman called out, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”  To which Franklin replied:  “A republic, if you can keep it.”

This story was told repeatedly by members of both parties during last year’s impeachment of President Trump.  Obviously, telling the story didn’t resolve the issue one way or the other.

Who cares about the Constitution anymore?  Many Americans still do.  And all Americans should.  Not the Constitution created out of various interpretations of the Bill of Rights, but the Constitution itself and the form of the Constitutional order it was written to create and protect.

Let there be no mistake:  Greater respect for the Constitutional order and a willingness to sacrifice our “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” in its preservation are the only things standing between us and tyranny.  It might be the tyranny of chaos, the tyranny of a political party, or the tyranny of a political ideology, but tyranny is afoot in the land and tyranny there will be, unless we renew our dedication to the republican form of government bequeathed to us.  ….

Read more here:  https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/07/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it/