A Republic, if You Can Keep It
Democracy requires work to keep it running
Tomorrow is the 4th of July.
It’s a day where hundreds of millions of people across the United States will gather to celebrate their country, its history, and its glorious ideals.
It’s a day where their country will once again fail spectacularly to keep up those ideals.
Tens of thousands of new people are being detained by ICE every week, citizens are being shot in the street, protestors — once protected by the First Amendment — are being charged with terrorism and given 50 to 100 years in prison.
The man in the White House is a tyrant, exactly the sort of creature that the Founding Fathers established the U.S. to escape. A wannabe King without a crown, who can’t stand to hear the word ‘no.’
A man who doesn’t respect freedom.
When the Constitutional Convention was held back in 1787, there was debate and uncertainty about what kind of government the new fledgling country would have. It just came out of a serious war of independence from the British monarchy, and the people weren’t keen for a repeat.
So when Benjamin Franklin left the room, the crowd of onlookers held their breath.
One nervous citizen asked, “What sort of government do we have?”
And Benjamin Franklin famously answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
What he meant was that democracy is fragile. It’s a tiny bird with hollow bones, beating its wings as hard as it can to stay aloft. It depends on its people to help it lift the weight of the nation off the ground.
Democracy, as I’ve said many times, only functions on the backs of its citizens.
Your actions make or break it. Either you keep it going by doing your civic duties, voting and protesting and keeping informed and showing up to hold truth to power…
Or you don’t. And it all falls apart.
I hope y’all enjoy your 4th of July celebrations. But I also hope they inspire you to remember what your country is supposed to be.
A Republic. Not a monarchy, not an oligarchy, not a deranged dystopian ethnostate as Trump and his cronies so badly want.
The world has always trended towards progress. You’ve gone past what your Founding Fathers built to introduce greater equality, end the barbaric practices like slavery — sort of, you’ve got work to do there — and give more rights to your citizens.
But there’s so much more room for improvement. So much space to grow.
This 4th of July should be a reminder of the fight you have on your hands, and an inspiration to stand up. Let it be a day of protest as much as a day of joy. Take your country back from the evil brewing in the halls of power.
If you do, it will remain a democracy. If you do, don’t just settle for the status quo — build it better than it was before. Build a country where everyone has a voice, not just the straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied wealthy men that currently hold the most power.
Make it a country where diversity is celebrated and respected, not treated like a dirty word.
Make a country where people live freely, no longer marginalized and sidelined for their skin colour, their birth place, their level of ability, their religion or sex or gender or who they love.
Then, for once, America will stand for that lofty goal it once professed but always fell short of achieving; all men created equal. All people created equal.
A true democracy. If you can keep it.
Solidarity wins.
I love your article!
I know many of us throughout the world hope that this July 4 the United States wakes from its slumber, sees the problem at hand and rapidly works to improve the situation so that it becomes a vastly better nation than it has ever been.
But I fear that Americans celebrate and glorify their nation on July 4. Many US writers I have read suggest they will be treating the date as a day of introspective examination, others as a day of mourning for what was. I hope that many of their fellow citizens take similar paths and that it translates into action to ease the flight of that fragile bird.