Has the GOP’s southern strategy done US in?
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Nov. 24, 2024 – The Civil War was the first indication that a substantial cohort of Americans reject the principle of equal liberty under law. In doing so, they sought to nullify the nation’s raison d’etre.
It is good to speak a little French, because in 1776, the French were our only friend against the British, and a century later they honored our revolution with the gift of the Statue of Liberty, which reminds us, 250 years into our experiment of self governance, to keep alight the torch because we are the last best hope of mankind.
It also corrects the temper tantrum thrown in 2003 by southern republicans when France wouldn’t let us use their air space to prosecute our illegal war against the imaginary Satan and his invisible WMD, Saddam Hussein, long-time client of the C.I.A..
The shared dream of equal justice under law is why such a diverse collection of colonists united in the first place, why they organized a rebellion, and successfully prosecuted the War of Indepencence from the tyranny of democratic monarchy.
They staked their lives and their sacred honor on the outcome of that war. As inheritors of such hard-won liberty, it is the sacred obligation of every generation of Americans to take stock of themselves, to examine the health of the nation, to behold the breadth and depth of Liberty.
First among equals on the team of rivals who drafted the documents that gave birth to America is Benjamin Franklin. Nobody was better qualified, nobody had a greater investment in the answer to the question posed immediately after the Declaration of Independence had been signed in Philadelphia – “What have you made?”
“A republic, if you can keep it.” So answered the world’s most famous man, 70 years old, fully aware of the fragility of republican self-governance. Franklin was so eager to find accommodation with the British that he pleaded with Parliament in person, and was ridiculed by a parliament full of democratic aristocrats for his efforts.
A republic is an ideal form of government, democracy is merely the tool by which it operates. The parliamentary monarchy that made the American War of Independence necessary was, and is, a democracy. The Intolerable Acts, which led straight to the shot heard round the world, were voted for by parliament, against the express wishes of the king!
Ben Frankling had personal knowledge of these facts. It is no accident that he did not say democracy, but it is a mistake for the noisiest cohort of democrats to weep and moan about the perilous plight of democracy, as if it were a dewy faun abandoned in the forest. China and Russia are democracies, the United States of America is a republic. Why nobody sounds off about the nullification of republican governance is a mystery.
The people of the United States of America have used the tool of democracy to elect a an avowed, not a secret, dictator. Is the American republic yet within reach to be re-claimed, or have we consigned it to the dust heap of history, for it to spend eternity alongside the Confederate States of America?