It takes two parties to un-do a republic
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Nov. 22, 2024 – When a political party re-elects to the nation’s highest office someone proven to have failed every test of suitability for any office, that party has outlived its usefulness and has become a clear and present threat to the nation’s health, to its existence as a free nation.
Also dangerous, of course, is the party that repeatedly failed to promote an alternative acceptable to the population. The greater guilt must lay with the more literate party than with the party more dependent on electronic media.
When a person reads material printed on the static page, every facet of the reasoning mind is activated and exercised. When a person listens and watches any program, from a six second Tiktok to a six-part documentary, the reasoning mind is overridden by the instinctive mind, which first has to respond to myriad visible and invisible stimulii, before considering whatever rational sense the program may contain.
Regardless which band of partisans should have known better, Americans on both sides have to accept the facts of life, and must quit digging deeper holes for democrats and republicans, before, as American persons, we can return to the healthy maintenance of humanity’s last best hope for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“A republic, if you can keep it”
We mustn’t allow Ben Franklin to become a prophet. Exiting the building in Philadelphia where the nation was born on paper, he was asked what the Continental Congress had just created. “A republic, if you can keep it,” was his cryptic reply.
He did not say a democracy, because democracy is merely a tool, an ancient Greek adding machine, a way to count votes. He said republic, because a republic is the ideal form of self-governance, not a mere tool for the accomplishment of an ideal.
In a republic, all power rests with the people. In a constitutional monarchy, such as the American Revolution liberated humanity from, power is distributed unequally among the people, the aristocracy, and the monarchy.
The republican party has just re-elected someone who has promised to destroy the American republic, to usurp the people’s power, and to be a dictator – but only on day one. Search thousands of years of history and you will not find a single king for a day. But search TV Guide, and you will find both The Apprentice, and Queen for a Day.
That scores of millions of people would choose to trust a demonstrably dishonest person – with the life of the nation, must be enough to keep legions of philosophers, psychiatrists, and political scientists busy for as long as such professions are allowed to practice their arts. It merely breaks the heart of poets, artists, and children.
What’ll you do about it?