We’ve Proven We Can Keep A Republic
Living through the last few months of this election cycle makes me think of REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”
If you listen to the partisans on the cable networks, talk radio, or your X feed, you certainly believe that the world will never be the same if (Trump/Harris) is elected.
It’s very divisive. The invectives hurled may seem like something we haven’t seen before, but this is just a repeat of what typically happens every four years in a Presidential election.
“Nazi.” “Leftist crank.” “Baby Killer.” “Mush for brains.”
These aren’t new. In fact, every Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater has been called a Nazi, a fascist, compared to Hitler, or all three.
Every Democratic candidate since Johnson has been called a socialist, communist, or Marxist.
And yet of the six Republican presidents and five Democratic presidents we have had since 1964, we are still a vibrant Democratic Republic, not a fascist state or a socialist hotbed.
And yet, “this is the most important election of our lifetime,” or “this could be the last election in our nation’s history” are phrases that you hear from both sides.
Guess what? This is the United States of America; one election is not going to make or break the union. Despite the dire warnings of civil war (again, coming from both sides of the political spectrum), we will remain a free and prosperous people.
Will there be protest, unrest, maybe even riots after the election? Almost for certain. But those engaged in these disruptions are a tiny, tiny fraction of the American people. Most Americans will wake up the next morning and go about their lives and continue to work hard to better their future.
And isn’t that the beauty of our system? Our Founding Fathers were damn smart. To a person, they were better read on government, philosophy, language, and mathematics than the vast majority of today’s PhD’s. They also cared deeply about creating a system of government that protects our God-given rights and allows us to pursue “a more perfect union.”
There is a certain beauty in our system of three branches of Government: Executive (President), Legislative (House and Senate), and Judicial (the Courts).
While partisans on either side will say that the other side will govern with “unchecked power,” the truth is considerably less dire. Just look at history. When Trump was elected in 2016, the partisan Left acted as if the world would literally end, that he would be a dictator and imprison his political enemies. That didn’t happen.
When Biden won in 2020, the partisan Right claimed that the election was stolen, that Biden would expand the Supreme Court, and that everyday Americans would lose all their rights. That didn’t happen.
So, we must take the dire warnings with a grain of salt. This is not new. It happens in every election. It even happened in our third Presidential election when John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson. The amount of vindictive ire thrown at each side then was no different than we see today. And yet, we remain the greatest country on the planet.
The Founders knew that they were creating something special. The Declaration of Independence laid out the argument of self-government and that informed the debate over the drafting of the Constitution. By diffusing government influence among three separate branches, the Founders created a check on the each branch against the other, and even checks within each branch.
We have seen multiple examples of this in action in just the last few years. The House of Representatives impeached Trump (twice) and the Senate failed to convict. The Executive branch attempted to prosecute a former President, and the Supreme Court ruled that Presidents have immunity while engaged in official actions.
While partisans wail and knash teeth at the minutia of the process, the process works and cooler heads prevail. Are there abuses that have yet to be rectified? Absolutely, but the process is designed to work slow and deliberate. In this age of instant gratification, it is good for us to be reminded that we don’t want to live in a country where snap judgments by a government entity can forever change the trajectory of our nation.
As you watch the final days of the election unfold, and the results come in as they will the night of the election and in the days to follow, if you find yourself beginning to feel the anxiety creep up to fever pitch, just take a breath, and express gratitude to our Founders that we have a system that will work, despite the failings of the players in the game. We’ve proven that it is a Republic we can keep.
