Come On Sense

By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com

I have recently been reading the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist papers. The contract between the ideas which run through those papers and the current state of American society and its status in the world is hard to avoid. America and Americans seem to be suffering from an advance and insidious form of schizophrenia – a kind of split personality – which threatens the very foundations of our republic. Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” It seems that Dr. Franklin’s great test is upon us and we need to stop and ask ourselves what kind of a people we have become and what that means for the future of the American Republic. For the most part, the picture is not pretty. What kind of a people have Americans become?

Americans are a people who will defend the sanctity of every life on the one hand and at the same time stand by mute while future generations of Americans are robbed of their prospects through the accumulation of the most massive indebtedness in human history;

They are a people who value every single human life but stand by while our young men and women are sent into the meat grinder of one senseless war after another – wars in which only the profiteers prosper;

Americans love their country and what it stands for but stand by while their government insists that the blessings of liberty are to be granted at the point of a gun and through the obscenity of ‘democratic imperialism’;

We are a people who revere our Constitution and the great gift that our founding fathers delivered to us – but nod approvingly when it is eviscerated – when the 4th amendment is gutted by a cabal of professional politicians – republicans and democrats – Americans stand silent when the right of habeas corpus is removed by executive fiat and while their most fundamental rights are eroded;

This is a people who stands four-square against the terrible idea of slavery but also stands silent when the 21st century version of this evil – the indenture of illegal aliens – rears its ugly head within our borders and flourishes;

These are a people who believe to their very core that theirs is a government of, by and for the people but vote for politicians who clearly believe that the state is supreme and the only legitimate source of sovereignty – who believe in a government of, by and for the state;

We are a people who believe that America may indeed be the last best hope of mankind and that to be an American is to be a member of a truly blessed people – but also a people who slip too easily into thinking that we are republicans, democrats or members of some secret society first and Americans second;

But Americans are most of all a people who always believed that, no matter what separated them in the details, they were part of a society built upon the rule of law, the inalienable rights of each citizen, the sovereignty of those citizens and their individual states over their federal government – but now we seem to accept without question that the real enemies are their fellow citizens who don’t believe as we do and that the federal government is the one true source of power.

The unavoidable truth is that we Americans can’t have it both ways. Dr. Franklin’s challenge to protect the republic that James Madison and the rest of the founding fathers gave to us requires that this split personality be abandoned and that we, as Americans, return to the ideals that lay at the very foundation of their gift to us. The unavoidable charge to every American is to be involved in decisions which determine – and restrict – the actions of their government – a government that Henry David Thoreau described as “simply an expedient”. But Thoreau’s expedient requires the active participation of all citizens – involvement beyond simply voting – and the clear understanding that ‘we the people’ are the grantors of and stewards of the sovereign right to act in the name of the United States of America.

If we abandon this obligation, we will become like much of the rest of the world – a society governed by men rather than laws – a society of subjects rather than citizens – triangulated into segments that are played against one another – and, by that abandonment, we shall surely hang separately. We need to remind ourselves that Americans are the bulwark of the Constitution and we are the defenders of our liberty. As Dr. Franklin observed “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Americans must continually earn that liberty by turning away from the ‘bread and circuses’ which are offered as inducement to distract us from our obligations to be active citizens. As Americans, we are what America is – not what our government say it is or should be.

Towards the end of ‘Civil Disobedience’ Thoreau wrote “The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to – for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know or can do so well – is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed.” For such a society of citizens, it is not the citizenry who need be afraid of their government but the government who should be listening carefully to the source of all its sovereignty and prerogatives. Our consent should be actively and carefully given – or withheld when necessary. We govern – we are not governed. I believe that Dr. Franklin had it right when he said that “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

Either the ideals of the American Revolution still matter and the best of America is yet to come – or they are a receding footnote to the history of a brave but failed experiment. The United States of America will become either what we allow it to by our indifference or what we insist that it must become in faith to the ideals of its founding. At no other time in our history has this been a more critical distinction.

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Dr. Smith is a political and social theorist
who lives in Georgetown, Washington, DC

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.