Getting a little ahead for the July holidays...
Notes from my Knapsack 7-3-2025
Jeff Gill
Democracy and other old habits
___
Jeff Gill
Democracy and other old habits
___
249 years since the Second Continental Congress in a hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia put down on paper their reasons for declaring the colonies to be a group of states, united even, independent from Great Britain and her monarch.
It's reliably reported that George III's descendant, King Charles III (his great-grandmother's great-grandfather was George III), does not hold this against us. Much. Which is kind of him.
It was actually some years later, in 1787 as the Constitution was being finalized, that a lady not allowed inside the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall for those 1776 events), named Elizabeth Willing Powel had a question for Benjamin Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" She wasn't being sarcastic, she just wasn't sure what the Constitutional Convention had decided upon.
Franklin's response has entered American legend: "A republic, if you can keep it."
That semi-sardonic closer, "if you can keep it," has echoed through a dozen generations or so. Can we keep it? Franklin was saying to Mrs. Powel that the Constitutional Convention had not chosen monarchy as our form of American continuity, but if we want our governance to be done as a democratic republic, we're going to have to keep working at it. Working, in order to keep it.
The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt perhaps helps Franklin make his point with her aphorism: "In every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"
Children come in a variety of sizes, and even ages in a way. Franklin and Arendt are just reminding us it takes an ongoing teaching effort to maintain an idea, let alone a complex interlocking set of ideas, in common currency.
The American experiment is based on democracy, but of a particular sort. We don't vote on everything, even if the vote of the people, or the "demos" is at the foundation of how we intend our government to operate. We don't have town meetings to decide on war powers or the amount of inside millage. We ask elected representatives to handle the "public things," the "res publica" if you'll forgive a little Latin, on our behalf. In a democratic republic, we vote in people to exercise wisdom and discernment, knowing if they govern too far off the popular will, we can vote again to remove them.
Polling isn't in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence. I think the Founders would have been baffled by how much time we spend politically thinking about poll results, but they would have understood the basic concept. They knew in their day that maybe 15-20% of the Thirteen Colonies were Loyalists, wanting to maintain historic and legal ties to the British Crown, and maybe 15-20% were avidly for independence.
That meant 60-70% of the new United States were "yeah, okay, whatever" about independence. If it worked out for them, they were for it; if things went pear-shaped, they might change their minds. To govern meant to find a path where a working consensus could hold.
"If you can keep it." The challenge continues in 2025. To teach what democracy is and isn't, why a republic operates the way it does, and to vote (and sometimes impeach, or otherwise let elected officials know where they need to be wary) for the elected officials who will govern wisely and well. I think we can keep it, but the question will remain.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's found democracy in a republic to be a neat trick. Tell him how you see it working at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
It's reliably reported that George III's descendant, King Charles III (his great-grandmother's great-grandfather was George III), does not hold this against us. Much. Which is kind of him.
It was actually some years later, in 1787 as the Constitution was being finalized, that a lady not allowed inside the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall for those 1776 events), named Elizabeth Willing Powel had a question for Benjamin Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" She wasn't being sarcastic, she just wasn't sure what the Constitutional Convention had decided upon.
Franklin's response has entered American legend: "A republic, if you can keep it."
That semi-sardonic closer, "if you can keep it," has echoed through a dozen generations or so. Can we keep it? Franklin was saying to Mrs. Powel that the Constitutional Convention had not chosen monarchy as our form of American continuity, but if we want our governance to be done as a democratic republic, we're going to have to keep working at it. Working, in order to keep it.
The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt perhaps helps Franklin make his point with her aphorism: "In every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"
Children come in a variety of sizes, and even ages in a way. Franklin and Arendt are just reminding us it takes an ongoing teaching effort to maintain an idea, let alone a complex interlocking set of ideas, in common currency.
The American experiment is based on democracy, but of a particular sort. We don't vote on everything, even if the vote of the people, or the "demos" is at the foundation of how we intend our government to operate. We don't have town meetings to decide on war powers or the amount of inside millage. We ask elected representatives to handle the "public things," the "res publica" if you'll forgive a little Latin, on our behalf. In a democratic republic, we vote in people to exercise wisdom and discernment, knowing if they govern too far off the popular will, we can vote again to remove them.
Polling isn't in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence. I think the Founders would have been baffled by how much time we spend politically thinking about poll results, but they would have understood the basic concept. They knew in their day that maybe 15-20% of the Thirteen Colonies were Loyalists, wanting to maintain historic and legal ties to the British Crown, and maybe 15-20% were avidly for independence.
That meant 60-70% of the new United States were "yeah, okay, whatever" about independence. If it worked out for them, they were for it; if things went pear-shaped, they might change their minds. To govern meant to find a path where a working consensus could hold.
"If you can keep it." The challenge continues in 2025. To teach what democracy is and isn't, why a republic operates the way it does, and to vote (and sometimes impeach, or otherwise let elected officials know where they need to be wary) for the elected officials who will govern wisely and well. I think we can keep it, but the question will remain.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's found democracy in a republic to be a neat trick. Tell him how you see it working at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
No comments:
Post a Comment