Columnists

Principles of Freedom – Republic

Issue 44.15

I received an interesting response from a reader on an article that we shared recently. His response concerned the use of the term “republic” when referring to our nation and what it means.

He criticized our nation and likened it to the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Republic of North Korea and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). I replied to him with the points below which I felt were worth sharing with our readers.

The first point is that politicians of all countries lie. Statesmen tell the truth. If you want to get something past the people, doing something bad while getting most people to think it is good, call it the opposite of what it is and appeal to them through the name while stabbing them in the back with the actual content or actions. A good example of that is the so called “Patriot Act” that has dismantled the personal liberty of patriots and citizens while doing very little if anything to protect us from terrorists and criminals. Another example is the “Affordable Care Act” that has raised the cost of insurance, lowered services and left millions of the people it was supposed to help without insurance while penalizing them for not having it. That is what happens when legislators rush to pass something as a knee jerk reaction instead of refusing to vote for it until it is understood. As Nancy Pelosi famously said, “We have to pass it to know what’s in it.” Does anyone else see the problem with that statement?

To put that in the context of the current issue, many Communist countries have used the term republic to hopefully convince people both inside and outside their country that this new government is designed to benefit the people, representing not only their welfare, but their will and hopes. It is pretty obvious how much the leaders of those countries care about the people and their opinions when you see how they handle dissent, poverty and international relations/war/etc.

A representative republic is supposed to be made up of local units of populations, each having representatives that work in larger units (such as states) to make policy, set standards and define concepts that benefit or regulate the group safely while protecting individual rights and freedoms. In turn the states each send representatives (Senators) to the Federal (federated) government to work together on matters of international relationships, trade and commerce both internationally and between associated states. The Federal government also was to have a house of “representatives” that were answerable to the local population and had to be re-elected by them every two years so they didn’t get out of line.

The 17th Amendment destroyed one of the key checks and balances when it took appointment of and responsibility for Senators away from the State governments and gave it to the people, just like the House of Representatives. Since it was passed in 1913, there has been a steady degradation of our freedoms and an increase in our debt as well as an almost continuous state of war with one nation or another. This is not what the founders intended.

The reader who commented was correct in his concern that we are not living up to the concept of a true republic and we and the world are suffering and will suffer because of that if we do not restore the concepts of liberty in our government and our representatives.

Lynn West is a thinker, a teacher and a patriot. You can reach him through email at forgingthefuture2021@gmail.com or through this newspaper. Liberty is a state of being which must be continually created. These articles can help all of us discover the ways we can contribute to that outcome. 

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