A republic….if you can keep it.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the last meeting, a Mrs. Powel, waiting outside, asked him: "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic if you can keep it" responded Franklin.

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be keeping it.

A republic is a form of government whose legitimacy is based on popular consent and whose governance is based on popular representation and control. On the surface I guess we still look like a republic – we still vote for congressional representatives and presidential electors.

But in fact our federal government, and most of our state governments, are mostly run by unelected people to whom we have never given any consent and who don’t represent us in any meaningful way. It is in fact largely run by bureaucrats in federal and state agencies, legislative staffers, K-street lobbyists, and the wealthy senior managers of large businesses and organizations who fund political campaigns. These are the people who craft the laws and regulations and policies that actually affect our daily life. Some tiny fraction of these laws and regulations and policies are nominally debated and voted on in Congress or state legislators, but most are not – they are just promulgated and enforced by federal or state government agencies.

In the early days of our country the government was pretty small, and the government’s influence on people’s daily lives was pretty limited. And indeed many of the early bitter political battles were over the assumption of very minor powers by the federal government, like establishing a federal bank. I suppose it was inevitable that as the nation grew in size and power, the government and government powers would have had to grow as well. But we have long since reached the point where we are no longer truly a republic, but are ruled rather by a relatively small aristocracy composed of political insiders, senior civil servants, and wealthy political backers.

This ought to disturb us. It certainly would have disturbed Ben Franklin.