"A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the The Constitutional Convention that convened from May 25 to September 17, 1787 to address the problems facing the post Revolutionary War America he was asked by a passerby what was the outcome of the assembly. Franklin responded, “it’s a Republic, if you can keep it.”

The great American government created by those men in 1787 was not anything akin to the current or past governments of the world. It was not just a democracy, it was a republic, and there in lies an important distinction.

The best source on the meaning of the Constitution and the authority on the government created by the Founders is a collection of essays written in 1787 to the average American, posted in the newspapers of the day. These essays were written under the pseudonym of Publius by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

The essays were written in explanatory defense of the newly drafted Constitution because a group of people, known as anti-Federalist, opposed the creation of a centralized government were giving speeches and writing articles which caused the Federalists to compose and publish the essays in defense of the Constitution. The Constitution required ratification by the States. Therefore the Federalists essays were an apologetic, a defense for this Constitutional Republic form of Government. Today these documents are compiled into one book entitled The Federalist Papers.

It is very clear in the Federalist Papers that the American government was designed not to mirror the Democracy of the Greeks. They had great concern that such a government would be detrimental to America. Moreover, they discuss with brevity the various nations using the term “Republic” or “Democracy” with ill regard to the actual meaning of the terms. They illustrate that no government exists which accurately exemplifies what they have in mind to create for America. While the Greeks were a pattern of democracy and England a form of a representative government, neither nation truly modeled a real Republic.

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Final Authority and National Identity

In a court of law the legal counsel will present a case often based on precedent. This means that the attorney will consult prior cases where the same or similar facts of the case were dealt with and ruled upon. The attorney will present that prior ruling, or a collection of prior rulings, as a justification for the plea he is making before the court. Similarly the opposing counsel will seek to find prior rulings to support his position in the matter.

At the Supreme Court level this presentation of established precedent is also the common method used to win a case. However, something has changed in the worldview of this culture that does not presume the past ruling to be justification for a present matter. It simply does not matter to the Court if the Justices of old ruled a certain way and interpreted the Constitution a certain way. What matters is how they see the matter today and what they decide today is an appropriate ruling. The wealth of history is often sacrificed to modern ideology.

I began to consider this situation. On one hand the abandonment of the authority of history seems like a dangerous thing. It is like building a house on sand with no sturdy underpinnings leaving the power of the justices to be a matter of political position. However, on the other hand, if the past were blindly accepted as always accurate authority then errors of the past would continually be perpetuated to future generations with no hope of course correction.

Thus it would seem that precedent alone should not be sufficient justification for the Justices to decide a matter. Just the same, their own opinions are not satisfactory to making such important decisions that affect a nation.

How then should they rule? On what basis should their rulings be made? If historical precedent has no ultimate authority, then on what authority is their authority based upon? If none, why should their authority matter?

If there is no final authority, no place for the buck to stop, how can any court of justice actually do justice?

There was a day when it was commonly acknowledged that the final authority was God and that any justice we employ in this nation ought to be aligned with the Justice of heaven or else the ruling was not worth the paper it was written upon.

This is why this nation has a National Day of Prayer. It is a day of commemorating the subservient position of our nation to our God. Of course, this ought to be lived out all year through, but it is still good to have a day set aside where we remember our national identity in light of His Sovereign Identity.

It is precisely because of our subservience to God that we enjoy the freedom and equal value of life that we do in this nation. This is why this Day is so very important to America and why it ought not to be taken lightly. Nor should its purpose be overlooked in light of the current controversy. Moreover, let our observance of it not be undertaken in such a way that we trample on the freedom of others who do not wish to participate. Let us not get caught up in whose to blame for the current disregard for this holiday, but let us exercise our freedom to pray for our country to the only One who can restore our heritage and renew our nation.