Free Republic

There isn’t a worldly creation that doesn’t need continual upkeep and renewal. Examples abound. Without regular maintenance to our autos, homes, marriages, bodies and souls, they will degrade and eventually cease to operate, or will ill-serve their intended purposes. As applied to government, look no further than a congress that rarely serves its designed Constitutional purposes. Our government in general, and congress in particular, are in dire need of renewal, of restoration to their free government designs. Patriots know their forebears created the world’s best free government, yet the American republic is not the longest lived. At about 450 years,...

From yesterday’s post regarding thoroughly corrupted republics, Machiavelli* found that even when a few wise laws are passed, corrupt institutions in society and government will turn the law away from their intended, good purposes. To possibly recover, one of two things must happen. Either prudent men along the way step in to introduce reforms as incremental corruption is detected, or a large single stroke of reform is necessary when the debasement of society and government is evident to all. Since the republic in his discussion is already thoroughly corrupt, it would appear that the first of his possible solutions has...

Ancient Romans traded their freedom for a government that would entertain and take care of them. Sound familiar? CULTURAL CRITICS HAVE LONG LOOKED FOR lessons in the fall of the Roman Empire. But far more significant to the United States is the fall of the Roman Republic. Rome became ruled by an all-commanding emperor with pretensions of divinity because the Romans lost their constitutional, freedom-loving republic. A recent book by Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, is a lively, popularly written history of how this happened. When the ancient Romans overthrew their king, they formulated a...