Sorry Ben, We Couldn’t Keep It

Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety


Sorry Ben, We Couldn’t Keep It

As the story goes, after the final day of deliberations about the new Constitution being crafted in Philadelphia in 1787, a woman on the street asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic—if you can keep it.”



From his response, it almost sounds as if this founding father was not entirely confident that we would be able to keep the republican form of government, and the document that secured it, that had been crafted over the preceding months. Unfortunately, as the last few decades, and especially the last few years, of our nation’s history have shown, Franklin’s lack of confidence was well-placed. The United States of America gave up her freedom because we turned away from the republican virtues that are required for a free people to govern themselves and remain free. Without these virtues, any people will slide into tyranny and slavery. Indeed, pretty much all of what we consider modern “liberalism” (which is actually something of a misnomer) is anti-God, anti-freedom, anti-individualism, anti-self government, and anti-American, and has worked only to demoralize our people and undermine our liberties.

Benjamin Franklin said,

“Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.”



This characterizes far too many Americans today. Half or more of the people of this nation would rather be well-cared for slaves than they would free men. They see no problem with, and in fact desire, gun control laws and other statues that prevent free citizens from defending themselves against both common criminals and oppressive government. Indeed, many in this nation want the government to spy on them and to “protect” them with militarized police forces conducting unconstitutional warrantless no-knock raids. For “safety.” Any person who wants gun control, who justifies NSA spying, who demands ever-increasing police powers for the state and who is willing to throw aside the 4th amendment to get them is a person who is unworthy of the great heritage of liberty that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers.

Republicanism and liberty require an active citizenry who are ready to protect themselves. WE are the militia, WE the people are the ones who should be keeping the government in check, not the other way around. WE are the ones who should hold the preponderant share of deadly force in our hands, not the police or unconstitutional executive agencies.

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”—Patrick Henry

The basis of freedom is the willingness to defend it against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. That’s a basis that much of our nation is losing.

The cornerstone of this sense of liberty, and that it is worth fighting for, comes from the belief that our rights and freedom do not come from man-made government, but from God Himself above,

“You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”—John Adams

“Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God?”—Thomas Jefferson

It is observable from our history that the more irreligious our people have become, both outwardly and inwardly, the less free our nation has been. Only those who are convinced that their rights come from above, and that not even human government can override or veto these rights, will have the courage of conviction to fight for them. No nation constituted of the godless will ever be able to maintain liberty because its people have no firm basis for which they can even believe in human liberty, much less stand for it. For them, the only greater power is government, and they will inevitably want government to give, give, give them everything, and therefore it will become bigger and bigger and bigger, and take away more and more and more from them.

The godless will have no devotion to religious liberty, or to any other liberty. This is what we see today with the homosexuals and their agenda. They hate religious liberty, and desire instead to force their agenda onto everyone—small business owners, private citizens, whoever. “Gay rights” and constitutional liberty cannot exist together. Neither can atheism and liberty, or abortion and liberty. When the one advances, the other must necessarily recede, for they are built on two completely different foundations. When you reject God as the Supreme Arbiter of man, you replace Him with subjective, biased, agenda-driven monstrosities that will necessarily abuse and destroy liberty.

Connected with this is the fact that freedom also requires the republican virtue of self-control. Those who will not govern their own passions and desires and actions will soon find themselves governed by others, either from the prison house or the state house. Self-government is nothing less than the willingness to restrain your own behavior so that you are not infringing upon the rights of others; of controlling one’s self so that you don’t have to be controlled by someone else.

“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”—John Adams

What Adams means here is that only people who are willing to restrain and control themselves can be rightly governed by a Constitution that grants to humankind an extraordinary amount of liberty. Liberty can easily degenerate into license; only those who exhibit the virtue of self-government can prevent it from doing so, and thereby prevent the loss of that liberty. For history shows that when men refuse to control themselves, there will inevitably be a necessity for more and more laws to keep their actions in check so that they do not harm others and cause society to slide into anarchy. If men did not vandalize each other’s property, there would be no need for laws against vandalism, and so forth. When man thinks himself free to “do as he pleases,” then the foundation of ordered liberty is destroyed, nobody’s rights are respected, and the government “has” to step in and restrain what man himself will not.

“Political interest can never be separated in the long run from moral right.”—Thomas Jefferson

That is why radical libertarianism, as well as social liberalism, both inevitably result in the exact sort of expansive, intrusive government that libertarians claim to hate. When you destroy the family and create conditions in which there is the “need” for welfare, for intrusive family courts, and so forth, you are creating a vacuum that rapacious government will fill. When you allow abortion and destroy respect for human life and for God’s sovereignty over that life, you create a situation in which you will see more crime, more degeneracy, and more “need” for a police state apparatus to be created. Self-control restrains not only the self, but also government. License and the loss of moral restraints are the best friends that tyrants and big-government communists have ever had.

Walking hand in hand with our loss of self-government is the refusal on the part of many in our nation to take personal responsibility for themselves and their families. Yet, this personal responsibility is vitally necessary to maintaining a republic in which the citizens are free to exercise their liberties and choose their own leaders. Freedom can only exist when able-bodied citizens refuse to make themselves a burden to their fellow citizens. This is so because those who refuse to work for a living and earn their own bread will inevitably fall prey to scurrilous politicians promising them greater and greater “entitlements” to be confiscated from others. The moochers become addicted to big government and their victims see their right to their own produce taken away to support the ever-growing “Free Stuff Army” made up of the lazy, the selfish, and the envious. Freedom only exists when people are forced to shoulder their own earthly responsibilities, instead of shifting that burden off onto others.

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.”—Thomas Jefferson

Yet, half of our country has turned into a legion of moochers and pickpockets. Instead of supporting policies that would get the government out of the way of the productive so that those productive persons could grow their business, create jobs, expand opportunities, and exercise the sort of enlightened self-interest that ends up benefiting us all, the Free Stuff Army is trying to kill this nation through welfare, ObamaCare, and other giveaway programs. We’ve gone from being a people who say “give me liberty or give me death!” to “give me my EBT card or I’m gonna riot!” This is incompatible with freedom, and unless we find a way to roll back the welfare state—even by radical means if necessary—we will see liberty disappear.

Ultimately, all of these things relate back to the basic virtue of a broad-based education in virtue and freedom. America is a well-educated country, in many ways. Yet, we are fast becoming a nation of educated fools, people with more degrees than a thermometer, but who don’t have a lick of sense about how to maintain and use the liberty that our forefathers fought for. Americans today lack a genuine civic education, which is vital necessity in a republic composed of free people. We have for a PRes__ent a “constitutional scholar” who has no understanding of the Constitution, and what’s more, who doesn’t care to know anything about it except for how to get around it when it’s inconvenient to him. The large majority of our people can’t even name the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights—do you think such people would be able to explain the context behind these amendments and why they are there, and why they are important? Most Americans have never even read the Federalist Papers—yet these documents are the key to understanding our Constitution. We don’t have to rely on so-called “constitutional scholars” to give their conflicting opinions about the Constitution—we have commentary on that document from some of the very men who wrote it.

Why is the right to a jury trial important? Why is it necessary that juries be able to refuse to uphold laws or to refuse to rule as the judge or the prosecutor wants them to? Why do we have the right to keep and bear arms? What was the basis for our religious liberty and why was this liberty so vitally important to the rest? Sadly, most Americans have never bothered to find out the answers to these and other questions, and many couldn’t care less. It is this reason that has led us to where we are. Modern “liberalism” thrives on ignorance and inability to think clearly and rationally. The rate at which our nation has moved Left in recent decades is directly proportional to the ignorance and apathy on the part of our people about the founding principles of liberty.

Frankly, if I could build a time machine, I would be sorely tempted to go back to that day in 1787 and apologize to Ben Franklin and the other Founders for our failure to hold fast to their hard work and sacrifices. “Ben,” I’d have to say, “we gave it a good run, but it looks like monarchy it is going to be.”

“Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it.”—John Adams

The question for liberty lovers of all stripes is, “What are you going to do to change this?”