Republicanism
|
W |
hen asked what kind of government the
Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin replied: "A
republic, if you can keep it."
Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution contains an unamendable provision
that begins: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this
Union a republican form of government."
Today the word "republican" refers
to one of the United States' two major political parties. In the late 18th
century, the word referred to the principles and practices appropriate to a
government in which ultimate authority resides in the people and in which
elected officials and representatives are responsible to the people and must
govern according to the law.
But republicanism involved more than
eliminating a king and instituting a representative government. It also involved a critique of monarchical
society: A republican society was to be a society free of the corruptions,
pretensions, and rigid class stratification found in Europe. Monarchical
societies maintained their authority through hereditary privilege, patronage,
standing armies, and a religious establishment. A truly republican society, in
contrast, depended on the independence and the moral virtue of its citizens.
At the time of the American Revolution, the
only republics in the world were tiny: the city-states of Italy and Switzerland
and the Netherlands. Larger republics, like England during the mid-17th
century, had collapsed into dictatorship. One of the James Madison’s goals in
devising the U.S. Constitution was to create a republic that would endure
despite its large size and that would not have to depend entirely on the virtue
of the country’s leaders. In the Federalist Papers, he argued that in a large
republic, diverse and conflicting interests would balance and neutralize each
other.
The objective of the Constitution was to
create a system of government that would control men's lust for power and
safeguard individual liberty. To prevent concentrations of power, the framers
established a system of checks and balances. Authority was divided between the
federal and state governments and was further divided among the three branches
of the federal government.
The framers of the Constitution hoped to
weaken the basis of monarchical society. They wanted to eliminate the forms of
corruption, such as nepotism and the holding of multiple public offices, that
characterized the British government.
Discussion
question: How much of the late 18th
century Republican tradition persists in American society today?
|
A |
mericans continue to disdain special
privilege; yearn for disinterested leaders who will rise above party; pursue
personal independence; and worry about their society’s fragility and
vulnerability to corruption.