“Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

This was how Ben Franklin responded to a lady’s question as he emerged from Independence Hall on the last day of the Constitutional Convention in 1778.

For all these years, we have kept our Republic. Its political genius lay in its Constitution, which limited the power of the federal government. The three equal branches kept one another in check as they did the nation’s business.

What we see inside the beltway is not the comfortable, familiar partisanship battles of old. The stakes now are more important than yesteryear’s wrangling over distribution of tax favors, advancement of nepotism and pandering to favored voting blocks.

All that horse trading, all that getting-things-done-for-the-kids, only served as a dust cloud obscuring a steady leftward drift in this country’s laws, bureaucracy and institutions.

Instead, what we see inside the beltway represents a belated re-engagement by alarmed conservatives in the struggle to keep the Republic. This embattled group lies wholly within the Republican Party as a matter of practicality, but must struggle against beltway careerists who infest both parties. 

The hysterical rhetoric of the left seeks to diminish their reputation.   The president’s overuse of executive orders and the majority leader’s recourse to the nuclear option limit their effect.

Keeping the Republic stands as the order of the day. Orwell’s Big Brother waits in the wings, our manacles and  regulations at the ready.

Lenny Hoy, Greenwood