Constitutional Convention delegate James McHenry of Maryland recorded a wonderful anecdote about a lady who asked Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”28 Franklin’s response was the legendary “A republic, if you can keep it.” A republic—res publica—is literally “a public thing,” a thing of the people. Not something divine, not something handed down from on high, and not something that could be maintained without effort—but a thing “of the people, by the people, for the people,” as Lincoln so beautifully
...more
