Is It a Republic？ Can We Keep It？ ｜ 6⧸4⧸25
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Summary
When progressives claim democracy as the justifying principle for their latest crime against humanity, the automatic conservative retort is, "Well, well, thankfully, America is a republic, not a democracy." While that is historically true, few Republican voters have really considered the difference.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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When progressives claim democracy as the justifying principle for their latest crime against humanity,
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well, thankfully, America is a republic, not a democracy.
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While that is historically true, few Republican voters have really considered the difference.
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If pressed, conservatives will cite the election of representatives rather than direct democracy as the key difference.
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When I taught civics in public school, this was the canned answer that we fed to the students.
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Many conservatives claim that they'd like to return to the values and traditions of the founding fathers.
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But that's very difficult to do without first understanding the historical and philosophical context of those traditions.
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To that end, in this episode, we're going to be investigating the nature of republics,
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evaluating whether that label accurately applies to the current government of the United States,
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and determining whether we can return to a republican form of government if we lost it.
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Monarchy is the most universal form of government on the planet.
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But even the nature of monarchy varies widely for each particular people who practice it.
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In many monarchical systems, like ancient Egypt or China, the god-king reigns.
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But even when the English had a meaningful kingship,
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their sovereign was always limited by documents like the Magna Carta.
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The Anglo tradition has never been comfortable with the concentration of power in a single figure,
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even when recognizing the need for a powerful executive.
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The American tradition itself, Anglo-Protestant in nature,
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took this one step further by creating a federated republic with a mixed constitution.
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The philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, no relation,
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claimed that for any tradition to survive, it must be able to overcome an epistemological crisis,
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not just by resolving the crisis at hand, but by having a coherent explanation for why the crisis arose
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and why the tradition had to undergo modification.
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By exploring the classic understanding of what defines a republic,
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we'll be better able to understand whether a crisis has indeed taken place,
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and whether we can reconstitute that tradition,
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or if, as Machiavelli put it, the founding of new modes and orders is necessary.
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Americans often treat the constitution as some piece of novel political technology
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that created the form of the republic while solving politics in perpetuity.
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In reality, the republic is an ancient form of government
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with a tradition stretching from Aristotle to Machiavelli
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to the American founders like John Adams, who cited Machiavelli as an influence.
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For all of these thinkers, the virtue of the citizen was the key that enabled republics to flourish.
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simply because they happened to be living inside the borders of the country.
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Expressing political will was the purview of the patriarch,
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who had proven himself capable of owning property,
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and defending his domain through violence when necessary.
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It was the need to master and maintain these domains that cultivated virtue
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and made one worthy of participating in the body politic.
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Each of these thinkers also acknowledged the willingness of the citizen
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to take up arms as a key aspect of republican government.
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Aristotle said that the citizen is he who is armed.
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Machiavelli made the need for a citizen militia a central theme through all of his political works.
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In his Art of War, the Italian political thinker argued against the use of both mercenaries
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and standing armies which would create a separate soldier class.
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every citizen must be willing to serve in his own defense and the defense of the nation.
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Service guarantees citizenship is the famous line from Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers,
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The franchise exists for those who are willing to face danger and overcome it for the sake of the republic.
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Alexander Hamilton acknowledged this tradition while arguing in Federalist 24 and 29
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that the state should turn their militias over to the central government
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If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country,
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it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of the body
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which is constituted the guardian of the national security.
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in the body to whose care the protection of the state is committed,
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to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions.
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If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies
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which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate,
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it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force.
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To render an army unnecessary will be a more certain method of preventing its existence
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This is why we see so much confusion over the language of the Second Amendment.
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The citizen militia was assumed to be the default mode of armed defense for a free republic.
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Of course, every individual had a right to bear arms.
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How else could the United States protect itself?
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To be clear, none of this validates the leftist claim that the Second Amendment is somehow outdated.
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The right to self-defense doesn't cease to exist because the United States has a professional military.
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But it is important to understand the context in which these critical documents were written.
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Hamilton would continue the push towards a standing American military,
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but he had to acknowledge and address the deep apprehension of them inside the republican tradition.
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The founders were also familiar with the need for a cohesive cultural identity
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With equal pleasure, I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give
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this one connected country to one united people.
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A people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion,
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attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs,
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and who, by their joint councils, arms, and efforts, fighting side-by-side throughout a long and bloody war,
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have nobly established general liberty and independence."
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Admittedly, Jay was engaged in a bit of wish-casting as this statement was not entirely accurate when it was made,
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but he recognized that it needed to become accurate if the nation was to succeed.
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One thing that conservatives rarely consider when arguing in favor of Republican governance
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is whether the form has any inherent limitations.
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As mentioned previously, Machiavelli argued that standing armies are a danger to Republican government
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destroying the equality among the citizens, diminishing their virtue,
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and incentivizing a policy of conquest lest bored and unpaid soldiers turn against their host nation.
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In his book, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Leo Strauss expands on this argument,
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warning that imperial republics will unwisely extend their franchise to the unworthy
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because their manpower and commitment is needed to expand.
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usually requires the liberal admission of foreigners for citizenship,
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which increases domestic strife and leads to the degradation of virtue.
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Those that join the republic in this manner are primarily concerned with wealth,
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and the imperial republic quickly becomes a machine for enriching its new mercenary citizens,
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Power always seeks to expand its borders and centralize control for a reason.
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If France gains the power to draft its entire male population for military service,
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surrounding nations can find a justification to do the same thing,
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The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States all developed different rationale
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for mass propaganda, economic centralization, and mass military production,
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but they developed them simultaneously for a reason.
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Power is an arms race, and no matter how much you oppose the use of something like nuclear weapons,
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once your enemy has one, you can either develop your own or become a smoldering wasteland.
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In the modern world, scale has proved to be a devastating weapon of its own,
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and nothing destroys republican governance as effectively as scale.
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The geopolitical reality in our age is one of large-standing armies,
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overseas imperial holdings, and sprawling networks of global trade.
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The nations that have been successful have indulged deeply in these practices.
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These are also the various behaviors that have been identified as the ruin of republican governance.
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The large bureaucratic structures required to scale government to this level
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take on responsibilities that were once the domain of citizens and communities,
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destroying the opportunity to cultivate and exercise virtue.
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The mass immigration required to feed the managerial state apparatus fractures national identity,
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and mass democracy extends the franchise to the unworthy.
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The idea of personal duty and virtue are tossed aside as every faction uses their political clout
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to carve out a piece of the pie that must continue to expand lest it be consumed by the interests it has created.
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Tens of millions of illegal immigrants now reside in the United States,
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expecting amnesty to deliver voting rights to them
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and birthright citizenship to automatically secure the franchise for their children.
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The idea of the citizen militia is well in the rearview mirror,
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as the United States maintains a large standing army which takes on the character of a hereditary class
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as fewer and fewer Americans outside the military interact with service members.
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Foreign war for the purpose of expanding or maintaining the American empire is constant.
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The press is even finally admitting that Joe Biden was never really the president,
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which makes a mockery of the notion of popular sovereignty.
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While the founders intended for this nation to exist as a republic,
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they warned that it would only remain one if we fought to keep it that way.
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It is very difficult to argue that we have done so successfully.
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While the United States may no longer be accurately classified as a republic,
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that political formula still holds great power as it lies at the foundation of our tradition.
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People still speak in the language of constitutionally restrained government,
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expecting the fruits of a virtuous society even if they don't understand how to cultivate it.
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This means that while the republican tradition in America may be on life support,
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it's not dead, and it's worth exploring whether it can be revived.
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In his essay, Nationalism, Old and New, the political commentator and theorist Samuel Francis
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outlined the tension between the original federated republican model
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and the unified national empire desired by figures like Alexander Hamilton.
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That battle existed at the very beginning of the country,
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and despite the republican tradition being deeply implanted in the American people,
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the advantages of scale and the desire for centralization slowly pulled toward unified nationalism.
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This national centralization stripped away the cultural particularities that were protected
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by the regional and federated nature of the republic,
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as it attempted to bring every citizen under the direct control of Washington.
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Large bureaucratic organizations were erected to manage the American population,
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offering to take away burdensome responsibilities like the education of children or care for the elderly.
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At every step, the bureaucratic structure also robbed the population of the responsibility
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and self-reliance necessary for the cultivation of virtue,
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making republican governance increasingly impossible.
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For Francis, this unified imperial nationalism was always at odds with the true nature of the American republic,
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and he believed that it would inevitably doom the republic, just as Machiavelli had predicted.
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Instead of pining for a tradition that he venerated but ultimately believed to be extinct,
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Francis suggested that the right embrace a new nationalism that was not hostile to the interests of the American people.
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The political theorists believed that the revolution of scale had made republicanism obsolete,
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and that the conservatives should deal with this reality.
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According to Francis, the American people were no longer independent and virtuous.
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They had become reliant on mass bureaucratic institutions to survive in the modern world.
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Francis envisioned a revolution from the middle,
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where the mass bureaucratic institutions which had become hostile to middle Americans
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The Federated Republic just wasn't coming back,
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so conservatives had to deal with that reality,
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and at least middle Americans could have a government that benefited them instead of hating them.
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but perhaps it could be turned towards the good of the people.
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I admire the incredible prescience that Francis often demonstrated,
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but I must say in this case, I believe he may have been wrong.
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and while at the time it seemed like scale was winning in every domain,
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we're now seeing that it also has serious downsides.
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The massive bureaucracies of the United States have turned on their citizens,
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but they have also become bloated, sclerotic, and incompetent.
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Airlines have an increasingly difficult time operating their services.
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Global supply chains endure significant disruption,
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and educational institutions find it almost impossible to graduate students
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I'm not going to be able to properly elaborate on every argument
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for why I think mass managerial bureaucracies are doomed to fail,
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So if you'd like to know more, you can check them out.
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The point is that the reign of quantity may be coming to an end,
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and if so, the opportunity for a proper republican government might reemerge.
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While the solution offered by Francis is a practical one,
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it's ultimately undesirable if it can be avoided.
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Francis himself made the argument that reliance on these mass centralized organizations
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would continue to degrade the virtue of Americans,
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even if they were reformed to serve the population in a benevolent manner.
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His solution was to use bureaucratic institutions
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to instill an ethic of solidarity, discipline, and sacrifice
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that would ultimately overcome the deleterious impact of scale,
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but I'm doubtful that this will ultimately solve the problem.
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The limitations of the political formula must be recognized,
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and just as republics have a problem with scale,
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unified mass bureaucracy has a problem with virtue and self-reliance.
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The power of scale had an impressive run for a few hundred years,
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but the long string of victories has come to an end.
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The turn away from massification will not be immediate,
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but we can already see the first steps being taken.
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Donald Trump seeks to remove the United States from large international bodies
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It's increasingly obvious that perpetual imperial expansion
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and global financial entanglement are a detriment to the American people.
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Domestically, the president is dismantling bureaucracies
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that are openly hostile to middle Americans like the Department of Education,
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If the power of scale diminishes and more authority is devolved
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then the possibility of returning to republican governance re-emerges.
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If not, then the middle American nationalism of Sam Francis
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If that's the case, then we will have met the conditions
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Alistair MacIntyre set out for a tradition which is able to overcome a crisis.
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they would have devised exactly the right system of government
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would have brought the viability of the system to its natural end.
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while having a coherent explanation as to why that tradition had to undergo change.
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Ultimately, I believe that the failure of massification
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will mean a return to the republican form of government is possible.
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But the good news is that whether I'm right or Francis is right,
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and orienting the remaining institutions of the United States
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we must rebuild robust communities and local institutions.
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and civil organizations must return to prominence,
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who will be able to act in the interests of the American people,
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whether their future be the revivification of the republican tradition
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or the embrace of a new middle American nationalism.
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