The republic has survived 250 years — now we will decide whether it continues 

As we approach the 250th birthday of the American experiment, we are confronted with the greatest threat to its survival since the Civil War.  

We have all learned what Benjamin Franklin said in 1787 as he left the convention where the Founders signed the Constitution. Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Willing Powell asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Nine generations have passed, but Powell’s question remains our most important issue today. Once again, our fundamental freedoms and rights — the foundation that made America a “shining city” — are threatened by the same type of monarchal rule that inspired the American Revolution.

We might ask what Thomas Jefferson would think, now that the U.S. is led by a government in which grift, brutishness, self-dealing, greed, capitulation, open corruption and grievance have become the norm. Jefferson probably would be disappointed, but not surprised.

He recognized that human nature is flawed and vulnerable to corruption. “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” he wrote. Americans “should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption … will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price.”

Anticipating this, the Constitution created three co-equal branches of national government and gave each the obligation and authority to prevent........

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