All apologies,Mr. Franklin

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 29, 2003

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin told an inquisitive citizen that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gave the people “a Republic, if you can keep it.” We should apologize to Mr. Franklin. It is obvious that the Republic is gone, for we are wallowing in a pure democracy against which the Founders had strongly warned.

Madison, the father of the Constitution, could not have been more explicit in his fear and concern for democracies. “Democracies,” he said, “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.”