Anatomy of a Republic

Because it is based on natural laws and timeless truths, the republic can be ignored, it can be mocked, and it can be forgotten, but it can never be fully undone. All it takes is an anamnesis, something to rouse us from our slumbers and reassert its many truths and goodnesses and beauties. Long live the republic!

I recently published an essay here on why America is a republic and not a democracy. I’ve also been publishing essays attacking modernity, ideology, and progressivism. In some ways, these have been cheats, as we conservatives are truly excellent critics. I’m not necessarily saying that I—Brad—am an excellent critic, but that conservatives, overall, tend to be the best critics. That is, we very much know what we’re not, and we proclaim it loudly and effectively. Much harder for us conservatives is arguing what we’re for. That is, in a positive sense, what do we advocate?

Here, I think, we can see something similar about republics. The democrats—those advocating democracy—are extremely good and effective at explaining the positives of democracy, and, in many ways, they have captured the language. We republicans—those advocating a republic—are not nearly as effective. As such, I want to try to define a republic, in both universal terms and in specific American terms.

First, the term republic comes from the Latin “res publica,” literally translated as the common good or the good thing. Critically, this is not the same thing as the “greater good.” In pursuing the common good, one willingly gives up some of his rights and offers his responsibilities to the community. Everyone does this, thus, the burden of culture and community falls on all alike.

Further, the common good is more appropriately juxtaposed against the Oriental (Persian) notion of a God King (the private good) in which all members of a community are his subjects. In the common good, every member of the community is a citizen, equally responsible for the success of the community.

In the “greater good”—often associated with democracy—there are serious winners and serious losers. That is, some gain much, and others lose much. In this sense, the idea of the greater good always leads to conflict and violence, class struggle (and often racial struggle), and untoward hierarchies.

During my professional career, I’ve seen libertarians react strongly against the notion of the common good—especially when the term is employed by the so-called Post Liberals—but they are seriously wrong to do so. The common good, properly understood, is perfectly commensurate with liberty, equality, and stability. I would go further and argue that human dignity and decency as well as liberty and equality can only exist where the common good prevails.

Second, the idea of a republic is rooted in the natural law and, especially, in the nature of the human person. As such, a republic is organic (not in the Darwinian sense of the word, but in the humane sense of the word), and it reflects the life cycle. Just as each human person has a birth, a middle age, and a death, so, too, do all republics. That is, a republic is the best but also the most fragile forms of government.  No republic begins with the illusion that it will last for a thousand years. Rather, the republic strives to exist, generation by generation, always knowing that decay is inevitable.

A republic is also organic in that is follows Aristotle’s notion of a mixed government, incorporating elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, though allowing none of these branches to prevail. In this, the republic again reflects the nature of the human person. We associate the head with the monarchy and with rationality. We associate the stomach with democracy and the passions. We, critically, associate the chest or the heart with the aristocracy and with reason (reason, traditionally, means imagination rather than our current usage of it as a synonym for rationality). It is the chest that balances the rationality of the mind with the passions of the stomach and procreative region. Again, associated with reason, the chest allows the Divine to reflect itself within us. C.S. Lewis explained this brilliantly in The Abolition of Man:

Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

Third, a republic is grounded in and animated by the virtue of its citizens. Just as a set of laws—constituted, a constitution—form the body, virtue forms the soul, thus continuing the organic and natural reflections. It is worth remembering that the greatest ancient republic—that of Rome—was founded in response to the rape of Lucretia. After the son of the Etruscan king sexually abused and assaulted Lucretia, she called upon her husband to avenge her. Brutally, believing herself forever tainted, she pulled a knife and stabbed herself to death. Horrified, her husband led the revolt against the Etruscan king, overthrew him in 510BC, and helped create the republic in 509. One should and could never dismiss the horror as well as the virtue of Rome’s beginnings.

One is reminded strongly of John Adams. “Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics,” he wrote to Mercy Otis Warren in 1776. Further, ““There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superiour to all private Passions. Men must be ready… to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests… when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society.” In that same year, 1776, he wrote in Thoughts on Government: “The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.”

Fourth, republics, not surprisingly, more often than not result in outstanding cultural achievements.

Again, one only has to think about the republic of Rome and its many, many contributions to world civilization, not the least of which were Cicero, Tacitus, and Livy—all of whom came at the end of the republic, but idealized the republic in their nostalgic reflections. Republican Iceland—from roughly 1000AD to 1300AD—saw not only stability but music and story, the Eddas and Sagas, a great cultural flourishing. When one thinks of the early American republic—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and James Fenimore Cooper—the same is true.

America was never meant to be a democracy. It was, from the very beginning, a republic that incorporated a democratic element (through the House of Representatives). Ever since 1827, though, democracy has infiltrated, infected, and corrupted the republic through its arrogance, its false religion, and its imperialism. Despite these inhumane encroachments, the republic remains. Because it is based on natural laws and timeless truths, the republic can be ignored, it can be mocked, and it can be forgotten, but it can never be fully undone. All it takes is an anamnesis, something to rouse us from our slumbers and reassert its many truths and goodnesses and beauties.

Long live the republic!

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The featured image, uploaded by the Oregon State Archives, is “The Lewis and Clark statue in Seaside.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.