By Evelyn Pyburn

“If you can keep it…”

Can we?

Those were the words of founder Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the signing of the new Constitution of the new United States, when asked by Elizabeth Willing Powel “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Benjamin Franklin’s response was, “A republic, if you can keep it” (September 17, 1787)

Now seems to be a moment in time when we all – individually — must answer that question. Can we keep it? The  question was posed to each of us, by Franklin, who seemed far more clairvoyant about the challenges of the future than one could have imagined.

It was a challenge – not to our military or politicians – but to each citizen individually. It is our challenge today because we are threatened by the potential loss of our liberty and it’s not about the outcome of a military struggle or political maneuvers  — it’s about whether we each individually can defend “the very idea of it.”

If we do not understand the “very idea of it,” enough to persuade, we will lose the battle because the only alternative, other than surrendering, is to use force which of course is the idea’s very antithesis.

The concept that Franklin and his cohorts, on that day, proposed was essentially a new idea. The idea that each individual should be free to live as they choose. Not as the King dictated, nor as the church scolded, or the family position designated, but as the individual person chose.  It was a revolutionary idea, one that ignited the Revolutionary War. It was the supreme idea that was the goal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

That idea is what is being attacked by those in the streets destroying buildings, throwing Molotov bombs, fighting police, undermining laws and defending criminals. While they pursue violence and coercion – and we may try to defend ourselves – in the long run, the plunderers can only be defeated if each one of us can intellectually defend this idea. How many people can do that?

If we cannot define and defend the concept that shaped our country, and about which our forefathers debated long and hard, we will lose, because it is this idea that most terrifies our opponents – all those people in the streets, throwing bombs, destroying buildings and threatening lives. They do not have the capacity nor the intellectual arguments to thwart this amazing idea – and the thing is, THEY KNOW IT. That is why they are perpetrating violence, whether it’s in the streets or advocating it in the rhetoric they use, or as they use force to silence those who dare to utter otherwise.

From at least that moment, when Benjamin spoke to Elizabeth in 1787, to be able to intellectually understand this idea and to defend it, became the challenge of all freedom- loving people, just as it became an eternal threat to the thugs who oppose it. “The very idea of it” became the eternal conflict that will underlay all future conflict of mankind – that will rouse all political struggles – and foster all wars.

It is fear of this idea that, over the past decade, prompted the power mongers to coerce social media to censor the ideas on their platforms. It is the fear of this idea that inspires the collectivists to control all means of education and to muffle, as much as possible, all media. It is the fear of this idea, and their inability to counter it, that keeps collectivists from participating in any public exchange of ideas on media or in public debates. THEY KNOW, going in, that they’ve got nothing – no reasonable argument to defeat the efficacy and power of this idea.

The very idea of it is why the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

It was understood by the authors of the Bill of Rights that being able to speak to intellectually defend this idea would be our last line of defense against those who will always be there trying to eradicate the idea from existence — from our minds.

Theirs will always be a futile effort if each one of us takes it upon ourselves to know why this idea is so important and to know how to defend it in words and deeds and to do so at every opportunity – most especially in teaching the next generation. That is what Benjamin Franklin challenged in stating “…if you can keep it.”

Can we?