The Republic Abides (?)
Priorities again
I originally posted this cartoon on another blog shortly before the 2020 election*. The discourse was getting heated at that time. The intent of this cartoon and the text that accompanied it (a few words from me and many words from Abraham Lincoln) was to appeal for calm and remind everyone that the preservation of our shared republican institutions was more important than the outcome of any single election.
We are heading into another election in the US, and once again the stakes are high. When I share my thoughts on the upcoming election, I want readers to understand where I’m coming from.
The events of Donald Trump’s first term and its aftermath led me to examine my political priorities and decide what was most important. I’ve written about a variety of specific issues and possible reforms and will continue to do so in the future, but, as I see it, the most serious challenges we face can be subsumed under two general headings:
Save the Republic from degeneration into (a) oligarchy or (b) something worse.
Save the planet from (a) catastrophic climate change or (b) nuclear war.
Everything else — abortion, immigration, inflation, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, you name it — either falls under one or both of these headings or is less important. I would compromise on any of those other things before I would bequeath to the next generation an unfree state or an uninhabitable planet.
I encouraged readers to read Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address” the last time I posted this cartoon. This time I’ll encourage readers to read Madison’s “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”, better known as The Federalist Papers #10. Both of these short works should be part of every American’s civic education.**
* For those who don’t get the joke, it’s an allusion to the 1998 film The Big Lebowski.
** Some say “The US is a republic, not a democracy.” This is misleading. The meanings of these words have shifted over time. Currently, we use the word democracy as a general term that comprises direct democracy and representative democracy. In The Federalist Papers #10, Madison uses the terms popular government, democracy, and republic to mean what we now mean by democracy (in general), direct democracy, and representative democracy, respectively. The American republic is not a direct democracy, but it is a democracy in the general sense, as the word is currently used.