Benjamin Franklin, by Constantino Brumidi, Fresco, c. 1873, Senate wing, U.S. Capitol.
A Republic if You Can Keep It
In 1787 Benjamin Franklin was given a question: “Well doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
“A republic,” responded Dr. Franklin, “… if you can keep it.”
A well-drafted Constitution has another requirement: it must be well administered to be a blessing to its people. Those people who work in government—legislators, the president, judges, and officials—all contribute to a well-administered government.
Victor Davis Hanson brings up the unhappy subject of Tyre Nicholas. Why, many Americans wonder, did Nichols die?
VDH answers in American Greatness: You could attribute Nichols’ death to:
- A basic lack of humanity of the part of the officers
- Poor police training
- Lax administrative supervision
- Lowered hiring standards
Why the Scorpions
The now disbanded Scorpion team was mostly black. The Scorpion unit was created as a response to a grassroots appeal to stop spiraling crime in mostly black neighborhoods.
According to Christopher Roach in American Greatness, in response to public pressure about diversity and discrimination, police departments across the country have lowered standards, removed fitness tests, relaxed requirements on written tests and, occasionally even have hired convicted criminals. Police departments are looking to increase the number of black and female officers. This trend, Roach continues, “accelerated after the race riots in 2020, especially as talented and experienced police officers retired or transferred” to more hospitable areas of the country.
Ordinary Citizens Pay the Price
In pursuit of diversity, continues Mr. Roach, “standards have gone out the window. And the people who pay the price are ordinary citizens, who are underserved and sometimes attacked by unqualified police.”
Systemic Racism
After Nichols’ death, systemic racism was readily hurled.
- Van Jones, Obama’s former administration green czar, pronounced on CNN that the black police oppressors were acting out white racism.
- Some claimed that charging the five black officers with murder was itself racist.
- Others claimed that creating the unit itself was racist.
What Is or Not Racist
As VDH reminds readers, when “everything is racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.”
Mr. Hanson notes that California was always a free state with no history of slavery. Furthermore, no resident of America in 158 years (six generations) has been either a slave or slave owner. That doesn’t seem to be stopping the state of California from exploring paying out huge cash reparations to its African-American residents for the ancestral sin of slavery.
Who Is Eligible
VDH wonders how anyone can quantify either current eligibility or culpability in multiracial California, where 27% of the residents were not born in the United States? (Whites make up 35% of the state’s population.)
Outlawed: Separate but Equal
College campuses increasingly greenlight racially segregated resident housing. Is that a cry to return to “separate but equal” apartheid? The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed apartheid 60 years ago?
“To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord,” reflects VDH. He encourages readers to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.
As the world becomes ever more formidable, Mr. Hanson warns, “Americans must—as Benjamin Franklin once warned—hang together, or most certainly they will soon all hang separately.”
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