Some republics die with a bang, some with a whimper. Most of them die because of being corrupted from within, where people lose their republican virtue in the pursuit of political power. Sometimes it is done when people willingly give up their freedom to a populist candidate who promises hope and change and delivers nothing but broken promises. Sometimes it is when corrupt political elites seek to nullify the voice of the people by exploiting and corrupting rules to ensure themselves power and victory despite a lack of genuine popular support [1]. Either way, Republics die when people either lack the willingness to take personal responsibility or when a significant enough group of people decides that only a given political figure can save them and so they corrupt the republic they wish to save in order to seek to ensure victory. By that standard the American Republic appears to be near death, done in both by its open Progressive enemies as well as its feigned libertarian friends.

At its core, a successful republic depends on the virtue of its people. People of virtue select other people of virtue to represent them in office. People without virtue select others like them as representatives. Therefore, the quality of political leadership in a republic reflects the priorities and concerns and state of virtue within the body politic as a whole. A lack of trust in one’s political leadership in a republic suggests a people that is untrustworthy and immoral itself. A republic gets the leaders it deserves, since those leaders come from among the people and must receive the support of the people.

That is how a republic is supposed to work, but sometimes political movements openly champion ballot nullification. In the United States this year we have witnessed the bizarre and hypocritical spectacle this year of a fringe minority candidate who claims to be the only genuinely constitutional candidate seeking to exploit rules to procure a majority of delegates in different contests without having the genuine grass roots supports of voters. Such a conscious political campaign strategy is the sign of advanced states of decay within our body politic, both to have rules that are that corrupt in the first place, and then to have someone cynical enough to claim to be saving a republic by actively striving to destroy what little legitimacy it has in the eyes of the people by directly nullifying the votes of millions of people through fraudulent means, such as pretending to support one candidate to win status as a delegate while being a true supporter of another one. Such a Trojan horse technique, and that it can be openly supported by a candidate’s supporters as a sign of immense cleverness and patriotism suggests our republic is in deep trouble.

To have a republic worth saving requires having leaders who genuinely wish to serve the people, not a narrow clique of self-serving hypocrites who profess to respect the people while seeking to exploit institutions for their own selfish benefit. It also requires having a people willing to save the republic, and willing to deal with the cancers within them, dividing us against ourselves, destroying families and communities and churches with a poisonous attitude of self-interest above all else. If we’re not willing to sacrifice for other people, others are not going to put their trust in us. At this late hour, it appears if we have a severe problem that elections alone cannot fix. If political morality is really nothing more than self-serving and empty slogans by which we condemn others for what we doing ourselves, speaking in favor of rights that we deny to others while we corrupt them ourselves, then our republic is not worth saving.

That’s a scary place to be. One is reminded of the cynical statements of American military leaders in South Vietnam, who said that they had to destroy villages to save them. Even where creative destruction may be necessary, it is never pleasant. There are always heavy costs involved in stress and insecurity and the fact that no system we design right now will be as good as the one that appears to be dying because of a lack of virtue among even its defenders. If there is no organized part of the body politic that is able and willing to be a part of a political process without corrupt motives and behavior and a genuine interest to serve others for the common good, there is no political system that will save us, and no leaders that we could elect that would serve us. If we have truly reached that moment, our republic will not endure.

The only options that remain would be bad. Either we can elect people who pretend to serve the people but in reality serve the interests of a narrow group of supporters and friends and family members who may be expected to profit from corrupt elite cliques, or we can elect populist poseurs who promise much but lack the competence to deliver upon their unrealistic promises, or we can have elections overturned by corrupt backroom convention behavior or by the tyranny of unelected courts, or by weak civilian governments being overthrown at the barrel of a gun. However it happens, it looks like our republic is dying, just like every republic in history has died for the same reasons and by the same few means. If that is the case, may God help us all, for we lack the ability to help ourselves.

[1] http://www.infowars.com/oklahoma-gop-cheating-ron-paul-in-delegate-process/