Of, By, and For the People

By Art DeJong RPSC Member

When diverse crews like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Pastor Franklin Graham, Kid Rock and Governor DeSantis, and UFC’s Dana White and Senator Ron Johnson stand up on the same stage to level with us about the real shape of the nation, it’s worth a listen. For four days I couldn’t resist binge-watching a barrage of stories, rabble rousing speeches, and thoughtful analysis from some of our most successful governors, most articulate politicians, most insightful pastors, most kickass entertainers, and most honest average citizens. This year’s RNC was not your typical political convention. Its speakers probed far deeper than our present ineptitude to the core of what it means to be a self-governing people.

The dramatic resurgence of Donald Trump was, of course, front and center, but his brush with death, like Joe Biden’s dementia, had reminded everybody that human life is short and that the real source of American greatness is not the greatness of its leaders or the power of the majority in a democracy to impose its will on the minority, but in America’s defense of the rights of every individual citizen especially those not it the majority.  

Convention speakers knew what Thomas Jefferson knew so long ago, that “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of forty-nine” and understood why Jefferson’s political opponent John Adams said “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” These convention speakers took to the stage to do something about  John Adam’s observation, “There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” 

These speakers knew that the “democracy” being avidly promoted by today’s Democrats is, like their imperial presidency, a problem, not a solution. It is Ben Franklin’s “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”    These convention speakers brought us back to the real thing that made America great in the first place, a free republic with a geeky system of law that gives every family and every citizen the space and the safety to do great things, to live “bigly” for God and neighbor.

For four days, RNC speakers drove home the point that this constitutional system of law that protects the lives, liberty and property of every family and citizen is now up for grabs in this election.  It is this system of liberty through law that gives the JD Vance’s among us who grew up in Appalachia the same rights and responsibilities as the Don Trump juniors who grew up in Manhattan.  The rocking balloon drop that closed the convention signaled hope that this brash free republic, this one nation under God–of, by, and for the people– has not yet perished from the earth.