The following illustrates the unpleasant to accept reality that the Constitution that most of us love and support is, in the words of George W. Bush, “just a goddamned piece of paper.”

There is no denying that the American constitution has repeatedly been subject to radical changes that have profoundly altered the relationship between the individual citizen and the state in some cases, and the relationship between the states and the federal government in other cases.

So, we ought to list these de facto republics as such:

First Republic (1776-1788)
Second Republic (1787-1865)
Third Republic (1865-1910)
Fourth Republic (1937- )

The old republics are gone. The constitutional order of the Jeffersonian years—i.e., the so-called “American experiment”—was swept away long ago. There is no member-state sovereignty. There are no “checks and balances.” There is simply what the federal judges say there is: a massive federal administrative state that can define for itself what are permissible federal powers and what are not.

We’re living in the Fourth American Republic. Those who speak of conserving the work of “the founding fathers” or “the American experiment” are living in a republic of the imagination alone. Many conservatives like to quote Benjamin Franklin who, upon exiting the 1787 constitution convention allegedly said that the convention had created “a republic, if you can keep it.” Well, they didn’t “keep it.” It disappeared in the nineteenth century, and what we have today is something else altogether.

Continue reading …

Perhaps it’s time for a Fifth Republic. What say you?