R: Self-Government Has Failed America

When asked in September of 1787 what form of government the framers of the United States Constitution had selected after three months of secretive deliberations, the eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic—if you can keep it.” Now, with two hundred and fifty years of history under our belts, we must ask ourselves if America has truly kept her republic intact. This debate forces us to explore one of our deepest held beliefs as a nation: that self-governance has made us flourish. While many Americans unquestioningly support this fundamental ethos, we must critically examine it in light of the problems we see across our society today. The Founders gave us a gift in the form of our constitutional framework. It is our duty to decide whether modern America is mature enough to maintain it.

The affirmative serves as a catch-all for a variety of factions united in the belief that America has become degraded beyond self-repair. Some may argue that our republic is overly-democratic, with populist leaders who cater to the masses while allowing our mores to grow obsolete; others say that it is not democratic enough, with an entrenched, two-party system that rejects any opposition from the outside. Regardless, the affirmative maintains that our government is broken, and that the solution to fixing it lies beyond the realm of traditional American political thought. If Federalists are to truly “resist the errors of the age,” they will recognize that America’s reliance on democracy is the root of many of these errors. Men have proven themselves incapable of forming good government on their own; an appeal to divine authority may be the only solution.

The negative rejects the notion that self-government has led us to our current discontents. History shows us that the American model has continually proven itself as the foundation for a durable, prosperous, and free society, while political theory shows us that our system ensures that the process for change will be robust and gradual. Despite its flaws, our government possesses an unmatched level of stability that has provided our society with order, the necessary prerequisite for liberty. As Federalists, we ought to praise the Founders for ensuring that the checks and balances implemented in our Constitution could not be overruled by the whims of either ambitious politicians or rabble-rousing citizens at any given time. We must strive not so that we may save ourselves from self-government, but so that self-government may save us from ourselves. 

Can we trace our problems back to 1787? Or will going back make us rediscover our solutions? And how can fallen men ever have faith in their own self-governance?