On this Fourth of July, heed this warning from Ben Franklin

There’s an old story about Benjamin Franklin that is worth remembering as America is on the cusp of its 244th birthday:

Franklin was leaving the Pennsylvania State House following the 1787 Constitutional Convention when a group of people asked him what sort of government the convention delegates had created.

Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Entering this Fourth of July, our country is most certainly at an “if you can keep it” moment.

All at once, we’ve had to reckon with massive upheaval on multiple fronts: The social and economic consequences of a deadly global pandemic. Widespread civil unrest over racism and police brutality. A cultural and political divide the size of the Grand Canyon.

And in the background, fears that our upcoming national election will be anything but full and fair because of the resurgent coronavirus, voter suppression and the threat of foreign interference.

That’s why we believe every American should think hard about Franklin’s quote and what it says about our duty as citizens during this tumultuous time.

In the past, Americans could rely on leadership from the top to guide us through choppy waters.

Think Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered us through the Great Depression and World War II. Or Lyndon Johnson, who stepped up after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and corralled other southern Democrats to secure passage of the Voting Rights Act and other landmark civil rights legislation.

Even during the Watergate scandal, Republican senators found their backbone and marched to the White House to stand up to a criminal president, forcing a disgraced Richard Nixon to resign.

Our leaders, somehow, have stepped up in the past. Sadly, not now.

With Donald Trump, America is reeling under a president whose only goal is to fuel chaos and division. As former Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote in a blistering op-ed, Trump is “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.”

Which is why the first step in keeping our republic is to vote Trump out in the all-important November election.

A vote against Trump — and every one of his enablers in Congress, for that matter — is the patriotic duty of every citizen of good conscience on Nov. 3.

Until we are free from a divisive, incompetent leader, America will never rein in the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic. The economy, which depends on a healthy populace, will never rebound and provide jobs for the 19 million workers drawing unemployment benefits. Our country will never reform over-aggressive policing, ensure decent health care for all citizens, restore tough environmental standards for our air and water, fight climate change, protect our public lands — the list goes on — until we have competent, caring leadership at the top.

Still, as we said, this is only the beginning.

The next step is on all of us, to pull together, as a country, and do the hard work of creating a new and better normal, not to simply restore the old.

And that work must begin by fully reckoning with our past and this undeniable truth: America has never fully lived up to the lofty principles of freedom and equality that the Founding Fathers put forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The country has survived for more than 200 years on the promise of those ideals. But for much of its history, those ideals were meaningless for millions of enslaved Black people — some of them “owned” by those Founding Fathers — who faced decades of legal discrimination even after being granted their freedom.

Those ideals were merely words on paper for Native Americans whose land was stolen via one broken government treaty after another.

Those ideals meant next to nothing to women, who were denied the right to vote until 1920. Or to immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and every other group that has, at one time or another in America’s history, faced discrimination — until someone stepped forward to make those ideals reality.

Now, in 2020, we see those “someones” in the essential workers who kept America’s hospitals, grocery stores, government offices and other institutions functioning during the worst of the pandemic.

We see them in the scientists and health care workers who are now fighting COVID-19’s scary resurgence.

We see them in the peaceful protesters, of all races, who were galvanized by yet another police killing of an unarmed Black man and are now demanding an end to systemic racism.

We see them in our neighbors and friends, putting up their American flags to celebrate the Fourth.

These “someones” bolster our faith that America, no matter its current flaws and historical sins, is a country worth believing in because so many of us take to heart its promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

We have our republic. It’s our duty to keep it.

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