PRESIDENTIAL OATH OF OFFICE: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
And that’s exactly what duly elected President Biden did. He is telling us that he is doing his part to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and warning us that it is under threat in a way that it never has been before. As much of a threat as the Civil War was to our Union, that travesty falls under a totally different category of threats, one I might add, that inveigles itself into our present narrative.
We the people; President Biden repeated that phrase several times, because it us—we the people—who will decide whether or not we continue this form of government under our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our continuing effort to improve and perfect this great experiment. It is not enough now to just vote, we need to all work in our own ways to ensure that voting rights remain fair and that everyone qualified to vote, does.
On January 9, 1790, George Washington wrote: “The establishment of our new government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness, by reasonable compact, in civil Society. It was to be, in the first instance, in a considerable degree, a government of accommodation as well as a government of Laws….I always believed that an unequivocally free & equal Representation of the People in the Legislature; together with an efficient & responsible Executive were the great Pillars on which the preservation of American Freedom must extend.”[i]
There are times when it is useful to go back to our roots, to remind us of the uniqueness of our experiment, and what we, personally, are called to do to preserve it. The League of Women Voters, a classically nonpartisan organization in strong support of our representative Republic, recently sent me a bumper sticker” “VOTE Our Democracy Depends On It.”
So, do we have a representative Republic, a Democracy, or what? If we didn’t have a Republic, and a strict Democracy only, every voter would have to vote on EVERYTHING, which is ABSOLUTELY NOT FEASIBLE OR POSSIBLE in any way. But our Republic is based on our Democracy, which enables us to vote for those who will best represent us. It is the Democratic foundation on which our Republic exists that is under threat by Trump and the MAGAs, just as our President told us. It does confuse semantics when our parties are named Democrats and Republicans. And there are certainly times when the Democrats have been most undemocratic, as in the Jim Crow years.
It’s even more difficult when the MAGAS seem to control the Republican party, so any instance of telling the truth seems extremely partisan, as many have accused President Biden of in his Independence Hall speech. The MAGA Republicans have shown they do NOT respect the rule of law, free and fair elections, or what we the people have decided by majority. This is not a political party, this is a gang of thugs, con men, gullible people, and a few extremely greedy, power-hungry (mostly) men.
This is not a case of the ideologies of the two parties in serious conflict. The MAGAs have no ideology. I’ve argued before in these posts that we need a healthy 2-party system. We don’t have it now. The majority of the candidates running on the Republican ticket are off the rails when it comes to any sense of what this country is about. Voter repression, ignoring and attempting to overrule elections, violence against law enforcement: this is not an ideology, this is fascism.
If you didn’t watch all of President Biden’s speech, I recommend that you do. Watching selected clips may give a distorted view of his words. Here is one link for that and a link to the transcript, if you would rather read it.
www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/video/watch-president-bidens-full-speech-at-independence-hall/
www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/politics/biden-speech-transcript.html
[i] https://founders.archives.gov/?q=1790%20letters%20from%20George%20Washington%20Period%3A%22Washington%20Presidency%22&s=1111311113&r=190
Yes, I did watch Biden’s speech and am hopeful that there will be more. We are at a precipice and must take voting very seriously as you wrote in your blog. I always appreciate the depth of your research.
THANK YOU!