The Term [r]epublican Has Been Erased from the Lexicon

May 14, 2012 1

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – How did the word republicanism get cleansed and almost erased from our common public consciousness and from the works of individual writers and thinkers and politicians? Not even just politicians, citizens. It is almost impossible to read a letter, to read a tract, to read a pamphlet, to read a discussion, to read a debate, to read a Supreme Court decision, and not encounter the word “republican” or “republicanism.” That’s how ubiquitous it was. Yet today, I’m some sort of outlier, nut job ostrich for bringing it up, some sort of pariah. Check out today’s transcript for more…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: You know what I’ve been doing the last two weeks? I’m writing this screenplay for the sequel to Road to Independence the movie, tentatively titled Free and Independent: Then and Now, which is basically the story of how the states never stopped being the states. It was people and political parties that decided, [mocking] “We don’t need these states anymore; we don’t need them to be little countries. What we want them to be are co-opted, incorporate into one, big, giant conglomerate blobulous mass called America.”

Something happened along the way that caused this to happen. Some of it is explainable. All the way up until around 1875, maybe 1890 or so, even after Lincoln, the concept of the state as a country was still the default position that most Americans, and that would even include Northerners, had of the issue. Somewhere in that time period, it stopped. The attachment to it began to be severed. They were working on cutting the cord. What you’ll find when you start researching this and start reading the works and correspondence of wise and learned men that wrote in between the two time periods, I’m blown away by this. I really am. I’m not just saying this to hype my docudrama. I’m saying this as a point of historical and educational reference. It is so overwhelmingly obvious that it just begs for an explanation.

How did the word republicanism get cleansed and almost erased from our common public consciousness and from the works of individual writers and thinkers and politicians? Not even just politicians, citizens. It is almost impossible to read a letter, to read a tract, to read a pamphlet, to read a discussion, to read a debate, to read a Supreme Court decision, and not encounter the word “republican” or “republicanism.” That’s how ubiquitous it was. Yet today, I’m some sort of outlier, nut job ostrich for bringing it up, some sort of pariah. [mocking] “Why don’t you get with the program and get with David Webb and the rest of them and start being the kind of conservative that Americans want on the Patriot Channel?” some people say. I just sit here scratching my head. I’m like I guess I could just burn all these books that I have, have a nice little bonfire. I’ll just start reading Bill Kristol. How about that?

I don’t know what else to do, I really don’t, other than trying to use the word in every possible way imaginable just to make the point that this is — if you took one word, it’s not liberty or freedom that you would take away from the American Revolution as a word that almost all of “them,” the founding generation, the next generation, the generation after that. If you took one word that they commonly used to describe the American form of government, it would be [r]epublican. What it was that they were practicing was republicanism. It’s mindboggling.

You stumble into some cave in Europe or somewhere and you’ve got a decent flashlight and you’re looking on the wall going, “What’s all this painting? It looks like someone was finger painting on the wall. What is that?” Or you’re stumbling around some cave in France and, “Hey, that looks like a metallic vial of some sort. Why, it is.” You shake it and go, “Hmm, there’s something inside. Let me open it up.” Inside there’s the Dead Sea scrolls. Watch, they probably weren’t found in the cave in France I’m thinking of and now I’m going to get 5,000 emails correcting me. [mocking] “They weren’t found in France, you imbecile.”

It’s just a perplexing question. I think if you can answer that question and figure out how that happened and then work on either reversing the process of reanimating and becoming re-acclimated with the word, I think you can actually fix some things. I think you can go a long way towards, I don’t think you can ever repair the damage that’s been done, but I think you can go a long way towards eliminating some of the periphery. Number one, we’re broke and that’s not going to change. Our bankrupt estate is not going to change. I would scan the pages and send them to you if you needed proof of what it is I’m speaking of.

You cannot avoid that word, yet today, we’re the only people that are using it. The only way it would show up in print is if one of the transcripts of this show is transcribed or you read it in Kevin Gutzman’s book or Kevin makes a blog post somewhere or something. It’s truly, truly — it’s just mind-blowing. How did this happen? How? It coincides, as the word republican and republicanism stops appearing and it used less and less, guess what appears? Terms of empire, terms of “our nation” and what have you. It’s something that needs to be talked about. I’m here to tell you that historians are going to find that connection as well. Maybe I’m the historian that finds it. We’re going to find that the rise of government is coincidental with the lack of popularity of the term [r]epublican.

End Mike Church Show Transcript