Dear Ben,

Dear Mr. Franklin,

Today I grieve the loss of our Republic. A woman once asked you, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" This, at the infancy of our great nation. And your reply was, "A republic, if you can keep it." I celebrate that our fathers, and your idealistic children, kept the Republic for two hundred years. Now I grieve at the loss of your toil.

We have been caught up in a movement that has caught mankind in its most carnal. We have moved in reaction, and ignored action. We have moved away from shadows of evil and found ourselves in the midst of wolves. We have sold our souls and the blood of two hundred years of patriots for a sense and empty promise of financial security and vacuous change.

I fear that if you were to walk about this nation, from sea to shining sea, that you would not recognize either the quality of people that comes out of a great Republic, nor the government that was meant to protect freedom that is moving inexorably towards the antithesis of freedom and responsibility. You said, "A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." We have no longer a tyranny of an individual king, but a tyranny of democracy.

I remind you of what Mr. Jefferson wrote, "“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

Also, of another Father, ""A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."

From time to time the American people have acting in the inspiration of wisdom and virtue. Now we have sold the soul of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for the hope of an unnamed, undefined Change. It is deplorable that so many think change for the sake of change is worth anything. Like a child playing in the streets for something new, we are bound to become a smear on the earth because we needed something different regardless the cost. We have crept this way for years since Hoover and FDR. Though some have fought the tide, as a man standing before a train yelling stop before it falls off a cliff, the time is swiftly approaching when that which made this country grand shall fade away and that which is detestable to those who love freedom and goodness shall rise from the ashes.

No longer shall the sweat of one's brow, the love of those around him, and the security of living in the greatest and freest nation be enough for those of this country, nay has it been for a while. But we have taken it upon ourselves to trust others to do what is best for us. We have taken to trusting government to accrue our wealth and security. We have taken money from those whose calluses bleed, and bodies did bleed to give it to those who did not deserve it, and to continue to rescue oppressed peoples in the world who do not desire saving.

I do pray to the Almighty that we would learn from the wisdom He did hand down to you and our other Fathers. I pray that we would turn from the decline before us. I pray that the might Judge would turn His mercies upon us once more and raise up those who would not betray what is good for what is convenient.

To you and those who bled and lost their lives to grant us this Republic, I beg your forgiveness.

May we learn from your wisdom,

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766