30 August 2007 by Richard Stengel American volunteers posing for
TIME's special feature on volunteering (TIME, 2007). As the
Constitutional Convention of 1787 came to a close, after three
and a half months of deliberation, a lady asked Dr. Franklin,
"Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A
republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it." — ANECDOTE
FROM THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, ED., MAX
FARRAND, VOL. 3, APPENDIX A, 1911 A republic, if you can keep
it. The founders were not at all optimistic about the future of
the Republic. There had been only a handful of other republics
in all of human history, and most were small and far away. The
founders' pessimism, though, came not from history but from
their knowledge of human nature. A republic, to survive, needed
not only the consent of the governed but also their active
participation. It was not a machine that would go of itself;
free societies do not stay free without the involvement of their
citizens. Today the two c