Opinion | The American republic is under considerable stress today. Here are the five real dangers to our form of a free government that Americans should recognize and remedy.

Election polling shows that a large percentage of Americans are concerned about threats to their democracy. Not surprisingly, the perceived source of that threat is different for those on the Left than on the Right.

Partisanship aside, Americans would do well to head the real risks ahead for the American republic.

The American historian Will Durant once correctly described democracies as “hectic interludes” in the history of governments. Understanding that, long before Durant, Benjamin Franklin responded to the question of what type of government the Founders established, with his historic reply, “a Republic… if you can keep it.”

Note that Franklin did not say, if your “leaders” can keep it. He placed the responsibility on individual Americans.

With that in mind, it is true that the American republic is under considerable stress today – well beyond any one candidate. Here are the five real dangers to the American form of a free government that Americans should recognize and remedy.

Runaway Government Spending
As I have written elsewhere, “no major country in history ended with a balanced budget. Fiscal restraint has never been the reason a civilization declined and fell. On the other hand, history is littered with governments that fell in a flurry of spending.”

The Roman Empire’s fall was hastened by hyperinflation. In the 1930s, the German Weimer Republic collapsed amid runaway spending. After America won its independence, the individual states engaged in a flurry of spending often with their own, inflated currencies, which led to rising conflict among the states. The response of the Founders was to consolidate power in a more centralized federal government under the Constitution designed, in part, to stabilize the economy.