I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how little it would take for a representative republic like ours to become a dictatorship.

We saw during the COVID-19 pandemic that some of our politicians had a real need to tightly exercise authority over the citizens who elected them.

In New Jersy based on an executive order issued by Gov. Phil Murphy that included banning religious services, nine Jewish men were arrested for gathering at a synagogue to honor a friend who had passed away. In an example of the exercise of power just because he could Murphy imposed nightly curfews probably making some New Jersey citizens wonder if COVID was more transmissible after dark.

When the governor was asked what he thought about the legality of travel bans, restrictions on religious services and the size of gatherings in light of the First Amendment guarantees in the Constitution he replied the First Amendment was not even considered in making those decisions. Gov. Murphy’s words illustrate the fact you don’t have to be wise to get elected.

A further example of this attitude was seen in the actions of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who imposed a strict stay-at-home order and a travel ban allegedly because she thought it possible you could catch COVID by touching a gas pump. The governor did allow boating as long the boaters practiced social distancing and were members of the same family.

Governor Whitmer continues to ignore the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of speech by supporting a bill, passed by the legislature, that would make it a felony with a fine of up to $10,000 to intimidate someone of a protected class by using wrong pronouns. Does this signal the beginning of the end of free speech in Michigan?

Also, we remember former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo happily ignoring the First Amendment by issuing a directive to law enforcement just prior to Thanksgiving 2020 to spy on citizens to ensure that the number of persons at family celebrations was restricted.

I am also convinced as are many others that “climate change” is a movement fostered by the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry, and other members of the elites who think they are wiser than the rest of us, to control us and to make us do what they want done.

To do this they play on the fears of people who have been propagandized into believing that any change in climate is caused by mankind. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may not have really believed it herself when she predicted back in 2019 that the world would end in 12 years if we didn’t control the climate, but she knew that the prediction was “red meat” to believers in climate change and would ensure their loyalty to the cause.

The leaders of the movement have managed to convince some of the public and elected officials to eliminate all energy from nuclear and fossil fuels for unproven wind and solar energy. Leaders of the climate change movement are literally forcing us to accept an uncertain future with expensive electric cars few can afford and homes depending on expensive electricity from wind and solar because they know best.

Our ever-growing government and attendant bureaucracy, much of which is unaccountable to the legislative or executive branches, is also a danger to our republic. In recent years the FBI has shown signs of becoming a rogue agency. It colluded with Twitter to suppress news of Hunter Biden’s laptop days before the 2020 elections which according to polls may have changed the outcome. The FBI seems more intent on preserving and increasing its own power than on serving and protecting the American public.

During the COVID pandemic Facebook was pressured, and acquiesced, into banning posts that theorized that COVID-19 had been man-made and manufactured in China.

The “misinformation” was prohibited over fears that such talk supposedly would fuel anti-Asian sentiment. Only when a U.S. intelligence report was leaked to newspapers did we learn that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick enough in November 2019 to be hospitalized, and Facebook lifted the ban. Prior to the bans lifting Americans had been fed the Communist Party line on COVID’s origins.

Citizens must understand the important role they play in protecting our republic. They must be well informed and participate in the process by being informed, voting in elections, and informing their elected representatives of their views. Being a citizen of a republic carries with it more responsibility than citizens in a dictatorship.

I will conclude with a story I’ve told before. On the last day of the constitutional convention, Sept. 18, 1787, A lady asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? A republic,” replied the doctor, “if you can keep it.”

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com